Abstract

Latin America is characterized as a continent where religious freedom is widely guaranteed by law and religion coexists easily with other aspects of social life. International human rights treaties provide a broad guarantee of religious freedom, but the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has scarcely addressed the issue. In recent years, several countries have enacted religious liberty laws or plan to do so. This has generated discussions in various fields about the place of religiosity in the worldview of indigenous peoples, and conflict between new laws govering new conceptions of family, bioethics, and traditional religious values. Still another important development in this regard is the right to conscientious objection.