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U.N. Body Gets Jewish Proposal on Protecting Religious Rights

January 24, 1961
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A representative of a Jewish organization proposed here today that the United Nations form a Commission on Religious Rights, which would be empowered to receive complaints and probe into religious discriminations everywhere in the world.

The proposal was made by Dr. Isaac Lewin, UN representative of the Agudas Israel World Organization, in an address to the UN Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. He told the Subcommission he based his idea on the type of commissions against discrimination now existing in 20 American states and in a number of American cities.

Like many of the American commissions against discrimination, he said, the UN Commission on Religious Rights would act as the guardian of religious rights. The UN commission would, after investigating charges of religious discrimination against governments, intervene with those governments and try to reconcilable the differences between the governments concerned and the complainants.

The subcommission took no immediate action on Dr. Lewin’s proposal. But the suggestion was placed in the group’s records, and could be brought up any time for possible implementation by any one of the 12 members of the subcommission. The group is a subsidiary of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

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