Sec. 2. Findings; sense of Congress
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Congress finds the following: Many of our Nation’s founders fled religious persecution and placed great importance on religious freedom. President George Washington summed up the prevailing view of our founders when he wrote, in 1793, in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws . In 1791, the First Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, enshrining freedom of religion as the First Freedom of all Americans and becoming an inspiration to people all over the world who struggle to throw off the yoke of religious persecution.
Throughout our Nation’s history, the United States has sought to protect and promote fundamental human rights, including religious freedom, in the United States and throughout the world. After World War II, under Eleanor Roosevelt’s leadership, the United States spearheaded the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted at Paris December 10, 1948, which recognized freedom of religion as a fundamental right of all people. Article 18 of that treaty states Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. .
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted at New York December 16, 1966, and which was ratified by the United States in 1992, states, Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. .
Since the enactment of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 ( Public Law 105–292 ), referred to in this section as IRFA , which established the Department of State’s Office on International Religious Freedom, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (referred to in this section as USCIRF ), the state of religious freedom throughout the world has significantly worsened. In section 2(a)(4) of IRFA ( 2 U.S.C. 6401(a)(4) ), Congress stated, More than one-half of the world’s population lives under regimes that severely restrict or prohibit the freedom of their citizens to study, believe, observe, and freely practice the religious faith of their choice. .
According to Rising Tide of Restrictions on Religion, the most recent report of the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries in which restrictions on religion were high or very high. According to the 2014 USCIRF Annual Report, The past 10 years have seen a worsening of the already-poor religious freedom environment in Pakistan, a continued dearth of religious freedom in Turkmenistan, backsliding in Vietnam, rising violations in Egypt before and after the Arab Spring, and Syria’s decent [sic] into sectarian civil war with all sides perpetrating egregious religious freedom violations. .
Under section 402 of IRFA ( 22 U.S.C. 6442 ), the President is required to designate a country as a country of particular concern (referred to in this section as CPC ) if the government of the country has engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. According to the 2015 USCIRF Annual Report, since October 1999, when the first countries were designated as CPCs, the list has been largely unchanged. Of the nine countries designated as CPCs in July 2014, most had been named as CPCs for over a decade … Since IRFA’s inception, only one country has been removed from the State Department’s CPC list due to diplomatic activity. .
This track record calls into serious question the utility of the CPC mechanism and the utility of IRFA to improve the state of religious freedom throughout the world. The United States has a long tradition of providing safe haven to refugees, including members of religious minority groups and those fleeing religious persecution. Following the international community’s tragic failure to shelter Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi genocide, the United States played a leadership role in establishing the international legal regime for the protection of refugees.
Since that time, the American people have generously welcomed millions of refugees fleeing war and totalitarian regimes, and the United States traditionally accepts at least 50 percent of resettlement cases handled by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (referred to in this section as UNHCR ). According to the 2014 UNHCR Global Trends Report, more than 59,500,000 people were forcibly displaced in 2014— which is equal to 1 displacement for every 122 people worldwide; which is the most displacements in a year in recorded history; including— 38,200,000 individuals who were internally displaced within their own country; 19,500,000 refugees; and 1,800,000 asylum-seekers; many of whom were victims of serious human rights violations, including religious persecution; and many are whom are members of vulnerable populations, including religious minorities.
The ongoing conflict in Syria has led to the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis and worst refugee crisis since World War II. More than 50 percent of Syria’s 23,000,000 people have been forcibly displaced from their homes and, as of 2015, 20 percent of the world’s refugees are Syrians. UNHCR is seeking to resettle 130,000 Syrian refugees during 2015 and 2016, with a particular focus on vulnerable individuals such as religious minorities. Although the United States traditionally accepts at least 50 percent of UNHCR resettlement cases, the United States has only accepted approximately 800 Syrian refugees since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, which is an unacceptably low number.
There are several steps that would facilitate the efforts of the United States Government to protect and provide safe haven to refugees from religious persecution. The 2015 USCIRF Annual Report recommends that Congress work to provide the President with permanent authority to designate as refugees specifically-defined groups based on shared characteristics identifying them as targets for persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion .
The United States Government has limited tools to hold accountable the perpetrators of religious freedom violations. Section 604 of IRFA added section 212(a)(2)(G) of the Immigration and Nationality Act ( 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2)(G) ), which made foreign government officials who commit particularly severe violations of religious freedom inadmissible to the United States, but it has only been applied once, to deny entry to Narendra Modi, who was Chief Minister of Gujarat, India. In its 2015 Annual Report, USCIRF recommends that the State Department:
Make greater efforts to ensure foreign government officials are denied entry into the United States due to their inadmissibility under U.S. law for their responsibility for religious freedom violations abroad. . The effectiveness of this law is also limited because it does not apply to non-state actors, such as international terrorists, and it can only be used to deny entry to a perpetrator who has not yet arrived in the United States, not to deport a perpetrator who has already entered the country.
In the 2015 USCIRF Annual Report, USCIRF recommended that the United States Government should call for or support a referral by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court to investigate ISIL violations in Iraq and Syria against religious and ethnic minorities, following the models used in Sudan and Libya, or encourage the Iraqi government to accept ICC jurisdiction to investigate ISIL violations in Iraq after June 2014 . Given the weakness of the international criminal justice system, particularly that an ICC referral is subject to a UN Security Council veto, the United States Government should have the ability to prosecute members of ISIL in United States courts for crimes against humanity, including religious persecution.
Under United States law, it is a crime for a non-United States national to commit genocide, torture, terrorism, or several other violations of the law of nations, but it is not a crime under United States law to commit crimes against humanity, including religious persecution. Since the United States Government is unable to prosecute perpetrators of these crimes, many foreign war criminals have found safe haven in this country. In 2006, the United States Government learned that Marko Boskic, a man who participated in the Srebrenica massacre in the Bosnian conflict, was living in Massachusetts.
Rather than charging him with crimes against humanity, or religious persecution, Mr. Boskic was charged with visa fraud and sentenced to only 5 years in prison. There is bipartisan agreement about the need for the United States Government to promote and protect international human rights, including religious freedom. USCIRF is, by design, a bipartisan organization, with Commissioners appointed by the President and Congressional leaders. USCIRF can most effectively promote religious freedom on a bipartisan basis.
In its 2014 Annual Report entitled Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits , which identifies unnecessary duplication in the Federal Government, the Government Accountability Office (referred to in this section as GAO )— highlighted the lack of coordination and overlapping missions of USCIRF and the Office of International Religious Freedom in the Department of State; found that the lack of a definition regarding how State and the Commission are to interact has sometimes created foreign policy tensions that State has had to mitigate. ; and concluded that the lack of coordination between the USCIRF and the Department of State may undermine the efforts of the United States Government to promote international religious freedom by sending mixed messages to foreign governments and human-rights activists who are fighting to defend religious freedom in their countries.
Congress, which is responsible for overseeing the work of USCIRF and ensuring that it is effectively pursuing its mission, should provide greater oversight of USCIRF’s practices, including addressing concerns regarding financial irregularities and the work environment for religious minorities. It is the sense of Congress that— the protection and promotion of international human rights, including religious freedom, should be an important priority for the United States Government; and the United States Government should pursue new strategies for protecting and promoting religious freedom throughout the world, including— the creation of new tools— to deter and punish the perpetrators of particularly severe violations of religious freedom, including non-state actors; and to protect the victims of such violations; and increased diplomatic engagement that does not focus primarily on CPC designations.
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- Pub. L. 105-292
- 2 USC 6401(a)(4)
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