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Headlines this week reported that Nigsti Haile, a 33-year-old Christian woman, was tortured to death in Eritrea for refusing to recant her faith, and the European Center for Law and Justice is asking the United Nations to address what it described as the growing problem of forced religious conversions around the world.

"We had been getting notification from lawyers and human rights groups that this issue was growing, and we thought it was high time that the United Nations address it," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ECLJ as well as the organization's U.S. affiliate, the American Center for Law and Justice, told WND.

He said the problem is not necessarily always national governments, but local governments and area factions, which are "putting pressure" on people and "threatening people with up to death if they don't renounce their conversion to Christianity."

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The ECLJ, since it is officially recognized as a non-governmental organization in special consultative status by the United Nations, now has petitioned the organization's Human Rights Council to address the situation.

"We would like to draw the Council's attention to the growing number of violations of the fundamental right to freedom of religion that are occurring around the world, specifically the right to choose one's religion and change one's religious affiliation," the written statement said.

"Forced religious conversions and punishment for voluntary conversions are commonplace in many countries. Laws against apostasy, blasphemy, or proselytizing are used in conjunction with anti-conversion laws to create an atmosphere hostile to members of the majority faith who voluntarily convert to another religion," the organization said.

Sekulow told WND that the problem is growing significantly in the Middle East, although total numbers are impossible to cite since so many of the cases end with the death of the person who converted from Islam, or refused to recant a conversion to Christianity.

"A lot of these cases go unreported," Sekulow told WND. "We think it's pretty significant." He cited situations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt as among those he's heard concerns about just recently.

The Compass Direct News report said Haile was one of 10 single Christian women arrested at a church gathering in Keren who have spent 18 months under severe pressure. The report said last February, Magos Solomon Semere also died under torture at the Adi-Nefase Military Confinement facility near Assab, and last October, two other Christians died from torture wounds.

The report said Haile died at the Wi'a Military Training Center, where she was being detained.

"As the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief (Asma Jahangir) has observed, 'questions related to change of religion are at the very heart of the mandate on freedom of religion or belief,'" the NGO's petition said.

It cited other recent cases:

• Just last month Fatah officials reported Hamas gunmen abducted a university dean in the Middle East and forced her to convert from Christianity to Islam. "Sources close to the family said that she would not willingly convert to Islam and she had 'called her parents to say she was being held against her will in order to marry a Muslim man…'"

• India in just the past few days has begun considering new anti-conversation legislation. That's in a nation where many states already have instituted laws "that allow the government to accept or reject the legitimacy of religious conversions."

• Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have used India's models as the basis for their own laws. "Under the auspices of upholding anti-conversion laws, arrests and private acts of violence have contributed to the degradation of religious freedom."

• "In the last few months, the first Muslim-born Egyptian to challenge that country's restrictions on conversion away from Islam filed suit in the Egyptian court system to have his conversion from Islam to Christianity recognized by the government after the Interior Ministry refused to change the religion on his identification card. According to recent reports, the individual has since gone into hiding due to numerous death threats made against him, and his first two lawyers withdrew from representation due to alleged harassment by the government."

The NGO petition said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations and endorsed by most of the offending nations, recognizes that "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and "freedom of opinion and expression" are among the most fundamental of human rights.

Such rights also are enshrined in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (1950), Fundamental Freedoms and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981) and other U.N. documents.

"If governments may abridge the right to choose one's religion by relying upon regional practices or religious doctinres, how can this right be considered universal?" the NGO petition said.

The organization suggested the granting of the authority to investigate the claims, and a request to all religious leaders "to recognize the right to choose one's religion."

There also needs to be a provision that encourages governments to recognize voluntary conversions and prevent coercion, the NGO said.

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