Exercising Religious Freedom in Pandemic Era During the State of Emergency – a Legal Perspective
Exercising Religious Freedom in Pandemic Era During the State of Emergency – a Legal Perspective

Summary/Abstract: The COVID-19 virus pandemic has placed countless challenges before the states with which these were not fully prepared to cope. Bearing in mind that this danger threatened the existence of the state and its citizens, states have often responded by introducing a state of emergency, in which they had to maintain a balance between the state’s survival and the guaranteed human rights, in particular the freedom of religion. As a result of the comparative analysis of normative solutions from the constitutions of some of the European countries that introduced the category of non-derogable rights in a state of emergency, it was concluded that all analysed cases incorporated religious freedom under this category, following the solution in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The author refutes the view that the choice of the European Convention on Human Rights, which does not list among non-derogable rights religious freedom, is obsolete and unjustified. In many states having a state of emergency in effect for Easter 2020 during the pandemic, religious freedom had factually been derogated from by the suspension of freedom of movement, making it impossible to go and attend the service. In this paper, the author advocates returning to the solution of the European Convention on Human Rights as one capable to respond appropriately to the modern challenges (not only pandemics but also the increasingly frequent terrorist activities). In this context, the author argues that derogation from religious freedom is inevitably permissible, but only in respect of forum externum, while forum internum remains an absolute right.

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