A/HRC/37/49 undergoing a range of minor or dramatic adjustments, typically in response to social or political pressures.2 12. Studies using various indicators to demonstrate how States engage with religion or belief, and how such entanglements may affect Governments’ disposition in promoting and protecting freedom of religion or belief have produced myriad classification models for the relationships between State and religion. Some studies examine the correlation between States’ actions or inaction which result in interference with freedom of religion or belief and the extent to which governmental institutions identify themselves with religious institutions or beliefs.3 Others assess the role of constitutional stipulations in establishing and regulating the overall relationship between religious and State authorities.4 13. A 2017 study, which focused on the official religion policies and reported State practices of all 193 States Members of the United Nations, concluded that some 42 per cent of States either declared official support for one religion (21 per cent) or conferred favour onto one or more religions (21 per cent). Another 53 per cent of Member States did not identify with any faith or belief. A small number of Member States (5 per cent) exerted “a very high level of control over religious institutions in their countries or hold a negative view of religion in general”.5 An earlier study, on the other hand, which also examined the laws, regulations, government policies and government actions of 177 countries, produced 14 subcategories grouped into 4 overarching relationships between State and religion — similar to those identified by the 2017 study — concluding that 41 States had official religions, 77 favoured one or more religions, 43 did not identify with any religion and 16 had a negative view of the role of religion in public life.6 14. Given such complexities, there is no consensus as to either how the relationships between State and religion should be classified, or on the terminology for characterizing their nature. The Special Rapporteur does not endorse any conclusion or particular model for such relationships generated by the above-mentioned studies. Nevertheless, some indicators for understanding such relationships are common to these studies, and the general patterns for how States engage with religion or belief gleaned from them are useful for the purposes of this discussion. 15. This includes examining States’ identification with religion(s) and/or belief(s) by way of declaration in constitutions or other founding documents, which offer some insight into the range of normative attitudes States may hold towards the roles that various religion(s) and/or belief(s) should play in public life and, in extreme cases, private life. At the same time, examining States’ official identification with a particular religion is not necessarily determinative of how they will entangle themselves with religion or interrelate with religious communities in practice. For instance, States with official religions, typically, support religion more strongly, but declaring an official religion does not always lead to high levels of actual support for that religion. Consequently, a close examination of the practices that Governments adopt is also essential to understanding the implications that these relationships pose for freedom of religion or belief beyond what the mere existence of an official religion implies.7 16. Of the 660 communications transmitted by the mandate holder from 2004 to 2017, about 86 per cent were sent to the 81 States with official or favoured religion(s) (412 communications) and the 10 States that maintain a negative posture towards religion (157 2 3 4 5 6 7 Jonathan Fox, Political Secularism, Religion, and the State: A Time Series Analysis of Worldwide Data (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Cole Durham, “Patterns of Religion State Relations”, in John Witte, Jr. and M. Christian Green (eds.), Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011). Dawood Ahmed, Religion-State Relations, 2nd ed., (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2017). Pew Research Center, “Many Countries Favour Specific Religions, Officially or Unofficially” (Washington DC, October 2017). Fox, Political Secularism (see footnote 2). Ibid. 5