 It's a tremendous honor for the Institute to welcome everyone to this very special occasion that marks the 25th anniversary of the International Religious Freedom Act. It's a landmark piece, a bipartisan legislation that has become a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and is a core principle of America's global leadership. USIP is proud to co-host this special event with the Office of International Religious Freedom in the U.S. State Department. With us today are the leaders who defined, promoted and secured this extraordinary legislation and with us also are all of the ambassadors who have served as custodians of international religious freedom in the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. It's a great honor to start by welcoming two visionary leaders from the U.S. Congress. Former Senator Don Nichols, former Representative Frank Wolf, who believed in this legislation and who fought for it to be part of America's global leadership. We welcome also Katrina Lantos Fett, who served as the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. It was a body that was created by the International Religious Freedom Act. I hope everyone joins me in welcoming all of the distinguished leaders who have served as ambassadors at large for international religious freedom. Ambassador Robert Seipel, the first ambassador at large, appointed by President Clinton. Ambassador John Hanford, appointed by President George W. Bush. Ambassador Susan Johnson Cook, appointed by President Obama. Ambassador David Saperstein, who will be joining us by video, who was appointed by President Obama during his second term. Governor, former Senator, and Ambassador Sam Brownback, appointed by President Trump. And Ambassador Rashad Hussein, who is America's current ambassador at large for international religious freedom, appointed by President Biden. One of the fundamental tenets of peacebuilding is the right of individuals to think and worship in our own way and to follow our own consciousness. There are many places in the world today where this right is denied or it's not fully respected or it's imperiled by inter-communal violence and conflict. This is the case for Uighurs in China, Rohingya in Myanmar, Yazidis in Iraq, Christians in Pakistan, Muslims in India. The U.S. Institute of Peace has worked for decades at the intersection of human rights, religious freedom, peace, and stability. Our experts have been part of the journey that led to the International Religious Freedom Act and like countless peacebuilders around the globe. We continue to support the efforts to monitor religiously motivated abuses, harassment and discrimination worldwide and to recommend policies and programs to address these concerns. It's a great privilege to welcome to the stage Representative Frank Wolf, a champion of international religious freedom throughout his legislative career and a founding father of this work. Mr. Representative. Well, thank you very much. The U.S. Institute for Peace honors Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, your strong early supporters by having this event. I know and I know Senator Nichols would agree they would be very pleased that you're having this. All over this world, people of faith are being denied the fundamental and ineligible human right to confess their faith according to the dictates of their conscience. The Pew survey says that 80 percent of the world's population live in a religiously repressive environment. There was growing persecution, yet the cries of the persecutors are often met with deafening silence. And many around the world feel abandoned and doomed. In China, every group is being persecuted at the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, Tibetan Buddhists. There is Oregon harvesting against the fallen gong, some while they are still alive. And there is genocide against Uighur Muslims and over a million are being held in detention camps. In northern Iraq, the Christian community is diminishing and 2700 Yazidi women and girls taken by ISIS are still missing. In Egypt, conflicted Christians and other religious minorities are facing persecution and yet we give Egypt over a billion dollars a year in foreign aid. In Pakistan, Christians are being jailed for blasphemy and Ahmadiyyat Muslims suffer severe persecution and we give Pakistan over a billion dollars a year in foreign aid. In Iran, religious freedom has dramatically declined and women and girls continue to face religious repression. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has committed genocide against Christians and Fulani militants are committing genocidal activity. A recent report documents that 52,000 Christians and 34,000 Muslims have been killed in the past 12 years and we give the Nigerian government massive foreign aid. We see growing antisemitism in many places in the world and rising vocal and antisemitism on many American college campuses. In Nicaragua, the Catholic Church is being persecuted, sisters of Mercy Mother Teresa's group were expelled from the country and Bishop Alvarez, as heroic as he is, has been sent to prison. In Cuba, persecution of Christians is escalating. There is so much religious persecution in many other countries, too numerous to mention. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. No country voted against it. Article 18 of the Declaration states explicitly everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change his religion or belief in freedom either alone or in community with others in public or private to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. In the United States, the issue of international religious freedom has always been bipartisan. President Ronald Reagan said that the words in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution are covenant, not only with the people of those gathered in Philadelphia in 1776 and 1787, but a covenant with the people around the world. Religion freedom has many benefits, for the individual means they can not only worship as they choose, but also freely practice their faith. As Founding Fathers James Madison of Pine, conscience, conscience is the most sacred of all property and for most people their faith, their religion informs their conscience. Religion freedom promotes peace, stability and prosperity in societies. Mary Ann Glenn, former Ambassador to the Holy See and former USERF Commissioner, has cited research by the Pew Foundation, which shows a positive correlation between religion freedom and other important human goods such as longevity of democracy, the presence of civil and political liberties, women's advancement, press freedom, literacy, lower infant mortality and economic freedom. We see all these benefits, we see all these benefits, yet we see growing worldwide persecution of people of faith. Here's some ideas that I think can help. As we move ahead, we must, we must keep this issue bipartisan. Some of the great leaders and legislators of the second half of the 20th century made the promotion and protection of religion freedom a bipartisan issue. Men like President Ronald Reagan, former Senator Scoop Jackson, former Congressman Henry Hyde and Tom Blantus all came together to ensure that this cause was not left wanting. Today, Congressman Chris Smith and Jim McGovern carry on this tradition, which unfortunately has become increasingly rare. Number two, we should encourage newly elected members of Congress to be involved in this issue. The issues a member adopts early usually become the issue they stay with. They should be encouraged to take bipartisan trips, Republican and Democrat, to countries where persecution is taking place. Number three, there needs to be a major effort on college campuses to make international religion freedom compelling to students. There could be a program similar to Fulbright Scholars to fund student study and work on human rights and religious freedom issues. It could be called the Reagan-Carter program. Both presidents were strong supporters of religious freedom. There should also be a program whereby people who have faced persecution like Nathan Szerensky and others speak about their experiences on American college campuses. Number four, when I was elected to Congress in 1981, nobody would have lobbied for the Soviet Union. Yet today we see many lobby efforts aid China who in addition to the abuses that I had earlier mentioned is working with Iran and aiding Russia in the evasion of Ukraine. I believe there should be legislation prohibiting lobbying for China and for any country that has been designated a country of particular concern, CPC, for four or more years. Number five, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has an extensive list of prisoners of conscience. I recommend that every member of Congress, college students, religious and other organizations adopt a prisoner of conscience and advocate for that prisoner. Number six, there should be a major effort to fight anti-Semitism, which we see growing around the world and even here, even here in the U.S., over much of our world history Jews have suffered betrayal, scorn, persecution and brutality. A Jewish friend told me no survey was needed to determine whether a country was free. He said simple visits to synagogues did the job. As history has shown, if the Jews of a country were free to practice their faith, one could be reasonably confident that tolerance and freedom were possible for others. I am sure many of you out there have your own ideas that what can be done. But the question is, how will we help? The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said and I quote, in the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. We in this room and here in town are the friends of the persecuting. I've always been moved by a quote from Bobby Kennedy whose family lived in my congressional district in McLean, Virginia for years. Bobby Kennedy often said, some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not. Thank you very, very much. I want to now introduce Senator Don Nichols of Oklahoma, who was key in passing this legislation. It almost stalled and almost died out in the Senate. And it had not been for Don Nichols, it would have never passed. Senator Nichols. Frank Wolf, thank you very much and my compliments to you and the great work that you did in the House. And frankly, I see so many champions of religious freedom that are here. I just want to thank you for your efforts. Many of you have been fighting these battles and fought them for years and years. And I do think the International Religious Freedom Act helps us in that fight. And it's certainly a fight worth being made. Just think of all the wars that have happened that are ongoing today, but happened historically because there were wars over religious freedom. Wars over hatred from one religion to another. And you see that generation after generation. And maybe with the work of this commission that was created by the International Religious Freedom Act, by the ambassadors. And we have all the ambassadors here. And I just want to thank you for your work. I look out and I see John Hanford. No one's probably more responsible, except for maybe his wife, Laura Bryant, now Hanford, in making this happen. And Laura, it's funny, I was talking to Steve Moffat in my office. And he said, well, you do realize, I talked to him yesterday. He said, you do realize that John Hanford, who worked for Dick Luger. Well, he was in our office so much everybody thought he worked for me. And again, I just want to say thank you. The fantastic work that you all have done in putting this together. It wouldn't have happened in my opinion, but had not been for you. So Ambassador Hanford and Laura, thank you for your efforts and allowing us to work together to help get this over the finish line. Frank Wolf and his team, Arlen Specter, worked and got the house bill through. The house bill wasn't going to go through the Senate. We were working with them to see what we could get across the finish line. We came up with a commission. We came up with a bipartisan support. Joe Lieberman was my principal co-sponsors, but we had many others. Had like 30 some odd co-sponsors in the Senate. And I think helped create a bill that can be long lasting and have very powerful impact. And we think of the efforts that were made. I was elected rather young in the Senate. I was 32 when I was sworn in, I guess. And I had a case come before me by a young man who went to my school, Uncle in the State University, Charles Mendez. And he was in prison in Nepal because he was sharing the gospel. Wow. And I remember, what do I do? I talked to my friend, Dick Luger, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. And next thing I know, I'm working with John Hanford and we have a meeting with the ambassador eventually and we get him out of prison. And it kind of wet my appetite. Wait a minute, members of Congress. I was a new kid on the block and really didn't know what we could do. But members could make a difference. And I look back at all those countries that Frank Wolf mentioned. All these big challenges. In China, I met with leaders of the underground church. In Russia, we would meet with people who really were oppressed and they would be Jewish, they would be Muslim. They were all kinds of problems. In Egypt against the Coptics and just country after country. But most of the efforts that we were doing were kind of haphazard. It was one member, one delegation. And we would travel to a country when we would highlight these problems. And maybe we would point out some political prisoners, religious freedom, prisoners, and maybe we could get them out. But it was a little haphazard. And only as energetic as those members were on that particular day, on that particular trip. And maybe there'd be a resolution in the House, a resolution in the Senate. And we would have some success. But the idea of the International Religious Freedom Act was to establish something that's gonna be ongoing, that it have a real presence, an ambassador level presence in the State Department. Which some of you may remember, the State Department didn't want this to happen. They didn't want this intrusion on their territory. So it was a rather challenging thing, but we eventually got it through. I remember meeting, and John Hanford reminded me of this, meeting with then Senator Joe Biden, who was Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. The Foreign Relations Committee really didn't like the fact that people that weren't on the committee were trying to write legislation, they considered their turf. And but eventually we were successful convincing then Senator, now President, Joe Biden that that was important. I remember Diane Feinstein, also a member of the committee. She had significant serious reservations and she was the last person we finally got off and we got her sign off. We were able to get it passed through the Senate. And we just had a lot of champions that helped make that happen and I can't help but think that by the commission, by the ambassador, by the chairpersons of the commission with energetic efforts, keeping these issues alive, highlighting the abuse. And the whole purpose of the legislation wasn't to punish countries because they were violating people's religious freedoms. It was to get them to change their behavior. We weren't trying to embarrass people or embarrass countries as much as we were trying to get them to change their behavior. And maybe that could be done by exposing the intolerance. Or maybe it could be done by saying we're gonna withhold some of this money that you're receiving unless you allow people to share their faith. Or allow people not to be imprisoned because they wanna change religions. Or just using different tools. And so the State Department, we gave them a lot of latitude. A lot of options to encourage behavior, changes. To allow an opening of religious freedom. And maybe by doing that, we would take away some of the tensions that are underlying some of these conflicts that are so prevalent today. And so again, I just wanna thank all those that are involved. Thank you for your efforts. We wanna keep these issues to the forefront. We thank the commission and particularly the ambassadors. I'm gonna thank Sam Brownback who's here. He was a champion in taking on and highlighting the abuses in Sudan. Unbelievable atrocities, some of which are still continuing today. So important to highlight that. And he did a fantastic job as ambassador as well. So having something that's established where the ambassador, where the commission can highlight this. Having an administration that's willing to work and empower the ambassador and the commission to really make a difference. To use the tools that Congress gave them to make a change. To help preserve and protect religious freedom for all people, all worlds, all religions. This isn't aimed at one religion versus another religion. It's to allow everyone in every religion. When we look at the United States and you travel around in any state, we're very proud of the fact that there's all types of religious communities. And everyone is able to change and talk and express. And they have freedom that we take for granted, but the majority of the world does not have. And so again, I think by passage of this act, we've given the commission, the ambassador, the state department, the tools necessary to do it if they are engaged. And if the secretary of state carries the ball. And if he's willing to take on some of these issues. And that can change from administration to administration. But there's some real champions in this room for religious freedom. I want to thank you for your efforts. May God bless you and continue to bless your efforts as well. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to introduce Katrina Lantos Sweat who will say a few words. Her maiden name is Lantos and her father was Tom Lantos. He was elected the same time I was in 1980. He was a champion of religious freedom. He's a champion of civil rights throughout the world. He was a Holocaust survivor, so he knew personally. The evils of religious persecution. Katrina is president of the Lantos Foundation. She kind of irritates me in a way. She graduated from Yale at age 18. What is this? She graduated from law school in California at age 21. Katrina, come on. What were you doing when you were 21? Well, I just graduated from law school. She also worked for then Senator Joe Biden on the Judiciary Committee, which had jurisdiction instantly over this legislation. She's been a leader on behalf. She served on the commission and chairman of the commission for four years. So thank you for that service. And she has seven kids married to former Congressman Richard Sweat and Ambassador Sweat. So Katrina, thank you very much for fighting this battle. The floor is yours. Thank you. Good morning. It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here with all of you, and in particular, to be here with so many heroes of the human rights movement and the IRF movement. We've heard from two of them already. And people like Frank Wolff and Ambassador Sam Brownback have been incredibly powerful examples to me of what it means to live out your convictions and to make your faith visible in the world. I'm grateful to them and to so many of you for the lessons you have taught me. We are here, of course, to celebrate and reflect on IRF at 25. And when Peter Mandeville extended the very gracious invitation to me to be part of this event, I planned to give quite a different speech from the one I'm going to give. I'm reminded of a similar situation that befell me close to two years ago when I was invited to speak at a conference on the topic of peace building. Between the time of the invitation and the time of the conference, the war in Ukraine began. And really, for all of us, it felt that the ground beneath our feet had shifted in unmistakable ways. The moment called then not for a speech about peace, much as we all longed for it, but rather for a discussion at that time of what were the things that were worth fighting for. Today, in the aftermath of 10-7, the ground has again shifted in frightening ways. And we are compelled to think about the defense of religious freedom in a world where the oldest and ugliest hatred based on religious identity has been unleashed in horrifying ways. As was just mentioned by Senator Nichols, I am the proud daughter of two Holocaust survivors, which makes me a recent link in a chain that extends back 4,000 years. In some ways, the descendants of Abraham could be considered to be the ultimate community that sought and fought to preserve their religious freedom rights against all obstacles across the millennia, through slavery, war, exile, Assyrians, Babylonians, Macedonians, Romans, diaspora, scattering, inquisitions, pogroms and persecutions, all culminating in the Shoah, the extermination of 6 million at the hands of the Nazis. Through all this, this small religious community refused to abandon their faith and their covenant relationship with their God. This minuscule, largely stateless and so often despised community has modeled for all of us why defending freedom of religion is truly of ultimate importance. The right to live our lives, as Frank Wolff has said, in accordance with our deepest convictions, goes to the very essence of our human dignity. And that is the foundation on which the entire architecture of the human rights movement is built. If we do not defend this right, we have lost our shared civilization. I can't fully express to you today how disturbing it has been for me and especially for my 92-year-old mother who lives with me to witness the tsunami of hatred towards the Jewish people that has been unleashed since Hamas's savage massacre just three weeks ago. The nauseating footage of a frenzied mob baying for Jewish blood at an airport in Russia. Jewish students locked in a library at Cooper Union College while a mob of protesters bang on the windows to get at them from just outside the doors. Cornell students calling for Jewish students to have their throat slit for Jewish women to be raped and babies beheaded while one of their professors expressed his exhilaration, his word not mine, at witnessing precisely these atrocities committed by the Hamas murderers. I'm sorry to say, what I'm sharing with you is not a metaphor. It is not an exaggeration. And these are not isolated incidents. It is a scandal. It is a civilizational threat. And it is a test for each and every one of us. A time for choosing, a time to stand up and be counted. And it is surely a time for us to redouble our work in behalf of religious freedom for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Religious freedom for everyone. I'm sorry. One result of protecting religious freedom for everyone is that it almost always leads to pluralism. Such pluralism is a powerful antidote to hatred. And extremism of the kind we have been witnessing. The famous French philosopher Voltaire said, when there is only one religion, tyranny rules. When there are two religious war reigns. But when there are many, liberty comes. And along with liberty comes a growing respect and civic fellowship among those who may differ in their most profound beliefs but who share a commitment to defending each other's rights. Ambassador Brownback and I have witnessed this in action at the annual IRF summit that we co-chair. And it is quite honestly one of the most encouraging and optimistic aspects of the gathering. Muslims speaking up on behalf of Jews, Christians on behalf of Buddhists, Hindus for Baha'is, Sikhs in defense of atheists. You get the idea. It is a beautiful and inspiring thing to behold. Now, I know that in some quarters there has been disappointment that in the 25 years that IRFA has been in place, we have not seen substantial improvement in the state of religious freedom globally. In fact, in too many places, the trend has been in the wrong direction. This has led some to wonder at IRFA's efficacy. I disagree with them. I think the problem has less to do with the shortcomings of IRFA and more to do with a lack of commitments to its meaningful prioritization and implementation. To paraphrase the great G.K. Chesterton, who was writing about Christianity when he said, it has not been tried and found wanting. It's been found hard and not tried. Too many presidents and too many state departments have found the fight for religious freedom too hard and therefore have not really tried to do it. That, in my view, has been a terrible, terrible mistake with implications not only for the defense of our cherished human rights, but for our national security and safety as well. My friend Tom Farr, I don't know if he's here today, he's another one of the early founding fathers of the religious freedom movement, but he has written extensively about the connection between security and freedom of religion and belief. And if anyone doubts the accuracy and the wisdom of that connection, the crisis we are currently facing should change your mind pretty quickly. I truly believe that if we could ever persuade a president to meaningfully prioritize IRFA, we could make enormous progress in building a better and a more peaceful and stable world and begin to fulfill the full promise of IRFA. I'd like to conclude my remarks this morning with a story from the life of my father and an important lesson that he taught me. He was a young teenage boy when the Holocaust came to his native country of Budapest and like tens and tens and tens of thousands of his fellow young Hungarian Jews, he was rounded up and sent to a slave labor camp in the countryside where they were terribly abused and starved and lived under utterly miserable circumstances. For some reason, the head of the barracks in which he and some of his friends were living decided to burnish somehow his reputation by compelling all these Jewish boys to be baptized. These young men were terrified, alone, frightened and had no one to protect them. And so they all did, all except two. My father and his very best friend, Nori Kereni, who went on to become a distinguished surgeon, they were badly beaten for their refusal to comply with this coercive request. And I've wondered what it was that caused my father to resist this demand. Why he didn't just do it. He was not a particularly religious teenager. He had a belief in God at that time in his life, which over the years and as a result of the things he lived through gave way to a more skeptical agnosticism. But I don't really think it was so much his deep religiosity that made him balk at doing this thing. So much as it was a recognition that if he gave up that profound personal integrity, that right that he had to decide for himself his deepest beliefs, that he would be giving up something of inestimable value. And I think he thought he might never find it again. I like to think that it was maybe that moment in his life where he began to develop the character that would eventually make him such a staunch and brave defender of the rights of others. There was another wonderful lesson I learned from my father. Despite having witnessed and experienced the worst of what humankind was capable of, he remained a profoundly optimistic person with a great sense of hope for the future. And whenever I would feel a sense of despair or dejection over events in the world, as I think many of us do right now today, my father would say in his wonderful rich Hungarian accent, Don't worry, darling, we are just bending a windy corner of history, and around this corner will be bright blue skies and wonderful possibilities. We are today at a very windy corner, and it is understandable to fear what lies around the bend, but if we can now summon the courage and conviction to stand by our values and to stand against the evil that confronts us, I too believe that there are bright blue skies and wonderful possibilities ahead. Thank you so much. It is now my distinct pleasure to introduce our truly outstanding current ambassador at large for religious freedom. Rashad Hussein has fulfilled many, many roles in his young life. I look at him and I say, how can you have done so many important things at such a young age? But even though he is, I think, maybe the youngest person ever to serve us, our ambassador at large, he has undertaken these duties with a maturity and a determination that has won the admiration of all. So, Ambassador Hussein. Good morning to all of you. To so many friends, to so many colleagues, to so many champions of international religious freedom that I see here today, it really is an honor to be with all of you this morning with our sincere thanks to the United States Institute of Peace who I have affectionately begun calling the Peace Factory for hosting and partnering with us on so many events. Before I get into more discussion and the number of critical issues raised by Senator Nichols, Congressman Wolff, former chairwoman Katrina Lantoswet, I do want to acknowledge the difficult and the challenging times that we are in today. On October 7th, I received a call shortly after 3 in the morning. I received this call from a close friend of mine who was in Tel Aviv. Even earlier that morning, he was in Jerusalem leading an interfaith delegation of prominent faith leaders from the Chicago area. And as we began talking and thinking through the logistics about how this group might have a chance of getting back home safely, we quickly realized that our world had changed. So early in the morning, I start looking around the room and when you have kids, when you have children, whether your own children, whether nieces or nephews, you think about the world, you see the world through the lens of your own family. And as we learned more about the horrific and barbaric terrorist attacks on the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and the kidnapping of so many hostages, I thought of innocent women, I thought of the elderly, I thought of children, and I thought of all of their families and all of the suffering that they were experiencing. Some of them were killed instantly, some of them hid for hours, and I was horrified just thinking about the fear that they must have felt as they pleaded for mercy before taking their last breaths. And in those moments, I thought about my own children, I thought about my own siblings, I thought about my own parents, and that is the least that I could do to try to empathize with those that were suffering, try to relate to the pain of those who are suffering on the other side of the world. As we see the devastating images from Reza, I also think about my own family. Children, when they go to sleep at night during a war, not knowing whether their homes will collapse on them at any moment. Mothers writing the names of their children on their arms and on their legs to increase the possibilities that they might be identified if they're killed. Families splitting up intentionally to increase the likelihood of survival and succession. I also observe what's happening in the Middle East through the lens of a trip that I recently took to Jerusalem at a very interesting time of the year. It was at the intersection of Passover, Easter and Ramadan. And during that time, there was a weekend where we had spent the 27th night of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and then Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque and then the next day, the Saturday, at the Holy Fire Ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and then at the Western Wall. And our mission there was to advocate for the access, the free access to all of these holy sites for worshipers. And when I look back and I thought back during those moments about that visit, it was also a reminder that no faith tradition, none of these faith traditions justifies the killing of civilians, taking of women and children, elderly, as hostages, none of them. There's a very famous verse in the Qur'an in the Islamic tradition. It means that whoever kills one person, innocent person as if they've killed all of humanity, and whoever saves one life as if they've saved all of humanity. And I know this is a common tradition in other faiths as well. And it's worth remembering at this time. We're also seeing the rise in hatred right here in the United States, a rise in anti-Semitism. Katrina mentioned many of the episodes that we're seeing on college campuses and elsewhere. We lost six-year-old Waldea Al-Fayyum, who was viciously murdered in his own home. So the work that we're doing to protect human rights, to protect freedom, is more important than ever. As the president has said, we must without equivocation denounce anti-Semitism, we must without equivocation denounce Islamophobia to all of you hurting, you belong, you are all America. Our office, the Office of International Religious Freedom, I'm grateful to many of my colleagues I see here for all the work that they were doing. Long before I joined their office and was fortunate enough to inherit them from Ambassador Brownback as just a phenomenal staff, we have been working to build bridges, to counter anti-Semitism, to counter all forms of hatred, Islamophobia here in the United States and around the world. I've traveled with the second gentleman, Douglas Emhoff, and our special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, Deborah Lipsdapp, to the Holocaust sites. We had previously, in other roles that I've had in government, traveled with Imams from the United States, Imams from around the world to the Holocaust sites as well. And Deborah Lipsdapp and I, along with our special representative for racial equity, Desiree Cormier-Smith, also traveled earlier this year to Srebrenica to mark the 28th anniversary of the genocide there. And importantly, we continue to work with all of you, the true champions, the heroes, the civil society leaders, to do everything that we can to end the dehumanizing rhetoric that we're seeing around the world, to end the dehumanizing actions that divide us. And we have to redouble all these efforts now to stand up for what is right, to work together, and to build bridges that will help eventually bring peace. We cannot stop thinking about peace and building peace, as my friend Shechna reminded me on the phone, even during these difficult times. We must be still continuing to prepare for peace. And we have to do all this work so that we can thrive together here in the United States and around the world. None of us chose where we were born. None of us chose when we were born. None of us chose the conditions under which we were born. So for those of us that have the fortune to be born into a land where there is relative peace and stability and that we have the freedom to advocate for ourselves, to speak up and to advocate for others, it is truly our obligation to do so. And that is what the last 25 years of our work together under the International Religious Freedom Act have represented. 25 years of advocacy, 25 years of action, 25 years of collaboration, and yes, 25 years of extremely hard work. Extremely hard work working to address discriminatory laws, discriminatory policies, and yes, even answering those calls in the middle of the night when we hear about individuals who have been arrested or detained or being persecuted and realizing that every second that we spend without getting to work could cost those individuals their lives. I want to recognize several individuals who made the International Religious Freedom Act a reality and others who have worked tirelessly to implement it and to give it hands, feet, and heart. Former Representative and current youth service commissioner Frank Wolff, former Senator Don Nichols, we are all here today because you and your fellow members of Congress cared enough to make EarthFare a reality and shining International Religious Freedom as a U.S. foreign policy priority, and we thank you so much. To my predecessors, as ambassadors at large for International Religious Freedom, Bob Seifle, John Hanford, Susan Johnson Cook, Rabbi David Saperstein, and Sam Brownback, we thank you for spearheading the cause of freedom of religion or belief throughout the last quarter century. I am grateful for the foundation that each of you laid before my tenure, and I am honored to follow in your footsteps. We travel around the world addressing literally every single one of the issues without discrimination, religious freedom everywhere for everyone, as Ambassador Brownback used to always declare so boldly. And we can't do it without all of the lessons that we gained from you. Every single one of you that came before us made inroads, made inroads within our own government in advancing these issues, made inroads within the diplomatic core here in the United States, made inroads working and building partners with civil society, made inroads in building up our office to now have, for the type of position that we're in, an ambassadorial slash special envoy, special representative type of position, one of the largest staffs in our government working on this set of issue. So we thank you for all of that and we are doing our absolute best trying to relentlessly build on all of your effort. I would also like to acknowledge the collaborative effort of so many of you who have joined us today for our partners at USIP and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and so many others. So it leads us to the question, particularly in light of the analysis that we've heard this morning about conditions around the world, what is it that we are celebrating today? After all, it is abundantly clear that religious freedom remains under threat in small and large ways in many places around the world. Repression has no timetable and religious freedom violators sometimes appear to have no limits to their cruelty. And yet we do celebrate. We celebrate because we have accomplished much over the past 25 years and we have done so together in a bipartisan way. The International Religious Freedom Act succeeded first and foremost in making freedom of religion or belief an integral part of U.S. foreign policy, creating our International Religious Freedom Office and the mandate of Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, as well as establishing our friends at USERF. Our leadership has sent a powerful signal to the world and that the last four ambassadors with the mission of protecting International Religious Freedom have been a Protestant minister, a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic senator and governor, and now a Muslim. The fact that we all continue to work together sends a very powerful signal and it says a lot about who we are as America and Americans and about the nonpartisan nature of our work that we continue this enduring commitment to maintain all of our efforts to promote freedom of religion or belief for all. Through our exhaustive and authoritative annual reports, we at the U.S. office have shed light on religious freedom conditions in every corner of the world, those countries whose governments respect it well and those that contraven it. If anyone ever wonders whether the persecution of any faith community has escaped our attention, your answer can be found in our comprehensive reports that we issue every single year. Through trainings, in our office collaboration and funding actual programs on the ground, we have assured that government personnel from Ford and Civil Service and locally employed staff on up to ambassadors understand and support the obligations under international law of all countries to uphold this universal right. Furthermore, we have engaged regularly and often with foreign government officials both here and abroad to urge social and legal reforms and to advocate on behalf of victims of religious freedom, abuses, and violations. I must make this abundantly clear, however, the achievements of the last 25 years are about all of us. They're about all of us, not just one particular office in the government. They are all about civil society partners at the IRF Roundtable, who bring us together advocates, representatives of besieged religious groups and government personnel to share information and encourage others' efforts. We are grateful for the members of our armed forces who seek to protect these very freedoms and to shield the vulnerable. We are grateful for our like-minded international partners who have grown in number, visibility, and strength. Partners in the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, or IRFBA, in the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom and in the annual International Religious Freedom Summit under the dynamic leadership of my predecessor, Sam Brownback, and our friend and former USURF chair, Katrina Lantos Sweat. In other words, IRF, the International Religious Freedom Act, has really sparked a movement, a movement that has brought together religious freedom advocates from around the world that continues to shine an even brighter light on our shared human right to believe as we choose or not to believe and to practice those convictions according to our conscience. When detractors ask us, and they often ask us when we travel around the world, they say, who are you as the United States to assess religious freedom conditions? Who are you to stand in judgment by issuing the report about conditions related to religious freedom around the world? And I think as the United States we're powerfully positioned to answer that question for a number of reasons. First of all, we are a country that was founded by many people who themselves were fleeing religious persecution, and they cared so much about religious freedom that they enshrined within our First Amendment in our Constitution the right to religious freedom, amongst other important rights. And we are a country that is made up of people from literally every corner of this planet. And when they come to the United States, just as my parents did, when they come to the United States, they don't forget where they came from. They come to the United States and they demand from their government officials their elected representatives that we stand up for our values everywhere overseas, that we stand up for the religious freedom of all people. So when people ask me, who are you to stand up for religious freedom as an American, we proudly say that we are, as the United States, representatives of the rest of the world, right here with the long tradition of upholding this value. And that's why we continue to do so, not without our own faults, not without our own faults all around the world. Finally, we cannot merely look back over the last 25 years of advocacy and partnership. There is, after all, so much more work that we have to do. We must solemnly look around at the present and pause in sorrow as we remember the countless victims of religious repression who languish in prison or whose families mourn their lives of faith and purpose cut far too short. The plight of the persecuted, those who survive and those who persevere, as well as those who have fallen, should always inform, inspire and drive our work. We must look ahead to the next 25 years, to the next generation of advocates and partners. All of you who are gathered here today, along with so many who could not be here in person, have laid a firm foundation of action and advocacy. We have created institutions and strengthened laws and we have formed new partnerships and reinforced long-standing alliances. Now let us ourselves together move forward to the work of making the utmost best possibility that we can for the resulting opportunities. Let us use the next 25 years to affect great and lasting change, to set prisoners free, to bring accountability, to persecutors, to end religious repression and to make religious freedom a reality for the millions of our fellow human beings who do not have it, but who desperately need it. Thank you for joining in the celebration today and I would like to pass the mic now to my friend, Pawasha Kakkar. Pawasha has devoted her career to empowering women and promoting peace and religious inclusivity through civil society and she now serves as interim director of USIP's Vital and Dynamic Program on Religion and Inclusive Societies. She will moderate what I anticipate will be a fascinating conversation with several of my predecessors, ambassadors at large for international religious freedom who I'd also like to call to the stage. They're all here except Ambassador Saperstein is the designated survivor, not at this location. He is in Indonesia and will be safe, God willing, in case anything happens to all of us. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Ambassador. Shout out to St. Fear kind introduction and peace be with all of you. I will quick give introductions of all the ambassadors here with me. We are so, so blessed to have all of you here with us and to have Ambassador Saperstein also with us through a video. Let me start off with Ambassador Robert Seiple. He was the first US ambassador at large for international religious freedom and known for demonstrating a commitment to the implementation of the IRF Act and establishing the post within the US Department of State. He served in this role from 1999 to 2000 under President Clinton. After that, we have Ambassador John Hanford who was the second US ambassador at large for international religious freedom known for expanding the office's scope of operations through the production of the annual International Religious Freedom Report and through a historic binding agreement with Vietnam. And he served in this role from 2002 to 2009 under President Bush. Then we have Ambassador Susan Johnson Cook who was the third US ambassador at large for international religious freedom known for advancing the promotion of religious freedom as a human right across the globe. She was also the first woman and African American to hold this position and she served in this role from 2011 to 2013 under President Obama. Then we have Ambassador Rabbi David Saperstein who was the fourth US ambassador at large for international religious freedom and known for promoting religious freedom agenda alongside other universal human rights. He was also the first rabbi to hold the position and he served in this role from 2014 to 2017 under President Obama. And we have the fifth ambassador, Ambassador Sam Brownback who was the fifth ambassador at large for international religious freedom known for promoting religious freedom alongside the promotion of economic growth and the reduction of terrorism. And in his role he served from 2018 to 2021 under President Trump. It's my privilege to really moderate this esteemed panel of my heroes and sheroes of international religious freedom and celebrating the 25th anniversary of the International Religious Freedom Act and to continue the USIP tradition of convening these important conversations on religious freedom and its connection to peace through upholding human rights and supporting political stability. As we heard from our previous speakers, we know that religious freedom is so essential to the human experience. That repression of religion can cause or become a major driver of conflict and violence. And like many Americans, as Ambassador Sane mentioned, my ancestors also came to this country seeking religious freedom because they were being persecuted. Such migrations of the persecuted is how religious freedom became part of our American narrative of freedom and peace and connected to our model of democracy. Today we are celebrating a pillar of this American approach, 25 years of the International Religious Freedom Act and each ambassador for international religious freedom brought a unique and important approach to promoting IRF around the world that we look forward to hearing about. We're lucky to have all the former IRF ambassadors participating in today's session and I will ask two rounds of questions. I request that ambassadors you keep your remarks to five minutes so that we can hear from everyone for each of the questions. And I'll ask the first round in chronological order and the second round based on interest. So first let me turn to Ambassador Robert Cyple. You were the first IRF ambassador. What was it like setting up the IRF office at state and getting the attention of the administration on IRF issues? And was IRF part of the language, particularly on national security at that time? And I have to answer that in three minutes or five minutes. Five minutes if you're able. Well, I was the first. I came in and I was the new kid on the block and we had this flurry of activity. That's a euphemism between the external and the internal which is to say in the State Department there wasn't a single person. That won in this bill. Not a single person. I couldn't find anybody. We were all alone. What have I done, Mama? So it took a while to make the adjustments with the people on the outside. But there was a lot of negative musings around the formulation of the bill. At the time I didn't know Frank or Don but I certainly appreciated what they were doing. And someone used the term along obedience in the same direction. Boy, if you're not in it for a long time and wanted to see things happen over a long period of time and come out good on the other end this is not the subject matter you need to become a part of. But as I say, no one on the inside one and someone on the outside and that was kind of hard to adjust to. Secondly, it was the commission. This was towards the end of the debate. The debate took two plus years. I mean, nothing takes two plus years and comes out right, right? Well this takes two plus years until everything did come out right. And the commission was designed on the outside to make sure good things happen on the inside. And I thought, see, this is awkward. This is really awkward. You get all these people from me outside and what are you doing anyway? Well, we're looking over your shoulder. Okay, well why are you looking over our shoulder? Because we don't trust you to do the hard work. Oh no. Yeah, well I've never been, you know, so chastised about merit for something like this but think about it. You had the State Department with all that entails all the bureaucracies and so on. Not a single soul accepting this particular act and then you have the outside because they knew that the State Department would be a little soft on this particular issue. By the way, it's all worked out. David who's not going to be with us today except from Indonesia was the superb chairman of the board of the commission. First one. And made sure it all did work out right. And we had some powerful people. David made sure that when everybody came together they had the pins and the hand grenades and nobody touched them. The longest time that we were there. I also, that was the external one that was supposed to fill the gap that needed to be filled on the inside. And so the State Department would point to my position and the fact that I was going to be given the portfolio for religious freedom. And I had some religiosity back in my background which is to say my sins have yet to find themselves out. There'd be more of you clapping if you read the King James version. You come in and we won't need this act. Well the fact is that I came in and they got me and then they got the act. The best laid plans of mice and men. We had a contestable political environment that summer when all this was coming together. The real name mentioned most often around the water cooler was Monica Lewinsky. And so a lot of the political wells were in the process of being spoiled. And yet in that context this new act had to emerge and have a running start and be able to feel the questions that would inevitably come. And do the work. Now you're going to hear a lot of people talk about the work. If you're not in it for the long haul stay out of it. I've got a lot of activity time in Vietnam and Laos. Well first time I went to Vietnam was 67 courtesy of the United States Marine Corps. First time I went to Laos was 1989. And these things had to emerge, had to be coaxed along, had to be padded down, had to be put back together and so on. But if you're willing to take that step and stay in there for the longest time until they get it right, until you get it right because you have as much to learn as they do and that's the respect that comes ultimately to a form of peacemaking. My wife died a couple years ago. Dementia, terrible way to go. I went to her memory care unit to pick up some stuff. And there was a big bouquet of flowers from the Vietnamese embassy. Next day I got a really beautiful note from someone in the staff of the field force in Laos. A beautiful note. And I thought to myself, you know, that's what reconciliation looks like. That's what peace looks like. And I'm very much touched by it. But I could go through the whole thing if we had more time. Just remember when it started in the 80s and got finished a couple years ago in terms of a relationship that continues to this day because people were willing to take the long walk. Thank you so much, Ambassador Seiple. We're so sorry for your loss, but really appreciate your message about the importance of the long haul. I guess that means that's the end of my talk. For this first question, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Before I got to page two, I was... That was really nice. Thank you, Ambassador. So next I'd like to turn to Ambassador John Hanford. So I understand you drafted a lot of the language that went into the IRF Act. And then you were appointed the second IRF Ambassador. So what was it like to be on the operational side of the IRF Act that you helped draft? And then during your tenure, how did the relationship between IRF and national security in the world evolve? So yes, I did have the privilege to lead the effort to work with the IRF. There were actually three of us, Will Inboden, who's now a professor at University of Florida. And then there was this very impressive house staffer who's with us today, Laura Bryant Hanford, because we got married later and now have five children. And that proves legislating can be romantic, even though it sure doesn't seem that way anymore. But the truth is, Laura was more than anyone. Was probably the genius behind some of the most important provisions of IRF. So the three of us met in my office for months. We sought counsel from persecuted groups and studied human rights law, trade law. And we, the three of us, had worked full-time in the U.S. government just on this issue for a combined almost 20 years by that time. And so we were incorporating all of that experience. We were tremendously blessed to have Senator Nichols as the champion and chief sponsor of the bill, along with Senator Lieberman. And Senator Nichols had already done a number of initiatives in this area around the world, which I had admired. But he also was the second most powerful leader on the majority side in the Senate. And so that helped us a lot, too. And his staff was incredible, especially Steve Moffitt, his legislative director, who was a real unsung hero in this. Steve and I led the negotiations with the White House and the State Department, who were trying to stop, kill the bill, or gut it, whatever they could. And then Congressman Wolf, who I had worked with and admired for many years, well, first I should mention, eventually Senator Nichols led this bill to unanimous passage in the Senate. Which was so rare. And then Congressman Wolf, who I said I had worked with and admired so much, he was willing, in a great act of graciousness, to accept the Senate bill as a substitute for his House bill, so that it then passed unanimously in the House. And as Bob mentioned, this was a rare bipartisan triumph right around the time that the Clinton impeachment hearings were going on. So that's how IRFA came to be. Now you're right, that a lot of people now you're right, that it is rare to have the responsibility then to implement what you have created. Probably a good trial by fire that more people should have to go through. But it was a wonderful privilege. And let me say that we created IRFA with two goals in mind, to mobilize the strongest possible U.S. government advocacy on behalf of persecuted people of faith, and to establish the strongest possible incentives for change by other governments. Now, the first two ambassadors, Bob and I, as he's alluded to, had a different challenge than some of our successors. And this is typical with the new thing. We needed to lay the foundations, we needed to fight battles, break some China, and set presidents that would pave the way for our presidents. And it's just one example. I walked into the State Department and found out that of the millions of dollars program money that was being given to NGOs around the world on behalf of democracy and human rights, religious freedom was excluded, no NGO could apply. Now we changed that, but that's an example of what we were up against. 25% of my time, I estimate, was spent fighting within the building to preserve the International Religious Freedom Act and to keep it from being gutted. The IRF report was held up for weeks to try to force me to agree to a reduced mandate for the bill. I would not do that. It helped that I could say, I wrote this darn thing and I'm not going to let you do this. There were efforts to undermine my CPC recommendations over and over. I remember sitting with an Assistant Secretary that I was having to meet with to pitch what I was gonna do on Uzbekistan and she was insulting me and I said, what is it about Muslims, pious Muslims being burned to death in vats of oil that you don't understand? I mean, that's how intense it got with the resistance that I was running into. The Assistant Secretary in DRL wanted to exclude religious freedom from the annual human rights dialogue in Beijing and felt that Sudan and Vietnam should not be designated as CPCs. That's what we were up against. And we were able ultimately to succeed on every one of these standoffs. I stopped every effort to gut our work in IRFA. In every country I fought to be a CPC on, we ultimately succeeded on but it was a lot more taxing. It took, in some cases, years to get some of those victories. And I wanna make clear, this was despite both great secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and the president that I had to work with, President Bush, who were staunchly committed to this issue. Now, second challenge was the fact that we had tiny resources, as was mentioned. I had a staff of five people with which to take on the whole world. So I had to work hard, fight hard to grow that staff to over 20, which was one of the biggest growths in the department when I was there. In terms of implementing the provisions of IRFA, human rights work is always triage. We fought hard on individual cases but the primary goal was always to secure permanent policy change and legal change. And as one example, I was able to write the constitutional provisions in the Constitution of Afghanistan and Iraq. We were able to utilize a provision of the International Religious Freedom Act to ban Prime Minister Modi from stepping foot in the US because when he was governor of Gujarat, he had been complicit in the slaughter of a large number of Muslims there. But I'd like to focus for a minute on the tools that we created, especially the CPC structure and the binding agreement process because this is where the rubber really hit the road. Vietnam was mentioned. In this case, we had a country that was shutting down hundreds of churches and meeting places by the tens of thousands rounding up religious believers, forcing them in writing to renounce their faith. There were a large number of religious prisoners, there were beatings, but we worked to try to improve things. They refused, we designated them a CPC, a country of particular concern, which brings sanctions unless you can get a binding agreement. And we pulled that concept out of trade law. We were able to get a binding agreement and two years later, they had so reversed course and banned forced renunciations and other things that we had the greatest reversal in modern history of a country, proving that this process did work. Saudi Arabia was an addition to the CPC list that surprised a lot of people because they were an ally of ours, but they sure deserved it. And in this case, I wanted to go after the hate literature in particular. They propagate to tens of thousands of madrasas all over the world, educational materials for grades one through 12. And so you have Muslim children all over the world being raised with materials that taught them to hate Shia, hate certain sects of Sunni Islam, to hate Jews and to hate Christians. And it was clear as day. And I love the fact that I could take those materials in writing and go to Saudi Arabia and sit down and negotiate this, trip after trip, negotiation after negotiation. Ultimately, they agreed and came forward with policies where they committed to remove all of these references from all of their educational materials, both at home and abroad and here in the US. And they also agreed to back off in the persecution of minority faiths and allow house churches to rein in their imams that were preaching hateful sermons and to rein in the Mataway and the religious police that were raiding the minority religions there. And we had to follow up. We had to get our hands quietly on their whole curriculum, go through the whole thing, design software. This is the kind of hands on work we had to do. Go through their whole curriculum, go back to them and say you've made improvements, but look at all these bad references that need to change. And so we did that sort of follow up with them. And Eric. Thank you so much. We have a limited amount of time and I just wanna say we're probably gonna go over. So we started a little bit late. We'll take some time because it's wonderful to hear all these perspectives and I really hate to cut you off. That's fine. We have some limited time. My idea would be to let Bob and me when you have the second round just finished a few of these things during our time. Yes, we would love to hear that. But thank you so much for talking about fighting the good fight and all the internal changes, but also the external changes that you were working on. So let me turn now to Ambassador Susan Johnson Cook, the first and only female or from Ambassador so far. You and I met in 2013 actually when you were presenting ways in which the US government could better engage with religious actors in light of the establishment clause or actually on a panel together. And so I wanted to ask why that was an important part of your tenure and how you see your work on Earth contributing to security and peace. Well, thank you. First, I wanna thank the US Institute of Peace for inviting us and having us here. I wanna thank my predecessors and the ambassadorship but also those in Congress for making sure this happens. So happy 25th anniversary to us. It's wonderful to be here. The establishment clause along with the freedom of exercise clause were important for the First Amendment to make sure on these shores that religion was protected and the rights of people with their religious beliefs were protected. But I also have a history of ancestry and so I brought that to the table in terms of how I was formed, in terms of coming out of an enslaved environment where our religious freedom issues were denied many times in these shores. But I think more than that, what was important was being the first female and an African American and what was important because many voices got to the table which historically had not been. And so we established female faces of faith which many women had voices and the religion and foreign policy working group where everyone who believed or did not believe was invited to the table and had a voice. And I think that that was important as a faith leader because the relationships had already been established outside of government to be able to give them a seat at the table in government. And I think that those things are still carrying on now and that was really important. What also was important was that it was bipartisan. And so many of us who had not sat in the same room or in the same side of the table were sitting together because we were advocating for international religious freedom globally. And that was important that we become one voice to advocate. And as my predecessor speaking today said, to take action, Ambassador Hussain, we thank you for your work as well, carrying it on. And then to work with people like you, sir, for Katrina Lanto-Swed, who was chair at the time I was serving and I seen the audience, the president of the Macedonian people to be able to be with persons that historically did not have their voices raised but really to be formed relationships and partnerships. I think that that was important. So I think my work was that new voices came to the table building on the voices that had blazed the trails and we thank you gentlemen, but I thought it was time for a shero and not just heroes. And so it was my pleasure to serve the United States of America as US ambassador at large for international religious freedom. Thank you so much for being one of those sheroes and really blazing the trail for other women in this space as well, along with Katrina and others who worked in this space. It was my pleasure and note that I honored the time. I just wanted to say thank you so much. Thank you so much. So we have Ambassador David Saperstein joining us from Indonesia and I'll ask him all three questions since he can't participate in the second round. Ambassador Saperstein you're the first and only rabbi who is also the IRF ambassador. And with everything unfolding in the Middle East as it is, how do you think about the relationship between international religious freedom and political stability? And secondly, what do you think is the most significant contribution of the IRF Act to US foreign policy? And thirdly, thinking to the future, what are the most significant religious freedom issues we should be focusing on moving forward? I was asked to cover three questions in five minutes. So here goes, even with my Jewish Brooklyn speed of talking, I'm not sure how I can get it all in. First question is the one that is part of the central to the conference. That is to what extent does religious freedom assist in creating stability and peace? And it's a complicated issue more than we sometimes pay lip service to. Like every other human right, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to protest, the right of association and the right of to petition the government for redress of grievances. It depends on how those rights are used. Very often when they think of the Arab Spring when autocratic governments suddenly lift their oppressive policies, it is the more extreme elements of the religious community. You have the best organized and best positioned to take advantage of the new democratic elections and ends up controlling the country and stopping future elections. Freedom of religion is no guarantee that it will lead directly in the short term to peace and stability. What it does mean is you will not have peace and stability in the long run. If people can't practice their religions openly, if they get driven underground in their religious practices and filled with the kind of frustration and despair that oppression brings in which they despair of being able to ever live in accordance with their conscience openly in a society, that breeds instability. So there is that direct connection. Secondly, I was asked to reflect on the most significant accomplishments since the advent of Verfa. And I would name three. One is the report itself. The fact that it tells the story of religious freedom and religious oppression in every country in the globe. The only report that is so comprehensive. And in the process of requiring that report to be written in every embassy and many consulates, we have foreign service officers over the 20 years in these reporting, thousands of them who've had to immerse themselves in this issue, who had to develop connections with oppressed groups and thereby gave those oppressed groups the opportunity to come to an officer of the United States Embassy when they were facing the most severe challenges. That was an extraordinary achievement. And secondly, the cooperative structures of the Alliance, the contact group, the regional roundtables, this effort to build international structures to help give it a place in ongoing formalized activity of the different governments has made a significant contribution. And above all, the hope that it gives to the oppressed. The number of times when I would visit small oppressed groups in countries across the globe who had said, I never believed anyone knew about us. I didn't know that anyone was paying attention to you have taken our story and put it in front of the world over and over again lawyers for those groups who would tell us the first thing they would introduce into court to show that oppressive policies and actions violated international law was the annual United States report as an authoritative testimony to the violations of international law. So that gives hope to the oppressed in hope that America and other democratic countries and other more tolerant countries are going to stand up for the rights of the persecuted, the rights of the private, across the globe. And finally, what do we need to work on? Two major issues come to mind. The first is this can't just be an issue of the more politically conservative, culturally conservative groups in the world. It has to be a wall to wall coalition as most human rights are. And that requires us willing to use tactics to put aside some divisive issues on behalf of the overwhelming number of people who suffer from religious violation of their religious freedom rights. The ones that are being ethnically cleansed and victims of genocide being put into jail because of how they belong, put to believe, put to death because of how they believe subject to torture, subject to violence from other groups. We need to stand together in that and we who are already involved need to be more assertive in reaching out and giving room for the more politically liberal and progressive groups to play a major role in this effort. And all of this requires that there be evidence-based analysis of what works and what doesn't work. Too much is kind of our gut feeling about, of course this has to work. Of course that is going to be a problem but we really need the kind of rigorous analysis that will provide us data and evidence of exactly what kinds of tactics make a difference in pressuring governments to change oppressive policies. What kind of tactics and strategies will deter social groups who are willing to use violence to impose their religious beliefs on others to deter them from doing so? Standing together, we can really change the world as we go forward. And that is needed today more than ever. There are more opportunities to do good and more challenges to religious freedom, more manifestations of religious oppression than ever before. And the world needs what this conference represents more imperatively and more urgently than at any time I can remember. Thank you so much. Ambassadors, thank you Ambassador Saperstein for giving us those words of hope to the oppressed and the opportunities to do good. Now let me turn to the final among the formers that are here with us, Ambassador Sam Brownback. The former governor of one of the places I call home, Kansas, welcome Ambassador Brownback. You took over as ambassador during a tumultuous time in U.S. foreign policy. I remember in my first meeting with you, you said we need to move from tolerance to respect. And that really stuck with me. What was your vision during your tenure for how respect could really change the dynamics of advocating for religious freedom in light of U.S. national security interests and getting us to a more secure and peaceful world? If we start to know one another, we'll start to respect each other. So we just, in the first of it, just build a relationship. Life moves at the speed of relationships and you just got to get to know somebody else, somebody different, somebody that maybe you don't agree with and that's a big part of it. I've got to introduce two people that I think you'll enjoy. Don Nichols talked about Charles Mendes, was kind of the poster child for getting this thing started. He's here with us today. Charles, shake your hand, stand up here. Just here's the guy that's kind of the... These all move by stories. They don't move by statistics. It's always the story and so here's the story that started this thing 25 years ago. And then Dan Nadal. Dan's been the super bureaucrat. Dan's the super bureaucrat that's run the office for 12 years or so and he's the best bureaucrat I've ever seen. That guy can tie you in knots faster and bigger than you just ever could dream you could get out of. But this guy you want on your side, right? When you're fighting in a bureaucracy, he's a guy like that, but he's just a wonderful man and truly believes in the cause. I want to, because our time's running short here, I want to really focus on where I think we need to go. And that is we've got to make this topic a top five foreign policy issue. This has got to be a top five foreign policy issue for a president, for a secretary of state, and for a secretary of defense. And I think our clearest shot on this is to say if you want to prevent genocides in the world or slow them down or stop them, you've got to do this. Because genocides almost always happen to religious minorities. That's who they happen to. And we've always said on every genocide, never again is what we always say. And then you're about to the point of just going here we go again is what we should start saying about genocides, because we've got several going on in the world today. Well, why don't we say never again and we've got a tactic for you now, not just a slogan. We've got a tactic and it's religious freedom. It's just religious freedom for everybody, everywhere, all the time. So the Yazidis deserve it in Iraq. The various groups around the world deserve this. The Uighurs deserve to be able to be protected in China and push that. And that's my real press to you. And thank you guys all of you. I love all of you. You guys, everybody has so much passion in this field and does such a wonderful job for it. And we've got to have it. Our efforts have grown threefold over what they were. I mean, we're really doing a lot more. The problem's grown tenfold. That's the problem here. When you say, well, what have you gotten done? We've gotten a lot done, but the problem's gotten that much bigger. And so we've just got to really get after and we've got to elevate the topic more. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ambassador Brownback, really getting us actually into the round two about what's the way forward. And thank you for giving us that vision in terms of it being the top five foreign policy issues. So let me open up round two. Let me ask that since we're short on time, if we keep our remarks short. And so the question on round two is what opportunities and challenges do we face in integrating IRF more fully into U.S. foreign policy and where do you think IRF is 25 years from now? So who would like to start us off? Well, I hope it's one of the top five foreign policy issues. That's where I hope it is 25 years from now. Some of the challenges that continue to face, I brought with me the 2009 annual report of International Religious Freedom. And sadly, some of the same issues are still there. I mean, this is 2023. So that's one of the challenges that we need to go farther and be able to pinpoint, as they said. Ambassador Hussain talked about us traveling together, Muslims and Christians and others, you know, around the world and Jews around the world together. But I also have a model of a partnership of faith what happened in New York after 9-11. Not only did we travel together, but we came and we tackled the issues together. So we saw, so we visited each other's holy sites, but we saw the problems and then we came back and we had solutions for them and we worked those out together. So I think that that's important. My way of hope is that, as Ambassador Saperstein said, that we are able to take the oppressed and give them connections to embassies here and places here that really helps advance their causes, along with us advocating with them. I see the Ambassador from the Sierra Leone who was one of those who came to my office because we were able to take meetings and help people get to where they needed to go. He's now Ambassador of that country. And lastly, I would just say that it's important that we continue to work in a bipartisan way and that we continue to go forward hand-in-hand together, advocating together. So those are the hopes. My last hope is University of Notre Dame Law School and also the LDS community are doing some things at the graduate level. I heard Ambassador Saperstein talk about the undergraduate level, but this is a world of faith, which is a book that mentions all the faiths of the world, that the LDS community law school, Brett Scharf and the Center of International Religious Freedom at Brigham Young University, but also us working together and having tools that are important from the child's age all the way to the adult to be comfortable with others that are different than ourselves. I think those are the hopes that we continue to go forward with. Thank you so much, Ambassador, for giving us those hopes and the partnership of faith, the connecting with the oppressed and those kinds of visions of hope where we can all learn to love one another and be together in partnership and community. Others would like to answer this last question. Well, just to gum up the works, I would say that very briefly if we could simply go from tolerance to respect in the relationships that derive us, all these things when something good happened, it was because of a relationship that was developed. Maybe the first time you're not met at the airport. Maybe the second time there's a little girl with flowers. Maybe the next time you get someone higher up in the State Department of that particular country. When you get to the VIP going away room and you start taking out pictures of your grandchildren, now you know you've arrived. You know you've arrived. But that's respect. And the thing that holds me back and even mentioning that is it takes so long. It takes so much out of us. It's easy to be discouraged. My simple formula, understand your own faith at its deepest and richest best. Understand why it works. Understand the heroes of the faith. The histories of the faith. Why, in the words of Pascal, good men believe it to be true. And then, and this is the hard part, know your neighbor's faith well enough to respect it. Not simply to tolerate. I tolerate people I don't especially care for. I reserve the word for them. But I respect people that I want to know more about. And I want to make sure that someone's taking their part. And someone is listening to their voice. This whole act was constructed a little bit top-down. We got it. You need it. Look out, world, here we come. We're going to do more listening. We got to hear the cries of the ones who kind of didn't come from our background. Didn't have it as easy as we have it. Aren't as annoyed in the rest of the world. We've got to find a way to listen better, to understand more fully, to stay with people longer as long as it takes and let them know that they're not alone with what they're going through. Thank you so much for that message of longevity and keep doing it for a long time because it takes time to build those relationships exactly. Yeah, I would just add we've talked about the State Department and I was seeing a change of heart that the State Department was realizing, wow, this can work. This can bring real change and it can actually deepen relationships with other countries. Surprisingly, you're there to confront them. But as you work through these difficult issues, you actually can wind up with building bridges. I found that in my work. And as our successors have carried it on, I think that's just improved and improved. The State Department is buying into it more and more. What to me is the most dramatically encouraging thing is conferences like this, that USIP is focused upon this. When I came to Washington and started in this work in 1987, there were three little NGOs that worked in some cases only partially on this issue. And now we fill a room like this. There are lots of groups doing it. Some of the human rights groups are waking up more to the issue. So that gives me a lot of hope. Thank you so much. We talk about in peace building and conflict resolution, when we work on conflicts, actually builds relationships more deeply. And you're talking about doing this work, particularly as working on international religious freedom with some of the countries we may have a conflict with, but it actually builds our relationships. And that's really the work of a peace builder and it's bringing those two together very beautifully. Thank you so much for ending with that, Ambassador. I just want to thank you all for joining us today on this panel. And it was wonderful to actually hear your insights and gain knowledge and wisdom and your thoughts for the future and your vision for the future. And I want to thank all of you for staying with us over time a little bit for joining us in one of this special event on commemorating the 25 years of the International Religious Freedom Act that we at USIP are so honored to be co-hosting with the US State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom Ambassador Rashad Hussein and his team. USIP will continue to be a partner and resource to those who advance international religious freedom as part of our broader mandate to prevent conflict and promote sustainable peace. So this is the first time the full history of the US International Religious Freedom promotion has come together in one celebration. So thank you all for being here today. I want to thank you all. I just want to invite you to join us for the reception of snacks and refreshments outside in the Leland Atrium. And before we start the second part of the program you're also welcome to take in the temporary exhibit we have here in the Great Hall in the ZD Genocide which is down below. At 11.30 we'll reconvene it here again in Carlucci for the second part of today's program on civil society advocates and the work that they're doing on the front lines of religious freedom around the world. Thank you all again for participating and we look forward to seeing you back here.