A/HRC/31/18 Covenant and further specified in general comments No. 22 and No. 34. Of the Human Rights Committee. Sometimes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence is amalgamated with broad legislative provisions against creating “discord” in society, undermining the unity of the State, or endangering interreligious “harmony”. Such broad concepts typically remain undefined, opening the way to arbitrary application of such laws, often to the disadvantage of those who would actually need protection from incitement to acts of hatred, including members of religious minorities, dissenters, critics, converts, atheists and others. In fact, they may even suffer additional intimidation owing to unclear legislation and its inconsistent, arbitrary application. Indeed, the Special Rapporteur has had to deal with a number of cases, including by means of allegation letters to Governments, in which individuals have been imprisoned under the pretext of vaguely defined anti-hatred laws for simply expressing religious criticism, internally dissenting views or creating their own reform branches of religious communities. 21 65. Overcoming impunity is the main responsibility of Governments when combating incitement to imminent violence. In order to fulfil the envisaged goal, however, antiincitement laws must be clearly defined and meet all the criteria set out in articles 18 (3), 19 (3) and 20 (2) of the Covenant and all other relevant provisions of international human rights law. 3. Criminalizing ill-defined superiority claims 66. Anti-hatred laws sometimes combine criminalization of incitement with prohibiting the spread of superiority claims based on “race”, ethnicity, religion or belief. This is yet another source of legal insecurity. The Special Rapporteur therefore attaches great importance to drawing a clear conceptual distinction between claims of superiority of certain religions or beliefs, on the one hand, and superiority claims based on “race” or ethnicity, on the other. 67. Surely, there are many overlaps at the phenomenological level. For instance, a common religion or belief may become one of the elements shaping the identity of an ethnic group. In spite of possible phenomenological overlaps, however, religion preserves a specific anthropological and epistemological status. Unlike various ethnic or “racial” group characteristics, religion typically includes ideas — for example, ideas of a metaphysical and/or a normative nature — which may invite personal reflection and meditation, exchange with others, public discourses, critical comments, academic research, missionary attempts and other forms of communicative positioning. That likewise applies to nonreligious belief-systems too, including atheism or agnosticism. The possibility of becoming an object of communication — affirmative or critical — constitutes an indispensable part of freedom of religion or belief. It is even one of the defining characteristics of this human right, which again accounts for its closeness to freedom of expression. 68. According to article 4 (a) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, States parties “shall declare as an offence punishable by law all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority”. Whereas article 20 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights calls for prohibiting incitement to acts of discrimination, hostility of violence, article 4 (a) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination requires criminalizing the dissemination of certain such ideas. It is important to adhere to a narrow interpretation of this provision, including a narrow definition of the nature of those ideas, i.e. their characterization on the 21 18 See, under expert papers, the joint submissions by Special Rapporteurs to the four 2011 Expert workshops on the prohibition of incitement to national, racial or religious hatred. Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Articles19-20/Pages/ExpertsPapers.aspx.