OPERATING THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF BELIEF AND RELIGION IN VIETNAM'S LEGISLATION

The paper provides an overview of the process of using the law to operate the right to freedom of belief and religion since the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established in 1945. To achieve this goal, the author set up the three following tasks: identifying major domestic and foreign factors that influenced the formation of legal provisions on the right to freedom of belief and religion in Vietnam; clarifying the content and limitation on this right in Vietnam through the legislative stages; pointing out important legal directions in the process of operating this right in the future. The author used analysis, synthesis and comparison methods to perform this study. The materials are the international and Vietnamese legal documents and the research works of Vietnamese, Asian and Western authors. The results of this study indicate that: (1) Legal provisions on the right to freedom of belief and religion have been influenced by Vietnamese culture and three factors: the ideology of democracy, human rights of the bourgeois revolutions and the proletarian revolution; accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966; globalization context and the experiences of secular states; (2) The content of the right to freedom of belief and religion has been expressed more and more completely; and the limitation on this right has been built more and more clearly throughout prohibitions, obligations, and responsibilities; (3) The right to freedom of belief and religion should be continued to operate in a harmonious combination between "the particular" and "the common", a selective acquisition of the successful experiences of secular states in the world. This study contributes to strengthening the protection of freedom of belief and religion in the context of building the rule of law in Vietnam.