Description
In the context of high-profile attacks on religious minorities, many Western governments have started to integrate the protection of religious freedom in their foreign policies. But how effective have these policies been in the protection of the security and rights of religious minorities? Research on the effectiveness of these policies has been scarce. We, therefore, use the international campaign to free Asia Bibi – a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death by a Pakistani court in 2010 and finally acquitted in 2018 – as a case study to explore this question. Based on qualitative interviews with government officials and representatives of international governmental and non-governmental organisations, and an extensive document and media analysis, and informed by the literature on international human rights promotion, this article identifies the lessons learnt from this process. To inform future campaigns, we specifically ask which strategies employed by different foreign policy actors to promote the rights of religious minorities in third countries are successful and which are counterproductive, demonstrating that ‘quiet diplomacy’ often is the more promising strategy than political protest.
