Congress creates envoy for religious minorities persecuted in Asia
As Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria send religious minorities fleeing for their lives, Congress has created a new job at the State Department: Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia.
Those regions “are the hot burning center” of the global problem of religious persecution,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, who heads the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which Congress created in 1998 to monitor the issue independent of the State Department.
Advocates for global religious freedom have lobbied for the position for years, and some say it is possible that the White House will combine the envoy’s duties with those of the larger portfolio of the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.
