A/CONF.189/PC.1/7 page 9 (i) Conceptual combination 26. As observed by the Human Rights Committee in its General Comment 18 of 4 September 1992, the Covenant does not contain a definition of the term “discrimination” and does not indicate what constitutes discrimination within the terms of its various provisions, particularly article 2, paragraph 1.25 In the same General Comment, the Committee introduces a number of elements that could help to shape the conceptual outline of the issue under study: it refers explicitly to the definition of discrimination contained in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 and therefore gives the impression that “discrimination” as used in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights should be understood as having a similar meaning.26 While pointing out that the enjoyment of rights and freedoms on an equal footing does not mean identical treatment in every instance, the Committee takes a broad view of the right to non-discrimination which covers all forms of discrimination, even those relating to rights that are not explicitly recognized in the Covenant.27 It is precisely when the rights are recognized by the Covenant and when they are violated in an aggravated way because of the implications of the identification with multiple groups of persons belonging to minorities that, on a strictly legal level, the discrimination cannot be treated in exactly the same way as either discrimination affecting a right that is not recognized by the Covenant or discrimination affecting a right protected by the Covenant but constituting, as it were, a single “violation”. 27. Two of the Covenant’s provisions are especially concerned with the groups and minorities we are dealing with: article 18 and article 27. Article 18 28. This article draws heavily on article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, providing for freedom of religion and - although it is less explicit on this point than the article in the Declaration - freedom to change religion. It is impossible to find a satisfactory definition of a “protected religion” because of the significant functional differences between the various systems followed. The Covenant seems to take this problem into account by providing like the Universal Declaration - for a broad acceptance of the concept. Thus, the scope of the article seems to cover every system of belief and practice based on a relationship with a supreme being, one or more deities or spiritual beings, sacred things or simply the universe. 29. Religion, however, is distinctly more complex: it differs from other manifestations of opinion or belief in that it cannot be reduced to a question of personal conviction, i.e. to a simple question of freedom of conscience or belief. As several authors have pointed out, religions are systems of beliefs and practices, myths, rites and worship that have the effect of uniting members of a group and ensuring the group’s existence and often even its ethnic identity [Yacoub, 1998; Ben Achour, 1994].28 Although religions have been the cause of the bloodiest wars, they have also safeguarded the identity of several peoples. Catholicism has done this for the Polish and the Irish; Orthodox Christianity for the Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbs; Judaism for the Israelis and Jewish minorities across the world; Islam for the Pakistanis, Bosnians, Kosovars and the many Muslims in the West; and many traditional polytheistic religions have done the same in Africa and Asia and for the indigenous people of the Pacific region and the Americas. As a result, religious status is often difficult to dissociate from the cohesion of a social group in terms of its