Faith in the Balance: Denmark’s UPR Outcome Adopted at HRC 63

CAP Liberté de Conscience — Session coverage, 63rd session of the Human Rights Council

Two hundred and sixty-five recommendations, one hundred and seventy-four accepted, ninety-one merely noted. On paper, Denmark’s fourth Universal Periodic Review ended in September 2026 the way most Western reviews do: with broad acceptance and polite applause. Yet the most telling sentence of the adoption session may not belong to any state. It came from a humanist organization, which observed that not one of the 265 recommendations addressed the place of non-religious life stances in Danish law. In a session where religion, belief and belonging dominated much of the floor, that silence said as much as the speeches.

The outcome

The document adopted by consensus is the report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of Denmark (A/HRC/63/10), issued on 10 July 2026 under agenda item 6. Denmark was reviewed on 7 May 2026 during the fifty-second session of the Working Group, with Brazil, the Marshall Islands and South Africa serving as rapporteurs. Ninety-eight delegations took the floor in May. The delegation was headed by the acting Minister of Higher Education and Science, Christina Egelund, and included ministers from the Greenland Mission and the Faroese government.

At the adoption session in Geneva, Deputy Permanent Representative Jane Werngren Rosales confirmed the final tally: 174 recommendations accepted, 91 noted. She framed the review as a process for the entire Kingdom, coordinated among the authorities of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, with civil society consulted through public discussions across the country.

A kingdom, three societies

The presentation had an unusual architecture: three statements for three polities. Denmark’s own covered the national action plan against racism presented in February 2025, the December 2025 agreement placing a hate crime coordinator in every police district, the goal of reducing coercive measures in psychiatry by 30 per cent by 2030, and continuing concerns over pretrial detention, solitary confinement and migration policy.

Greenland’s statement was the weightier of the two autonomous territories. It acknowledged recommendations on gender-based violence with visible gravity, cited the 2022 parliamentary decision to accede to the Istanbul Convention and work to criminalize psychological violence in intimate relationships, and addressed the suicide crisis directly: a national prevention strategy for 2023 to 2028, a psychiatric emergency function in construction, and the admission that the suicide rate rose in 2025 to its highest level since 2018. Greenland also invoked the Article 21 commission examining the path to independence, insisting that the future of the country “must be shaped by us and for us.” The Faroe Islands, for its part, pointed to its new disability ombud, a gender equality act under preparation and the criminalization of psychological violence and stalking.

The debate

The state interventions at adoption were brief and largely cordial, but their distribution is instructive. Cuba, Ghana, Morocco, Nepal, Laos, Maldives, Jordan, El Salvador and Sri Lanka commended acceptance rates and welcomed specific recommendations they had sponsored. The Philippines took satisfaction in acceptance of its recommendations on parental alienation in family courts and protections for migrant technical interns.

The critical notes clustered precisely around the themes of religion, origin and minority belonging. Iran formally regretted that recommendations on Islamophobia, racial profiling and discriminatory policies affecting Muslims had been noted rather than accepted, urging Denmark to address them “with the same seriousness demonstrated to supported ones.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea raised the “parallel societies” approach, the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, and the situation of Greenland’s Indigenous population. Russia pointed to what it called a rise in racial discrimination, xenophobia and ethnic and religious hatred affecting Muslims, Jews and Roma, and to neo-Nazi organizations.

These were continuations of positions already staked out in May. The review report records Türkiye commending the action plan against racism while noting pointedly that it did not mention discrimination against Muslims. Iran had then called for an immediate end to what it described as a widespread pattern of Islamophobic rhetoric, including a national strategy to combat Islamophobia. Tunisia urged action against extremist rhetoric hostile to Islam in politics and media. Egypt recommended stronger protection against discrimination and violence based on religion or belief. Indonesia noted the paradox of a state that bans public desecration of religious scriptures yet still faces persistent, underreported racial and religious hatred. Even China raised the “ghetto law” and violations against Inuit women in Greenland.

One structural fact hung over the room without being named: Denmark held parliamentary elections on 24 March 2026, the government resigned, and the delegation in May spoke from caretaker capacity, which constrained forward-looking commitments. The noted recommendations were, in part, homework left for a government yet to be formed.

Religion, belief and the unasked question

NGO interventions sharpened the religious freedom dimension considerably. The first civil society speaker welcomed the action plan against racism while regretting its omissions: it named Jewish and Greenlandic communities but left out Muslims, Afrodescendants, Roma and migrants. The same speaker asked Denmark to discontinue the stigmatizing “non-Western” classification and review the parallel societies act, welcomed the office of the special representative for freedom of religion or belief, criticized section 110B of the penal code on improper treatment of religious objects as vague and chilling to free expression, deplored eight incidents against Jehovah’s Witnesses, and cited the normalization of Islamophobic rhetoric at a Copenhagen march on 5 September 2026, days before this very session.

Humanists International, speaking jointly with the Danish Humanist Society, broadened the lens. Danish law and public understanding, it argued, should extend the concept of “belief” beyond traditional religion to include identity-shaping convictions, including through amendments to the law on faith organizations so that non-religious life-stance bodies can obtain equal recognition. It noted the compulsory teaching of Christianity in public schools, from which children can only opt out if their parents supply an alternative religious education, and recommended a syllabus built on universal human rights values and critical thinking. It also flagged an underexposed vulnerability: non-religious asylum seekers whose persecution claims are poorly understood by caseworkers, recommending guidelines and training for officials.

Christian Council International took the floor from a different direction, regretting the extension of abortion limits from 12 to 18 weeks and the introduction of co-fatherhood for same-sex couples, arguing both depart from the right to life and the best interests of the child. The Danish Institute for Human Rights, the national institution, struck a different note entirely: it recalled that after the 2021 review it had regretted Denmark’s refusal of recommendations on racism and solitary confinement, and observed that change had since come despite initial reluctance. Its verdict on the present outcome mixed welcome with warning. Without implementation, declarations ring hollow; without action, promises are meaningless.

Two further interventions grounded the debate in material facts. MAAT reported that in Copenhagen alone, 260 housing units had been sold to private investors and re-rented at roughly three times the previous rents under the parallel societies framework, with the Court of Justice of the EU having concluded the law could constitute direct discrimination on grounds of ethnic origin and the Danish Supreme Court still seized of the case; it called for suspension of the act pending the ruling, and noted that the Danish Institute’s mandate does not extend to the Faroe Islands, where no Paris Principles institution exists. Association Pan-Africa echoed the concerns over origin-based classifications and added calls to ratify the migrant workers convention and the Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The test of implementation

Denmark’s concluding remarks were gracious and procedural at once: thanks to states, to civil society, to the Secretariat; the adoption marks not an end but the beginning of follow-up; the Kingdom remains open to dialogue and to scrutiny. The outcome was adopted by consensus without objection.

The pattern of this adoption is worth retaining. A state with one of the strongest human rights records in the UPR system accepted two-thirds of its recommendations and still heard its name tied, in a single session, to Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-Jehovah’s Witness incidents, compelled religious education, blurred lines between protecting religious objects and chilling speech, and housing policy under review for ethnic discrimination. None of these delegitimizes Denmark’s record; several of its interlocutors have records of their own that invite reciprocity. But the mechanism functioned as designed: it made visible the gap between a self-image of equal treatment and the experience of those who live outside it.

The next marker is concrete. A midterm report will show which of the 174 accepted recommendations acquired budget, law and personnel, and which remain words. The families in the housing areas, the Jehovah’s Witnesses counting incidents, the Muslim and Jewish communities tracking hate crimes, the humanist pupils sitting through compulsory Christianity classes, and the non-religious asylum seekers explaining their persecution to a caseworker trained for something else will not read that report. They will simply know whether anything changed.