Some interesting talk today about the fate of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which was set to have its funding run out in September until a recent extension pushed the new sunset date into November while Congress works on the budget. In the meantime a fierce debate has broken out over whether the Commission should be continued at all.
Joseph Gieboski makes the case against at the Huffington Post today, charging that the Commission was intended to be temporary when it was created, offers reports that are largely duplicative of the State Department's work, and that its oversight role is more properly the purview of Congress. He also takes issue with the Commission's behavior
While it was intended to funnel good ideas and strategic thinking to the U.S. Government through the Ambassador (who is an ex officio Commissioner), USCIRF now sees itself as a watchdog, traveling around the world in the name of the U.S. Government and denouncing foreign officials on their record of religious freedom, making public pronouncements about what U.S. religious freedom policy should be, and condemning the Department of State for failing to follow its lead.
Interestingly USCIRF has more resources and dedicated full-time staff than the Ambassador does at the Department of State.
In any event, by behaving this way, the Commissioners have actually undermined important religious freedom initiatives the Ambassador has undertaken. Yet they do it anyway, without coordinating with the Ambassador — and sometimes despite the Ambassador's pleas to the contrary — because they want to create the impression that they are relevant and to demonstrate to their benefactors that they are doing their masters' bidding.
Meanwhile, Nina Shea, a former commissioner of USCIRF champions the work of this group in a post for the National Review:
Nevertheless, USCIRF is distinguished as a bold voice within the government and has seen important accomplishments. It pushed the Bush administration to understand the north–south conflict in Sudan as primarily a religious one, and not merely a fight over resources; this led to specific policies that resulted in the secession of South Sudan this past July and political independence and religious freedom for its people. It got the State Department to designate as “egregious” persecutors China, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan. It keeps the focus on religious atrocities in places like Vietnam, Pakistan, Iraq, and Egypt, even when the State Department does not.
…
USCIRF’s biggest contribution may simply be representing in the darkest, most closed corners of the world America’s bedrock belief — the individual’s inalienable right to religious freedom. USCIRF is one reliable voice within the government that does not find the issue of religious freedom too sensitive to bring up with foreign potentates.
Stay tuned.
