Threat to Human Rights

July 5th, 2007
By Jay Sekulow

For the past several days, I have been in our European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) offices in Strasbourg, France. In conjunction with Regent University School of Law, we are training over 50 students from around the world concerning issues of international religious freedom and human dignity. Students from as far away as South Korea are attending during this ninth year of our program here at the University of Strasbourg. Former Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, is on our faculty for this program. I will be giving a further report on the details of our program in next several days, but I did want to report a significant victory that our ECLJ obtained at the Council of Europe.

Legislation was proposed in Strasbourg for the entire Council of Europe entitled “The Dangers of Creationism in Education.” A vote was scheduled on this legislation for Tuesday, June 25, at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Our ECLJ legal team, as well as some of our Regent University law students who are serving as interns in Strasbourg, went to work on this situation immediately. The Committee on Culture, Science and Education presented a working document entitled “Report on the Dangers of Creationism in Education.” There were nineteen articles contained in a draft resolution which would forego any scientific discussion between the theories of evolution and creationism. In essence, a discussion of intelligent design in the educational setting would be illegal. The language used in the report called the discussion of creationism “a threat to human rights.”

Despite the fact that respect for pluralism and diversity are supposed to be the hallmarks of European society, the European Council had no difficulty entertaining this ban on creationism. Our ECLJ produced a 14-page document which pointed out that

“to censor discussion and teaching of creationism would violate the spirit as well as the letters of democracy enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, the Charter on the Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

We went on to assert that the result of passing the resolution would be the prevention of academic and educative discussions between the theory of intelligent design and the theory of evolution. This approach only hampers the educational progress of students by restricting their examination of competing scientific ideas and would necessarily violate the freedom of expression, including academic freedom, as well as the right to the free exercise of religion. We asserted that the Parliamentary Assembly should reject the resolution as incompatible with the goals and ideals of the Council of Europe.

I am happy to report that we were successful in defeating this resolution. This is a significant victory for academic freedom and represents our worldwide efforts to protect not only academic freedom, but freedom of association and intellectual pursuit. Prohibiting discussions of creationism in classrooms throughout Europe is nothing short of censorship. We were very pleased that this resolution was withdrawn after our document was circulated amongst the members of Parliament of the Council of Europe.

I will have more reports on additional victories in the days ahead. If you would like to read the memorandum that we presented to the Council of Europe, please click here.