Overview:

• Recognition and registration are amalgamated rather than ideally differentiated; there is a focus placed on legal registration with few to no means for existential recognition.

• Although well below Liberia’s fee, Palau has one of the highest fees for registration of a religious organisation in the world.

• The involvement of the President in the registration process is in appropriate as it politicises the procedure.

• The rule of mandatory registration violates the Bielefeldt provision.

• The way the IRFR addresses registration in Palau intimates that it is only stipulatory while the 2020 Freedom House Report suggests the process is mandatory.

Positive elements:

• Freedom of religion or belief is broadly upheld in practice.

• Horizontal recognition is in effect.

Recommendations:

• Establish a recognition system that has the capacity to bestow both existential recognition and legal registration simultaneously without discrimination of belief systems and has the capacity to bestow these forms of recognition at multiple levels of operation and activity.

• Remove all forms of politicisation in the registration process and remove any ambiguity existent in the legislation.

• Revoke the mandatory registration rule.