A/HRC/22/51 18. For example, minority protection systems that were developed in the framework of bilateral or multilateral peace agreements typically resulted in political or legal safeguards on behalf of specifically listed minority groups and their members. Although these safeguards might have provided practical advantages for the identified minority groups, such protection systems were not always human rights-based. Instead of building on the principles of universality, freedom and equality, they typically protected only the members of certain predefined groups. Moreover, the political context of bilateral or multilateral agreements harboured the risk that the specific minorities were seen as receiving protection by certain foreign powers. As a result, some of these minority protection mechanisms were eventually turned against the very groups they were supposed to protect. 19. The human rights- based approach also differs from theologically defined concepts of minority protection in which different status positions may depend on the degree of closeness to, or distance from, the predominant religion of the State. This would again result in reserving protection for a predefined list of religious communities while not appropriately taking into account the right to freedom of religion or belief of those individuals or groups who do not, or do not seem to, fit into the setting of theologically accepted religions, such as members of other minorities, individual dissenters, minorities within minorities, atheists or agnostics, converts or people with unclear religious orientation. 20. It is important to reiterate that the rights of persons belonging to religious minorities as established in the context of international human rights law, share all the characteristics of the human rights approach based on the principles of universality, freedom and equality. This is in the spirit of article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emphasizes that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. Moreover, the preamble to the Universal Declaration takes as its starting point the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family”. This proclamation, which has been reiterated in several international human rights conventions, must also guide the interpretation and implementation of the rights of persons belonging to religious minorities. 2. Free development of individual and communitarian identities 21. Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that “[i]n those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language”.4 According to the wording used in this provision, rights holders are individual persons who exercise their rights within their communities. The same structure can also be found in the 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992 Minorities Declaration).5 As the title indicates, rights holders are again individual persons in relation to their communities. 22. The Human Rights Committee, in its general comment No. 23 (1994) on article 27 (rights of minorities), further defines the overarching purpose of article 27 as facilitating the long-term development of minority communities and their identities, stressing that “[t]he protection of these rights is directed towards ensuring the survival and continued development of the cultural, religious and social identity of the minorities concerned, thus 4 5 6 See also the similar wording in article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child with regard to children who belong to a minority or who are of indigenous origin. General Assembly resolution 47/135.