This talk will explore why and how Christian nongovernmental organizations conduct human rights work at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (HRC), and how their work is informed and shaped by constructions of human rights discourse and space as secular. Through interviews, ethnography and archival research, it will interrogate the idea that the secular and the religious are distinct categories, and more specifically that human rights can be neatly distinguished from religion. Thus, Christianity remains somewhat entangled in the texture of the United Nations. This Christian presence is not without implications for human rights advocacy. 

Amélie Barras is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science (Law & Society Program) at York University (Toronto, Canada), and currently the director of the Socio-Legal Graduate Program. She conducts research on the intersection of law, religion, and politics. She has published on the politics of secularism and religious freedom, including in Turkey and France (Refashioning Secularisms in France and Turkey: The Case of the Headscarf Ban, Routledge, 2014). She also works on the legal mobilization of faith-based organizations in different institutions, including at the United Nations. Her most recent book - Faith in Rights (SUP, 2024) - explores the ways in which these organizations shape human rights’ discussions and norms. 

The mission of the Yves Oltramare Chair for Religion and Politics in the Contemporary World is to provide a major scientific contribution to the analysis of the impact of the relationship between religion and politics on the evolution of societies and the international system.