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US Envoy Promotes Faith Alliance as 'Significant' Rights Initiative

Adam Phillips

   NEW YORK - The United States is pressing other countries to join its
   proposed International Religious Freedom Alliance, in what diplomat Sam
   Brownback calls "the most significant" new human rights initiative in a
   generation.

   "We're going to call like-minded nations together and ask them to join
   this alliance and push on the issue of religious freedom and against
   religious persecution around the world," Brownback, ambassador-at-large
   for international religious freedom, said at a news briefing earlier
   this week. "We want to see the iron curtain on religious persecution
   come down."

   Brownback's remarks came at a Monday press conference following the
   "Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom," a U.S.-sponsored event on
   the opening day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. At the event,
   President Donald Trump pledged an additional $25 million to counter a
   trend of increasing religious intolerance around the globe.

   The president's chief envoy for that mission is Brownback. Since early
   2018, the former Republican governor from the Midwestern state of
   Kansas has headed the office that he helped establish as a U.S.
   senator. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 Religious Freedom Act, as[1]
   Religion News Service has pointed out.

   Brownback spoke with VOA after the news conference about what his brief
   entails -- "fighting for religious freedom all around the world for all
   faiths all the time," as well as for "people of no faith."

   "We'll stand up and we'll do something," Brownback said of the Trump
   administration, saying it employs tools ranging from private diplomacy
   to public designations and "sanctions against countries that persecute
   people for their faith."

References

   1. https://religionnews.com/2017/07/27/5-faith-facts-about-sam-brownback-political-champion-of-religious-freedom/

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