ISLAMABAD, March 10: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has assured OIC ambassadors in Geneva that her Office was taking necessary steps to combat defamation of religions, create a culture of tolerance, explore and elaborate legal framework for respect of religions as well as freedom of expression to address the situation created by the publication of blasphemous cartoons.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louis Arbour held out the assurance to a delegation of 14 Muslim envoys who met her this week to express Islamic world’s deep concerns on publication of defamatory caricatures in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten and their reprinting in several European newspapers, the Foreign Office said on Friday.

The OIC ambassadors sought UN High Commissioner’s help to address the concerns of Muslim countries to redress legal deficits in regard to respect for religions and mobilize human rights machinery to stem recurrence of such outrage, the Foreign Office said.

Ms Arbour’s view was that when freedom of expression hurt dignity and religious sensitivities, as in the case of publication of cartoons, the situation could not be addressed merely by laws. The viable course, she maintained, was to effectively combat the trend and promote culture of tolerance and sound political judgment.

The delegation, led by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative Masood Khan, the OIC coordinator on human rights and humanitarian issues in Geneva, proposed that as the UN High Commissioner she take concrete measures such as sending a fact-finding mission and asking the Special Rapporteurs to carry out legal analysis of the questions surrounding the caricatures issue.

The OIC ambassadors also suggested hosting of dialogues to address cross-cutting legal, political and cultural issues. They advocated inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogues for promoting peace, harmony and understanding.

The UN High Commissioner told the delegation that substantive efforts were being made by her office to raise awareness in this regard through publication, information campaigns, seminars and conferences.

The OIC envoys conveyed to the High Commissioner that the publication of the caricature and their reprinting in the media could not be justified in the name of freedom of expression. It was a deliberate act of provocation.