A/60/399 sought. Such conversions are sometimes prohibited by law and the acts facilitating such conversion may constitute a criminal offence. In some countries, legislation prohibits conversion without prior notification of the authorities or defines “forcible” conversion in broad terms. 2. Applicable standards 46. The Special Rapporteur notes that, according to universally accepted international standards, the right to freedom of religion or belief includes the right to adopt a religion of one’s choice, the right to change religion and the right to maintain a religion. She also notes that these aspects of the right to freedom of religion or belief have an absolute character and are not subject to any limitation whatsoever. 47. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion “includes freedom to change [one’s] religion or belief”. Article 1 of the 1981 Declaration states that “[t]his right shall include freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of [one’s] choice” and that “[n]o one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have a religion or belief of his choice”. 48. The content of article 18, paragraph 1, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is the result of a lengthy process of discussion in the Human Rights Commission and the third Committee of the General Assembly. The wording initially proposed was “Everyone should have the freedom to maintain or to change his religion”, but, following opposition by some countries which feared that this formulation would lend encouragement to proselytism and anti-religious propaganda, it was changed to “have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice”, a wording that was adopted without dissent. This final version of the provision was undoubtedly intended to include the right to convert from one religion or belief to another. The Human Rights Committee, in paragraph 5 of its general comment No. 22 (1993) on article 18, observed that “the freedom to ‘have or to adopt’ a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one’s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one’s religion or belief.” 49. The fact that article 18, paragraph 3, of the Covenant to be imposed only on the manifestation of religion or belief clearly assigns the freedom to “have or to adopt a religion or belief” to the first part of paragraph 1, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, also called forum internum, which cannot be interfered with in any way. In its general comment No. 22 the Human Rights Committee states clearly that article 18 “does not permit any limitations whatsoever on the freedom of thought and conscience or on the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief of one’s choice” (para. 3). 50. This prohibition of limitation is reinforced by paragraph 2 of the same article, which provides that “[n]o one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.” The fact that the prohibition of coercion was made explicit shows that the drafters of the Covenant found the freedom provided by paragraph 1 to be so significant that any form of coercion by the State was impermissible, independently of whether the coercion was physical or in the form of State-sponsored incentives. According to the Human Rights Committee: 15