I was working for Mongolia Global Justice Research during this winter break. The report from our research team will be used by members of parliament (“MP”) for advocates to change the law in Mongolia. I did the legal research on the international legal system and other nations’ legal systems related to three projects that were assigned to our team (the law related to registration limitations for churches or other religious organizations, the law related to Mine Closure Fund, and Restrictions on Religious Visa Issuance).
I and my team member were finding the critical information from the liberal and restrictive countries that could help MP to compare between these two legal systems and find a better model for their own legal system. It is very interesting to see how different between the liberal countries’ legal system and restrictive counties’ legal system in protecting/restricting the freedom of religion. We also did research on the international legal system, specifically, we focused on Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. We were able to find out how the state parties implements those international legal instruments and how those legal instruments protect the freedom of religion.
Before I started this internship, I had no interest with the freedom of religion restrictions. Now I could see that there are so many things that I should know about the freedom of religion and I really passionate with this research. I was so excited and curious to see how each country’s legal system deal with religious issues. Specially, I could see how the government uses the law to restrict the freedom of religion (the law that discriminates the minority religious groups and supports another group).
Please pray for the missionaries around the world that are doing His work, yet they are facing with the prosecution from the government.