Video: Dr Aaron Rhodes and Professor Vincent Berger, side event on religious Freedom at Council of Europe.

The event was held to focus attention on the already extensive criticism of French MP Rudy Salles' Report "The protection of minors against excesses of sects" — a report that has finally be debated in the Parliamentary Assembly on the 10th April and rejected by the Assembly (see here). 

 

The two speakers, Professor Vincent Berger (former Jurisconsult of the ECHR) and Dr Aaron Rhodes (new elected President of FOREF Europe, founder of the Freedom Rights Project and former director of the International Helsinki Foundation) outlined the dangers of adopting a report that would affect the rights of religious minorities when, from a human rights and legal perspective, there are no or inadequate definitions to define the supposed problem. To implement measures without any clear legal basis would only end up stigmatizing and eventually reducing the rights and protection of children and their parents.