A/HRC/25/58 30. In general, the Special Rapporteur has the impression that the potential of religious or belief communities to become positive factors of societal resilience against manifestations of collective hatred still requires further exploration in order to be fully understood. He thinks this is a fascinating area for research, practical experimentation and exchange of experiences. C. 1. Building trust on the basis of freedom of religion or belief Respecting everyone’s right to freedom of religion or belief 31. If it is true that collective hatred typically originates from combined sentiments of unreasonable fear and contempt, then it follows that policies of countering hatred must invest in trust-building based on universal respect for human dignity. Building trust with the purpose of overcoming unreasonable fears requires well-functioning public institutions, as well as activities that encourage and facilitate communication. Both levels are intertwined: whereas public institutions necessarily presuppose a certain level of public communication, the prospects of meaningful and sustained communication generally increase with an infrastructure of institutions that provide a public sphere to which everyone can have equal access. 32. In policies specifically addressing religious hatred and its root causes, freedom of religion or belief has a pivotal function. Like other human rights, freedom of religion or belief is a part of the development of an infrastructure of public institutions at national, regional and international levels, including courts, ombudsman institutions, national human rights institutions and international monitoring bodies. At the same time, freedom of religion or belief has far-reaching implications for communication — which, incidentally, also accounts for its close interrelatedness with freedom of expression. Finally, freedom of religion or belief institutionalizes due respect for all human beings as potential holders of profound, identity-shaping convictions and conviction-based practices. 33. Respect is a key term for the understanding of human rights in general and in particular for freedom of religion or belief. In the human rights framework, respect always relates to human beings, as evidenced in the opening sentence of the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family”. In the face of widespread misunderstandings, it cannot be emphasized enough that freedom of religion or belief does not provide respect to religions as such; instead it empowers human beings in the broad field of religion and belief. The idea of protecting the honour of religions themselves would clearly be at variance with the human rights approach (see A/68/290). 34. For many people around the world, religious convictions, spiritual values, a sense of sacredness, community-related ceremonies and other religious norms and practices constitute an essential part of their daily lives and may be the backbone of their individual and communitarian identities. Working on behalf of freedom of religion or belief requires an appreciation of the deep emotional attachment and loyalty that many believers feel to their religion or belief. However, to take religions and beliefs seriously in all their dimensions also implies taking pluralism seriously, including sometimes irreconcilable differences in world views and practices. What is sacred for one community may remain opaque to another community, and the values that one group holds in high esteem may appear incomprehensible to some others. This is one of the reasons why respect in the framework of human rights cannot immediately be accorded to the particular contents of religions or beliefs — that is, religious truth claims, norms, practices or identities — but only to human beings as those who hold, cherish, develop and try to live up to such convictions and norms. 9