A/HRC/9/12 page 14 have structured in lasting fashion the identity and culture of many countries. History books, literary works, artistic creations, educational programmes and self-proclaiming scientific research have been the instruments over time of this sustained intra-religious defamation in the collective awareness and popular imagination. 38, The Special Rapporteur also wishes to express his concern at the situation of members of spiritual and syncretistic traditions, sects, religious minorities and new religious movements. These minority groups are often vulnerable to intolerance, discrimination and defamatory statements; and they are frequently subject to various forms of discrimination, notably as a consequence of government policies and national legislation, such as registration procedures, restrictions on places of worship and cultural centres, and various religious profiling operations. Exploitation, legal vacuums and demonization of the notion of sect are pointers not only to the rise of anti-religious ideological intolerance but also of resistance on the part of established religions to the emergence of new spiritual sensibilities and traditions, adding up to a serious erosion of religious freedom. 39. The scope of the issues relating to discrimination, intolerance and defamation among different religions and towards members of spiritual and syncretistic traditions, sects, religious minorities and new religious movements prompts the Special Rapporteur to underline and endorse the importance of a broad understanding of the terms “conviction” and “religion”, as recommended by the Human Rights Committee in its general comment No. 22 (1993). III. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST DISCRIMINATION 40. The Special Rapporteur notes that efforts to combat religious discrimination, including incitement to national, racial or religious hatred, should take into account the complex dialectic between, on the one hand, recognition of the theological, cultural, historical and geographical uniqueness of every religion and spiritual tradition and of the forms and manifestations of the discrimination and defamation associated with them and, on the other, the universal nature of the underlying causes of such discrimination and defamation and of efforts to combat them. 41. The struggle against all forms of discrimination poses a fundamental and complex challenge, at once political and ethical. The political challenge addressed to multicultural societies, with their diverse legacies of discrimination and domination, is to devise policies and programmes organized around two principles, namely recognition of and respect for the unique nature of the memory of each group or community, and the construction of a collective or national memory that promotes reciprocal knowledge, interaction, and the sharing of the inner feelings and history of each. It is in the field of religion and beliefs - where feelings and a sense of belonging are most profound - that the challenge is most difficult. Two processes should combine in order to achieve the fundamental and supreme goal of living together in harmony consisting, on the one hand, of the shared work of memory represented by the writing and teaching of history as a multicultural memory, and, on the other, by the devising of a national system of values perpetually under permanent construction and nurtured by the interactions between the cultural and spiritual values of all the communities, based on respect for the precepts of international law and human rights.