The most serious and current challenges to religious freedom are as follows:

a) Since religious freedom includes the right to be present in the public sphere, in a multi-confessional world, referring to Western societies—the separation of state and religion must be such that government authorities are open to cooperating with religious groups rather than trying to marginalise or scorn them.

b) Religious freedom must have an `institutional' component, that is to say, it must include the right of every religious community to freely organise itself according to its own principles. This said, no religious community can be exempt from respecting fundamental human rights and public order. It must however be said that in China, Vietnam but also in France, religions are controlled by the state on the pretext of reserving public order and health.

c) Religious freedom is independent of any legal requirement to gain government approval. In many countries and regions (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, central Asia, Middle East, etc.), religious communities have the right to set up their own places of worship only after registering with local Religious Affairs Bureaus. Exerting such prior control does not respect the principle of religious freedom which is a fundamental human right.

d) Religious freedom includes the right to change one's religions. This is especially true in countries where Hinduism and Islam are the dominant religion. Conversion is too often either forbidden by law or made impossible by intolerant religious majorities. Former Muslims in Iran, tribal people in India or former Animists in Africa often risk dying at the hands of their relatives or of fundamentalist religious groups opposed to their conversion.

The right to choose one's religion be guaranteed not only on paper but "be also fully enforced in all social relations".

e) The notion, widespread in Europe, according to which religious freedom is the same as `tolerance'. Citing the  NESCO's 1995 Declaration, that tolerance does not mean "the abandonment or weakening of one's convictions"; it means rather "that one is free to adhere to one's own convictions and  ccepts that others adhere to theirs".

In some countries, having strong convictions is too often equated with `being intolerant'. Christian missionary activities and evangelisation are seen as `intolerant' when all they mean is bearing witness to one's faith.