A/79/182 24. In short, religion can inspire and be utilized to advance non -violence, conflict resolution and peace, or violence, conflict and war. 25. Nonetheless, “religiously inspired violence is, by and large, more deadly than violence justified by other means”. 31 One cannot ignore the scholarship underpinning the observation that religion “contributes to a strikingly high proportion of civil wars and incidents of terrorism” and that religion not only renders such violence “deadlier but [also] more difficult to bring to a lasting end”. 32 26. Research has demonstrated that “the State strategy of choosing exclusion and repression or accommodation toward minorities is a key driver behind the likelihood of a religious cleavage becoming an organizing principle for violence”. 33 It has been argued that it is in contexts of State repression that religious identity markers gain salience and can become, for example, “synonymous with not having legitimate claims to rights such as citizenship, land, employment and security”. 34 There is “no deterministic primordial route from demographic diversity to war, but … repression can spur civil war”. 35 27. In the context of discrimination and intolerance based on religion or belief, the mandate has long observed that such discrimination and intolerance result from the combination of “a variety of economic, social, political or cultural factors deriving from complex historical processes”, along with “sectarian or dogmatic intransigence”. 36 The risk of that intransigence increases where repression has not been addressed and the State has fallen short in its duties to address it. 28. This speaks to the multilayered factors that lead to a decision to resort to violence. Religion rarely stands alone as a factor, but rather in conjunction with other factors and grievances. Where there are targeted repressive State policies directed against a group, bonds are forged that increase cohesion among members of the targeted group, and these common grievances may give rise to mobilization and dissent – hence to the “religious cleavage becoming an organizing principle for violence” 37 – or even escalate to violence, conflict and war. 29. It is also worthy of note that “a regime’s experience with religious conflict will lead it to be more repressive of religious groups”. 38 Together, these findings hold that after a conflict that has involved religion, religious repression is likely to ensue, creating a cycle of restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, which in turn risks generating further future conflict. 30. Former Special Rapporteur Heiner Bielefeldt outlined the forms such violence can take. Violence in the name of religion “can be in the form of targeted attacks on individuals or communities, communal violence, suicide attacks, terrorism, State repression, discriminative policies or legislation and other types of violent behaviour. It can also be embedded and perpetuated in the status quo in various forms of structural violence justified in the name of religion.” 39 As to the actors concerned, they may comprise different types of non-State actors, including armed and vigilante __________________ 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 24-13239 Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 142. Ragnhild Nordås, “Religious demography and conflict: lessons from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana”, International Area Studies Review, vol. 17, No. 2 (June 2014), p. 160. Ibid., p. 161. Ibid. A/HRC/13/40, para. 43. Nordås, “Religious demography and conflict”, p. 160. Peter S. Henne and Jason Klocek, “Taming the gods: how religious conflict shapes State repression”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 63, No. 1, p. 112. A/HRC/28/66, para. 4. 7/22