UN Special Rapporteur Examines Freedom of Religion or Belief in Relation to Death and Burial Practices

The report “How freedom of religion or belief relates to death and honouring the deceased” (A/HRC/61/50) was published on 7 January 2026 by the United Nations Human Rights Council. The document was authored by Nazila Ghanea, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and submitted to the Council’s sixty-first session pursuant to resolution 58/5.

Death and mourning practices constitute central elements of religious and belief communities worldwide. Despite this universality, funeral rites remain often overlooked in human rights discourse, conceded to state regulation and understood narrowly. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate holder receives regular reports of violations including vandalism of graveyards, displacement of Indigenous Peoples’ remains, disruption of funerals, and denial of facilities necessary for mourning rites.

The document addresses how freedom of religion or belief relates to death and honoring the deceased in regular circumstances. Given the topic’s breadth, a forthcoming report to the General Assembly will examine exceptional situations, including armed conflict, persons deprived of liberty, health emergencies, and climate change impacts on remains. The term “funeral rights” encompasses the wide range of laws, observances, practices and traditions associated with death and mourning, from last rites and body preparation to burial, cremation, funeral processions, and commemorative ceremonies.

Drawing on 66 written submissions and contributions from over 60 workshop participants, the analysis highlights systematic patterns of discrimination affecting religious minorities, unrecognized communities, Indigenous Peoples, and non-believers across diverse jurisdictions.

The normative framework establishes that funeral rights are protected under the right to manifest religion or belief in worship, observance and practice, as articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Human Rights Committee has affirmed that manifestation includes “participation in rituals associated with certain stages of life.” Funeral rites engage multiple interconnected rights: life, non-discrimination, peaceful assembly, association, privacy, family life, property, and cultural and minority rights.

A human rights-based approach cannot rest on “blind equality” that assumes all religions and beliefs can be assimilated into government-directed uniform regulations. Such standardization typically reflects majoritarian practices and results in direct or indirect discrimination. Equality requires respect for differences, and differential treatment gives effect to genuine equality. States must facilitate specific provisions where funeral practices diverge from generally available arrangements.

Freedom of religion or belief contributes eight distinct elements to funeral rites: clarifying rights holders as the deceased, their next of kin and family, and their community of practice; prohibiting coercion through denial of burial rights; insisting on respect irrespective of circumstances or status; upholding non-discrimination; highlighting the deceased’s stated preferences; protecting manifestation in community and public settings; specifying that limitations must meet strict international standards; and extending rights beyond interment to commemorative practices.

The analysis identifies systematic restrictions arising from lack of recognition. Where states fail to recognize or acknowledge religions or beliefs—whether de jure or de facto—observances and practices around death become impossible. In Egypt, Baha’is have been prohibited from using public cemeteries or acquiring burial land since a 1960 Presidential decree, despite a 2009 court ruling on identity documentation. In Pakistan, Ahmadis face constitutional discrimination extending to death and burial, with authorities frequently denying access to graveyards, desecrating graves, and enabling mob obstruction of funerals.

Nepal’s Supreme Court upheld prohibition of burials in the Shleshmantak Forest, excluding non-Hindu groups from public land. Despite court orders to designate alternative sites, directives remain unimplemented. In Lebanon, unrecognized minorities cannot own burial grounds and depend on the goodwill of dominant sects, leaving them “vulnerable to humiliation and exclusion at moments of profound grief.”

Recognition disputes extend to the deceased’s religion or belief. In Malaysia, people born Muslim who later identify otherwise remain subject to Islamic burial rites regardless of actual beliefs or wishes. Religious departments have intervened to enforce such rites against family objections. In India, anti-conversion rhetoric has emboldened village councils to prevent converted Adivasis from burying their deceased in ancestral graveyards.

Ostensibly neutral laws prove insufficient and discriminatory. Standardization policies in China have destroyed traditional Uighur Muslim cemeteries, replacing them with smaller facilities conforming to state norms, often without relatives’ knowledge. In India, municipal planning increasingly normalizes Hindu practices: Muslims face graveyard encroachment; Christians are denied burial plots; Dalits encounter caste-based barriers to cremation grounds; Adivasi sacred burial lands are destroyed by infrastructure projects.

Inadequacy of provision creates severe hardships. In Iran, Baha’is are prohibited from Muslim cemeteries and often barred from their own, facing arbitrary restrictions, extortionate fees, and forced distant burials. A 2025 case required a family to bury a 56-year-old woman with intellectual disabilities 120 kilometres from Kerman. Between 2021 and mid-2025, at least 120 Christian families in India were denied burial rights, forcing transport of bodies long distances or submission to reconversion rituals.

Desecration and vandalism constitute pervasive violations. In Bangladesh, between August 2024 and August 2025, over 100 burial sites were vandalized, desecrated or demolished, particularly affecting Sufi sites. Antisemitic attacks escalated globally, with 39 Jewish cemeteries vandalized in Germany during 2024 alone. In Pakistan, 269 Ahmadi Muslim graves were desecrated in 11 separate attacks in 2025, with 319 gravestones defiled in 21 incidents in 2024. Throughout Iran, a state-condoned campaign has systematically vandalized Baha’i cemeteries through arson, bulldozing, exhumation, and trench-digging to block access.

The Special Rapporteur establishes that freedom of religion or belief is foundational to state obligations of respecting, protecting, fulfilling, and ensuring accountability for funeral rights.

Respecting funeral rites requires states to refrain from violating these rights and recognize the absolute right to have, adopt, and change religion or belief without coercion, including through restrictions or denials of funeral rights. Funeral rites must ensure manifestation in community with others and in public, with understanding of specific practices. Respect necessitates consulting communities in all matters concerning them.

Protecting funeral rites requires preventing infringement first by state actors themselves, then through due diligence ensuring protection against threats, interruptions, and violence from non-state actors. Any limitations must comply with the tripartite test of legality, necessity, and proportionality prescribed by international law.

Fulfilling and promoting funeral rites requires positive steps ensuring enjoyment by everyone without discrimination. Since funeral rights are distinctive to different religions, beliefs, and Indigenous traditions, consultation with respective communities of practice is necessary. This requires de jure or de facto recognition, or at minimum acknowledgement, of those communities. Through ongoing dialogue, states should accommodate funeral rights to the highest extent possible.

Provision must be equal and practicable, accommodating diversity maximally. Authorities must attend to communities too small to operate separate sites or where diminishing numbers create maintenance difficulties. This particularly matters where beliefs require allowing the dead to rest undisturbed, where burial sites hold extended sacredness, or where ancestor worship requires ongoing proximity to remains.

Accountability requires justice systems to address disproportionate burdens or charges on minority funeral practices, protect funeral services and processions from attacks, safeguard burial sites from hatred-motivated targeting, implement prevention measures, and provide remedies for violations. These obligations must be delivered in practice at the local level.

The document concludes that freedom of religion or belief uniquely encompasses the individual and collective, minority and majority, and the specificity of practices in an ongoing manner, extending beyond interment to ongoing commemorative manifestations. States must recognize this centrality to ensure dignity and equality at one of life’s most emotive junctures.