UM Law Professors lecture at Religious Freedom Conference in Spain

Carmen Asiaín and Sofía Maruri lectured at a religious freedom conference in Spain

Carmen Asiain and Sofia Maruri addressed freedom, religion, and human dignity subjects.

In September, senator and professor of Law and Religion Dr. Carmen Asiaín, and the professor of Human rights and Law and Religion Dr. Sofía Maruri, participated in two conferences in Córdoba, Spain. The professors addressed human dignity, religious freedom, and expression.

From the 19th and 21st of September, the sixth conference of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS) was celebrated. The event took place in the Palace of Congress in Córdoba, a historical building of the XVI century, with the topic of "Human dignity, right, and religious diversity: planning the future of intercultural societies," where some 400 academics from the five continents participated.

Its objective was to analyze how the notion of human dignity, which represents the focal point of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, can contribute to creating a common ground between antagonistic conceptions of human rights that has implications in terms of freedom of religion and beliefs. Asiaín was a member of three panels. In one of them, she outlined the contribution of legislative and executive powers in promoting mutual respect between divergent positions regarding the relationship between religious freedom and other fundamental rights. In the other two, she addressed the topics related to dignity, equality, and religion, its challenges for women's situation, and the rights of religious minorities. In turn, Maruri presented on the liberty of expression and the phenomenon of cancel culture, an issue she discussed in her master's thesis on human rights at the University of Oxford.

Subsequently, from the 22nd to the 24th of September, the XXI Annual Conference on Latin-American Consortium on Religious Freedom took place at the University of Córdoba. The central theme was "Freedom of expression and religious freedom," a conference that brought together Latin-American academics to discuss the regulation and protection of said rights within the continent. Maruri was the national rapporteur for Uruguay and presented on the country's freedom of expression and religious freedom.