The World Assembly,
Affirming the importance of identifying and protecting sites of cultural significance;
Acknowledging that religious sites frequently fall into this category and are deserving of protection;
Gratified by the long-standing success of General Assembly Resolution #287 "Cultural Site Preservation", which codifies identification and protection for sites with all manner of cultural significance;
Abhorring the needless and overreaching bureaucracy present in General Assembly Resolution #522 "Protecting Sites of Religious Significance", which both duplicates effort and exceeds reasonable boundaries;
Notes that the target resolution creates extensive and overlapping efforts in this regard through the creation of a second committee tasked with an overlapping mandate, and the separate designations of significance for religious sites now being required under multiple competing resolutions;
Annoyed that the creation of this unnecessary second committee will massively waste World Assembly funds that would be of better use elsewhere;
Further notes that the target resolution uses incredibly broad and problematic definitions, such as:
- defining any ‘place of religious community’ as a site of religious significance to be protected in perpetuity, which will include culturally insignificant houses with shrines where community worship may take place, preventing owners of the house from altering the religious nature of the house in the future even if their own religious views have changed;
- defining any grave ‘of people associated with […] a religion’ as a site of religious significance to be protected in perpetuity, which would render the grave of any deceased practitioner of an active religion forever untouchable, even for law enforcement purposes such as recovering evidence in a murder;
Dismayed that member nations are required to protect "foundational place, or places, of a religion" in perpetuity, which could lead to people declaring the establishment of a religion to immediately gain international protections for their person and property against even the most reasonable of societal demands;
Troubled that sites of religious significance established through invasion may be completely desecrated by member nations regardless of their current importance to the adherents of the religion at present;
Further troubled that the resolution does not fully prevent member nations from applying blanket access restrictions to sites of religious significance, defeating the purpose of protecting these sites in the first place;
Confused by unclear wording in the resolution, such as ‘[a]busing [sic] one's private property rights in the pursuit of gaining the legal right to protect or maintain a site of religious significance’, which could lead to vastly different interpretations by member nations and not result in the intended effect that the clause wanted;
Concluding that the member nations of the World Assembly should repeal a flawed resolution; hereby:
Repeals General Assembly Resolution #522, “Protecting Sites of Religious Significance.”
Co-authored by
Verdant Haven.
