USCIRF Chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett. Message from the chair.
Executive Director Jackie Wolcott and Director of Policy and Research Knox Thames meet with Volker Kauder of the German Bundestag, Berlin, February 5, 2015.
USCIRF Commissioners meet with the Honorable David Saperstein, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. January 16, 2015.
USCIRF Policy Analyst Tina Mufford and Burmese civil society and human rights advocate Zin Mar Aung briefed Congressional staffs and NGOs on "Burma: The Ongoing Abuses against Religious and Ethnic Minorities," December 3, 2014.
USCIRF Commissioner Hannah Rosenthal speaks at the 10th Anniversary Commemorative Event of the 2004 OSCE Berlin Meeting on anti-Semitism attended by Ambassador Power and U.S. NGOs, November 14, 2014, Berlin.
USCIRF Commissioner Thomas J. Reese and staff meet with Central African Republic interfaith leaders, November 12, 2014.
USCIRF Chair Katrina Lantos Swett, Commissioner Mary Ann Glendon, and Executive Director Jackie Wolcott with parliamentarians at the launch of the International Parliamentary Coalition to Advance Religious Freedom, November 8, 2014, Oslo.
Dwight Bashir, USCIRF Deputy Director for Policy and Research, speaks at a Stimson Center event on the escalating Shi'a-Sunni conflict, October 28, 2014.
USCIRF Chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett with Peter Van Dalen, co-chair of the European Parliament's Working Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, September 30, 2014.
USCIRF Chair Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett testifies before a House Oversight & Government Reform Subcommittee on "Protecting International Religious Freedom," September 18, 2014.
In December 2012, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, in conjunction with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and Amnesty International USA, launched the Defending Freedoms Project with the aim of supporting human rights and religious freedom throughout the world with a particular focus on prisoners of conscience.
Specifically, Members of Congress “adopt” prisoners of conscience, standing in solidarity with these brave men and women, while committing to advocate publicly for their release.
Click the interactive map below to view the status of prisoners of conscience highlighted in the Defending Freedoms Project
USCIRF Issues its 2014 Annual Report: 15th Anniversary Retrospective: Renewing the Commitment
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent federal advisory body the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) created to monitor religious freedom abuses abroad, released its 2014 Annual Report, and recommended that the State Department add eight more nations to its list of “countries of particular concern,” defined under law as countries where particularly severe violations of religious freedom are tolerated or perpetrated: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.
USCIRF also recommended that the following eight countries be re-designated as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.
Nigeria will hold presidential, federal parliamentary, and state parliamentary elections on March 28, 2015. The election previously was scheduled for February 14, 2015, but was pushed back due to security concerns in the north-east region of the country. Reports of pre-election violence, combined with rising societal and political tensions, increase the likelihood of religiously-motivated violence around the elections.
In February 2015, USCIRF issued a press release, USCIRF Warns of Potential Religiously-Motivated Violence Around Nigeria’s Upcoming Elections. From the press release:
“Every effort needs to be undertaken to ensure... Read More
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has launched the Religious Violence Project to highlight violations of religious freedom abroad. Learn more here.
August 2014 Factsheet: Violence Towards Religious Communities in Pakistan
- Pakistan Leads the World in Blasphemy Prisoners, by Knox Thames and Elizabeth Cassidy for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs - March 27, 2014
For more persectives, click here.
USCIRF Vice Chair Dr. Zuhdi Jasser testified on July 23 before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing entitled “The Troubling Case of Meriam Ibrahim.”
From the testimony:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 22, 2014 | USCIRF
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2014 | USCIRF
WASHINGTON, DC – As Muslims around the world observe the holy month of Ramadan, Uighur Muslims in China face far-reaching restrictions on their religious practices. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) urges the Chinese government to end such actions, including bans on fasting and other religious observances during Ramadan in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang, a Uighur Muslim-majority area.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
July 3, 2014 | By Robert P. George
The following op-ed appeared on CNN on July 3, 2014.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 3, 2014 | USCIRF
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, was elected on July 1, 2014 as Chair of the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Dr. Swett was first appointed to the Commission in March 2012 by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and reappointed in April 2014.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 25, 2014 | USCIRF
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is gravely concerned about the Sudanese government’s arrest of Meriam Ibrahim Ishag on document fraud charges and her being held with her family at a Khartoum police station following their June 24 detention at Khartoum’s airport as they sought to leave the country. USCIRF calls on the Sudanese government to release them immediately and has lodged a strong protest with the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C.
USCIRF Chairman Dr. Robert P. George testified on June 19 before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing entitled “One Year Under Rouhani: Iran’s Abysmal Human Rights Record.”
From the testimony:
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
June 18, 2014 | By Katrina Lantos Swett & Mary Ann Glendon
The following op-ed appeared in Deseret News on June 18, 2014.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 19, 2014 | USCIRF
WASHINGTON, DC – At the recommendation of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Hannah Rosenthal was appointed to USCIRF on June 17, 2014.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 11, 2014 | USCIRF
Who We Are
USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission, the first of its kind in the world, that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad.
What We're About
Inherent in religious freedom is the right to think as we please, believe or not believe as our conscience leads, and live out our beliefs openly, peacefully, and without fear.
We are about freedom…
Thomas Bill Search