Secularisation and Minority Rights—How Does Secularisation Affect the Rights of Religious and Belief Minorities?

This article discusses the link between secularisation and the rights of religious and belief minorities. Using data from the Atlas of Religious or Belief Minority Rights, it measures the extent to which RBM rights are respected, promoted and restricted. Taking the number of ‘nones’ in a country as an indicator of the secularisation of its legal system, it examines the impact of secularisation on the promotion of religious minority rights and the equal treatment of minorities, as well as the gap between their rights and those of the majority. The article concludes that secularisation does not directly promote RBM rights. Instead, it reduces the disparity between the rights enjoyed by the various minorities and between them and the majority Church. Notably, there is a clear correlation between secularisation and the majority–minority rights gap: highly secularised states tend to reduce it, whereas less secularised states tend to widen it. In terms of equal treatment, a highly secularised state does not guarantee equal treatment of all RBMs. However, a less secularised state makes equal treatment even more difficult.