Published on: 2 June 2020
President Trump signed an Executive Order, to prioritize international religious freedom.
The new order will budget $50 million per year from the USAID budget to fund programs aimed toward the advancement of religious freedom.
The order states that Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, will direct chiefs of missions in countries that are included on the State Department’s list of “countries of particular concern” for international religious freedom violations and the religious freedom “special watch list.”
“Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative. Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom,” the executive order reads.
Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash
The order calls for “recommendations to prioritize the appropriate use of economic tools” to advance religious freedom in countries of particular concern.
Such economic tools can include sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the U.S. to target perpetrators of human rights abuses through the seizure of U.S. assets or travel bans.
The executive order is inclusive, defining; “all faiths” are to be afforded “equal rights and legal protections.” The order reaffirms the desire of the Trump administration “to improve the safety and security of houses of worship and public spaces for all faiths, and to protect and preserve the cultural heritages of religious communities.
President Trump is ordering that all State Department foreign affairs civil service employees go through training every three years on international religious freedom, as described in the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 2016.
“This is a great victory for religious rights organizations such as Door of Hope International who have for many years pushed the State Department to take religious freedom seriously,” Paul Haralan Popov, CEO-Door of Hope International
