The IRLA Meeting of Experts: A Great Adventure and Now A Book.

When we organised the first IRLA Meeting of Experts in 1999, we had no idea it would become a major, annual think tank on religious freedom. It was during a visit to Washington, DC by Professor Alberto de la Herra, the Spanish Government’s Director of the Religious Affairs Department, and his Associate, Professor Rosa Maria Martinez de Codes, that the idea took form. During a luncheon with them and Dr. Beach, I shared the idea of having a meeting from time to time with experts in the field of Religious Freedom who we invite to our congresses and symposiums. Dr. Beach was in favor of this idea. In the beginning, we thought this could be a social meeting held every five years,  then we gave preference to an academic meeting limited to a group of experts. The word “think tank” was not used at this time, but the idea to study specific issues and to produce a statement formed rapidly to our minds.

The big questions were: “How to do it? Who will cover the expenses? Will we have enough top level experts interested?” After a while our conversation changed to other subjects. After all, this was a luncheon not a working session. But at the end of the luncheon Professor de la Herra said: "We could do it in Spain. Let's work on it!"

Professor Rosa Maria worked on the invitation of the experts and on the logistics. We built the program for the first IRLA Meeting of Experts. At this time the theme of Proselytism was in vogue. I proposed to ask our experts to work on the theme of "Proselytism and Religious Freedom". The first meeting was held at the El Escorial complex near Madrid. It was a great event. About 30 experts attended and the draft of a statement was created. The meeting was concluded later on and the draft statement became an important document on this topic published by Fides et Libertas and mentioned many times. The title is: “The Guiding Principles ...”.

At the end of this first meeting the experts enthusiastically proposed that the meeting be held the following year. Since this time, every year a group of 25 to 30 experts meets together and work on a specific theme. Over the past 15 years excellent statements were published on the relations between religious freedom and subjects such as Teaching Religion in Public Schools; Security; Religious Symbols on Public Squares; and more. The meeting has been hosted by several universities on five continents - from The University of Extramadura in Spain, to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, to the University of Aix Marseilles in France.

All the statements presented during these Meeting of Experts have been published by Fides et Libertas, Conscience, Liberty and others academic journals.

In 2013, Professor Maria Jose Ciaurriz, of the University of Madrid, was interested in the philosophy which emerged from the work of the IRLA experts. She published a very interesting book on the work of the IRLA Meeting of Experts. The book is titled Libertad, Defamation, Discrimination, The International Religious Liberty Association Doctrine. The book was published in Spanish by Tirant Lo Blanch in Valencia, Spain later in the same year.

The publication of this book is an encouraging moment and recognition of the work of this excellent group of experts.

 -- Dr. John Graz, Secretary General, International Religious Liberty Association