The US State Department recently hosted the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Bringing together more than 1,000 civil society and religious leaders and 100 foreign delegations consisting of ministers, ambassadors and policy-makers, this was the largest ever religious freedom gathering in the world, and the biggest human rights event ever to take place at the State Department in Washington, DC.
The Ministerial was timely, coming just a week after Britain’s Foreign Secretary released the report of the independent inquiry into the persecution of Christians. On the day of the Ministerial, Pew released its annual report which found that 52 governments, including some in populous countries such as China, Indonesia and Russia, impose either “high” or “very high” levels of restrictions on religion. This was up from 40 in 2007. The number of countries where people are experiencing the highest levels of social hostilities involving religion has risen from 39 to 56 over the course of the study.
