UN Special Rapporteur Cites Research on Apostate Asylum Claims Conducted Through University of York - Humanists UK Collaboration
Posted on Tuesday 9 December 2025
Research originally undertaken through a collaborative PhD award between the University of Sheffield and Humanists UK has been cited in a new interim report by Dr Nazila Ghanea, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. This work is now being further disseminated at the University of York’s Centre for Human Rights as part of an ESRC Early Career Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Dr Lucy Potter’s research explores how non-religious individuals, including humanists, atheists, and those labelled as apostates or blasphemers, are understood within the UK’s Home Office asylum assessments. Her contribution to Humanists UK’s submission to the Special Rapporteur demonstrates that the rights and identities of non-religious people are routinely overlooked within refugee status determination processes. Rather than being recognised as a distinct and legitimate basis for protection, non-religious identities are often collapsed into a broader discourse of ‘religious persecution’. This misrepresentation obscures the specific risks faced by non-religious individuals, leading to inadequate assessments, stereotyping, and the wrongful refusal of protection.
Dr Ghanea’s citation of this work in her report to the United Nations highlights growing international recognition of these gaps in protection frameworks. It also underscores the urgent need for more accurate, evidence-based guidance on how States should understand and assess claims involving non-religiosity.
For the Centre for Human Rights at the University of York, this research contributes directly to its mission of addressing systemic inequalities in human rights protection and improving the treatment of marginalised groups in legal and policy processes. It strengthens the Centre’s portfolio on freedom of religion or belief, refugee protection, and the rights of non-religious people, an area that remains significantly under-researched.
Reflecting on the citation, Dr Potter said she was ‘pleased to see these concerns reflected in Dr Ghanea’s findings’, and expressed gratitude to colleagues at Humanists UK and to the Special Rapporteur for their engagement with this overlooked issue.
The consultation response authored for Humanists UK is publicly available, and further information on the organisation’s work on freedom of religion or belief can be found on their website.