A/HRC/37/49/Add.1 46. Under international human rights law, agreements between States and religious communities cannot be used to restrict the right to freedom of religion or belief of the adherents of these communities or any other group. This position is also acknowledged in article 10 (6) of the Constitution and is clearly mandated by article 24 of the same document. The existence of these agreements raises important questions about the State’s desire to preserve the unique characteristics of the country’s traditional religious communities and its relationship with them. Put another way, the agreements highlight the potential tension between a decentralized religious landscape characterized by pluralism, inclusion and independence, on the one hand — a situation which is much welcomed and conducive to religious harmony — and potential hegemonic institutions that represent the promotion and interests of the country’s traditional religious communities, on the other hand. This situation requires the Government’s attention in terms of ensuring that the agreements do not result in discrimination or restriction on individuals’ right to freedom of religion or belief. 47. The tension is perhaps most relevant in the case of the Muslim and Evangelical Protestant communities which, unlike the Catholic and Orthodox churches, do not have unified or centralized governance structures and could potentially represent many different groups, sects, schools of jurisprudence (fiqh) or ideological streams that generally selfidentify as Muslim or Protestant or Evangelical. The Special Rapporteur notes, for example, that article 2 of the agreement between the Council of Ministers and the Muslim community defines the latter as “an organization of Muslim believers who express, demonstrate and/or practice their conviction, principles and religious practices determined in the sources of the Islamic doctrine, Religious Legal School ‘Hanafi’ and statutes of the Muslim community of Albania (emphasis added)”. This definition appears to preclude the inclusion of Muslim groups that do not subscribe to the Hanafi fiqh. 48. Additionally, under the current legal framework, there is the question regarding the power that recognized communities may have over adherents that may not wish to come under their influence or organizational umbrella. More specifically, there is an issue regarding whether the communities may effectively exercise veto (or “gatekeeper”) powers and prevent religious or belief groups that they oppose or with which they disagree, either on ideological or other grounds, from gaining legal status or being able to practice their faith altogether. Several government officials, including those affiliated with the country’s security apparatus, reported that the phenomenon of ethnic Albanian fighters, including some travelling from Albania to Syria,3 the recent convictions of two self-declared imams and six other persons for recruiting foreign terrorist fighters (or inciting them to fight abroad), 4 and an apparent rise in the number of unregistered mosques built by foreign funding sources, prompted the Government to change its “laissez-faire” policy that allowed religious groups to organize and build new houses of worship. 49. While being careful to note that there were, in fact, a few cases of foreign terrorist fighters going to Syria from Albania, and that the problem of extremist or radical religious groups now appears effectively to be under control, several government officials said that the country’s new strategy to counter violent extremism demonstrated the desire for more vigilance. They felt that such vigilance could be accomplished by a systematic effort to legalize all houses of worship in Albania to ensure they have the proper permits to operate and increased reliance on religious communities, including the Muslim community, to effectively vet new groups to ensure that they are legitimate (see section IV (C) below for further information). It was not immediately clear from the conversations with those officials what would happen to groups that refused to cooperate or to accept the authority and control of the traditional communities — that is, whether they would be disbanded and their houses of worship shut down. Government officials themselves recognized the 3 4 Reportedly, in 2013, approximately 300 Albanians (from Albania and other parts of the Balkans) had gone to fight in Syria. Albanian authorities reportedly have strong evidence that a ring operated by two imams in the suburbs of Tirana was responsible for recruiting 70 fighters who went to Syria and Iraq, predominantly to join Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and Jabhat al-Nusrah. Some imams have been arrested in that regard in the past three years. 11