How can religious freedom fighters navigate through the troubled sea of armed conflicts, transnational violent acts, and multilateral architecture to fight for religious freedom? What are the concerns of the so-called Western World, and why are freedom of religion, including freedom of thought and conscience, considered as marginal issues? And, also, what is the weight of the United Nations architecture?
In this paper, we open the discussion on possible actions to deter violations of fundamental rights within the contemporary multilateral system, and explain why life is so difficult for religious freedom advocates. We also explore ideas to manage some of the hot-button issues while navigating a system that is primarily based on money and security, rather than principles.
The ghost of UN Sanctions
The ghost of “UN sanctions” is gone from our world castle. Not only do sanctions lack the capacity to deter autocrats, but there is also no multilateral mechanism to enforce them.
Among us Christians, it is painfully clear how economic sanctions never bothered the autocrat, only his already tormented citizens. This prompted the West to shift from geographic to thematic sanctions, allowing the simple addition of names to lists of, for example, counterterrorism measures. As few can enforce economic sanctions on countries, we are all seeking ways to make Justice more personal to the perpetrator.
The UN security Council also proved to be an obstacle, protecting with veto the friends of China and Russia. Trying to get around the Security Council, and making Justice more personal, initiatives such as the Global Magnitsky Act came into being.
The Global Magnitsky Act
There are structures like the Global Magnitsky Act (GMA) which are applied bilaterally, from a country to a person, to great effect. Enforcing and policing them is not simple enough, however, for their wider application. The GMA authorizes the U.S. government to impose targeted sanctions—including visa bans and asset freezes—on foreign individuals and entities responsible for gross human rights violations or significant corruption globally.
The GMA came to being in the US in 2012 following the death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blower against the Putin regime. In 2016 more countries adopted similar measures, essentially focused on punishing individuals by confiscating their assets and not allowing them into their countries. Even if the US applies it directly to one person, such as Francesca Albanese of the UN, this ban extends to the ability to travel elsewhere, to have a bank account or a credit card, creating a great deal of personal embarrassment. It was also very effective toward the children of the president of Nicaragua, blocking access to the US and to the assets they had kept in US territory, which led to the first liberation and deportation of 222 political prisoners in February 2023.
Currently, across the US, the UK, Canada, and the EU, over 300 individuals have been penalized with GMAs from 40 countries. Smaller nations tend to form ad hoc coalitions to this effect. The main problem I see: GMAs only apply to government representatives, leaving suspects like jihadists and organized crime off the hook. For them, there are only the measures that affect any citizen. Again, the US administration can apply this blockades to individuals without previous warnings, as many Mexican officials are finding out since 2025.
The Multilateral institutions and the language of money
Indeed, the only language that autocrats across the 5 continents understand without an interpreter is the language of money.
This leads to the fact that the truly frightening multilateral institutions for autocrats are not the United Nations or the European Union, but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), together with international private banks that might lend billions at strategic rates.
An autocrat, is not only an elected officials turned despot, but the men and women with more weapons and money than their neighbours, including jihadist and organized crime networks. Since they do not borrow from the IMF or the WB, they create companies that borrow money privately, avoiding thus the official attempts to limit their capacity to commit crime.
As an activist seeking to form an ad hoc coalition of countries to impose conditions on the next World Bank grant, one can be quite effective. The ensuing embarrassment to the oppressing regime is strong, as most autocrats still care about their international image.
The WTO has a system of acceptable trade preferences that can be offered in exchange for reforms to social and political systems. The EU, as a matter of Article 1 of any agreement, imposes the mutual respect for democratic and human rights principles and can also use the “Generalized System of Preferences” or GSP+ with for example Pakistan, conditioning the next phase of trade benefits on the compliance with 27 international agreements, 10 of which are human rights agreements. It works slowly, but it has a protective effect on the threatened groups. As an activist, it is important to remind the Western country you are addressing of this capacity for conditionality that they have, as they tend to think in “all or nothing” terms and do not want to acknowledge that there may be a handful of products in the trade or cooperation agreement that really interest the oppressing counterpart.
Other well-known tools of conditionality include arms sales, as is the case for example of prohibition to sell arms to countries which are under civil war, but there are still very few arms-manufacturing countries compared to the number of oppressing autocrats in the world.
The role of the European Union
As a multilateral entity, the EU leaves considerable discretion to Member States to form alliances with other countries. GMA measures can also be applied by ad hoc alliances, to great effect. As an activist, you need to identify the 5 top business partners of the oppressing nation and seek potential alliances among the countries where the business is established, to press for human rights compliance.
The threats to Freedom of Religion
Among the transnational enemies of Human Rights, the three most dangerous ones are the neo-Marxist ideologies, the jihadism and the organized crime. Countries, however, continue to operate strictly within their own borders, in spite of the fact that the enemy ignores these limits. Few international problems, such as Climate Change, have been identified as transnational, and nations are at the losing end because they do not cross borders in pursuit. Needless to say, the religious liberty’s activists are disadvantaged, more so as the “international legal order” crumbles down.
When we identify a problem of this nature, we have to find creative ways to use what we have at our disposal. One important element to consider while drafting a strategy: all religions are transnational, and some are better organized than others. I believe that one of the main aims of “interfaith dialogue” should be to confront common enemies together. We should include in the agendas of all Interfaith dialogue actions the development of a working group on Transnational Challenges.
The reactions of the Western World
Nowadays, it is possible that a country from the so-called Western world can justify its inaction in front of egregious violations of human rights by arguing national security concerns and economic (mostly energy-sourcing) priorities.
As an activist, you must monitor the calendar of upcoming meetings to review trade and cooperation agreements, to select the right time to boost the impact of your outreach strategy.
Most Western governments would like to believe that Article 18 of the UN Declaration of Fundamental Rights (on Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion) is less important than other articles. However, the recent International Religious Freedom Summit, held in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 2-3, provided two examples of this very matter: Vietnam and Mexico both threatened speakers for merely acting according to their faith and conscience.
There are however, we are identifying a few Achilles heels on the oppressing autocrats: I mentioned the clear language of money, and the ability to obtain international loans to fund the autocrat’s lifestyle. Activists should not hesitate to make use of these tools, to try and save at least one innocent life.