USCIRF’s 2023 Annual Report on Religious Freedom

May 3, 2023

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recently released its 2023 Annual Report, which highlights the status of religious freedom across the globe during 2022. The report provides recommendations to improve the promotion of freedom of religion or belief abroad. India criticised this report after it recommended that the country be designated for the fourth year in a row that India be designated as a “Country of Particular Concern”.

USCIRF’s Recommendations

  • The USCIRF recommends that 17 countries be designated as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs) for violating the right to freedom of religion or belief.
  • Additionally, five new countries, including India, are recommended to be designated as CPCs.
  • The report suggests 11 countries for being added to the State Department’s SWL, with Sri Lanka being one of them, and it is being proposed for the first time due to the worsening religious freedom conditions in 2022. In addition, the report recommends redesignating seven non-state actors as “entities of particular concern” (EPCs) because of their ongoing, systematic, and extreme violations of religious freedom.
  • Moreover, seven non-state actors are recommended for redesignation as “entities of particular concern” (EPCs) for systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations.
  • The report includes USCIRF’s Freedom or Religion or Belief (FoRB) Victims List, which features individuals who are particularly vulnerable to and victimized by religious freedom violations.

Global Developments and Trends

The report also highlights the status of religious freedom in countries that do not meet the criteria for CPC or SWL recommendations. The report encompasses various areas, including religious freedom issues in Europe, emerging religious freedom concerns in other countries, laws that restrict religious freedom, transnational influence by religious freedom violators, the fight against anti-Semitism, and religious freedom concerns faced by indigenous communities in Latin America.

Implementation of USCIRF’s Recommendations

The report also provides information about the measures taken by the US government in response to USCIRF’s recommendations from its 2022 Annual Report, such as the inclusion of Central African Republic to the State Department’s SWL, imposing targeted sanctions on those violating religious freedom, and acknowledging the Burmese military’s crimes against humanity and genocidal actions towards Rohingya Muslims.

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