RESEARCH & PROJECTS

Religion, Law and Human Rights

International human rights has been a major and influential discourse of human dignity, equality and justice, as well as a regime of treaties, institutions, and legal norms to protect humans across the globe. In the national context, such as the democratizing Indonesia, the challenge to realize human rights have come from the state as well as society. ICRS research project on religion, law and human rights concern the legal as well as political and cultural dimensions of the encounter of the global and the local. 

The focus of ICRS research is on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) but also its interaction with other rights. For example, with the advent of social media, new issues at the intersection of FORB and other rights, especially freedom of expression, have emerged and increasingly become new, unprecedented challenges. This has underlined the need for better knowledge of FORB in relation to new challenges. A more recent issue, and an ongoing topic of research at ICRS, is on religion in the new Indonesian Criminal Code (2023). ICRS had engaged with other organizations in advocating for a better formulation of the Criminal Code, i.e. in line with Indonesia commitment to human rights; and now is working with them again for interpreting the new Code before it is implemented in 2026.   

From 2021 to 2023 (ongoing) the Oslo Coalition for Freedom of Religion or Belief and the International Center for Law and Religion Studies of Brigham Young University have supported ICRS, together with CRCS, to build and disseminate knowledge on FoRB. In 2023-2024, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands also supported ICRS works on religion in Indonesian laws and regulations. Previously, in 2018, the Embassy has supported a study entitled “Bridging the Unbridgeable: Dialectics of Religious Freedom and Harmony in Post-Reform Indonesia”, which convened four Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) in Medan, Surabaya, Makassar and Jakarta. The paper was presented in the International Conference on Islam and Religious Freedom (Jakarta, December 2018). In addition, the research produced a Policy Brief which was presented to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. 

Published works and events: