Country Foundations

Freedom of thought and conscience

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 18. Not present in the US Constitution.

Note on this measure. Distinct from religion in CCP coding. The US text has no separate conscience clause.

Constitutions declaring it
131 / 158
US declares it
0%
US practices it
86%

Does declaring it change anything?

Distribution of practiced scores, split by whether the constitution declares the right. If the two distributions look alike, the words on the page are not doing much work on their own.

Constitutions that declare it (131)
0100
Constitutions that are silent (26)
0100

Mean practiced score: 64% where declared, versus 58% where silent.

What the text actually says

Passages tagged with this topic, from the Constitute Project.

South Africa

Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion.

Country by country

CountryDeclaredPracticed
Albania100%72%
Algeria100%53%
Angola100%58%
Argentina100%81%
Armenia100%74%
Azerbaijan100%44%
Bahrain100%39%
Bangladesh100%40%
Barbados100%85%
Belarus100%13%
Benin100%67%
Bhutan100%64%
Bolivia100%68%
Bosnia and Herzegovina100%63%
Botswana100%72%
Brazil100%75%
Bulgaria100%67%
Burma/Myanmar100%19%
Canada100%79%
Cape Verde100%81%
Chad100%50%
Chile100%89%
Colombia100%65%
Comoros100%43%
Costa Rica100%85%
Croatia100%76%
Cuba100%22%
Cyprus100%75%
Democratic Republic of the Congo100%58%
Denmark100%93%
Djibouti100%53%
Dominican Republic100%85%
Ecuador100%72%
Egypt100%28%
Eritrea100%26%
Estonia100%77%
Eswatini100%22%
Ethiopia100%44%
Fiji100%66%
Finland100%92%
Gabon100%83%
Georgia100%68%
Ghana100%79%
Greece100%75%
Guatemala100%67%
Guinea100%42%
Guinea-Bissau100%71%
Guyana100%71%
Haiti100%67%
Honduras100%74%
Hungary100%72%
Iceland100%80%
India100%57%
Indonesia100%54%
Iran100%36%
Iraq100%48%
Ireland100%91%
Ivory Coast100%60%
Jamaica100%87%
Japan100%74%