Thomas Farr, former head of the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom, writes in today's Washington Post to protest the Obama Administration's failure to – as he sees it – live up to the promise of the Cairo speech with a real focus on religious liberty. He points to rhetorical trends in the President's diplomatic language that more often mentions the "freedom to worship" and not the "freedom of religion" (a move Farr interprets to refer to freedom that is only assured inside houses of worship, and not outside).
Primarily, though, his concern is the President's not having nominated an ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, a position created by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton.
Congress recognized that the State Department would likely resist giving much attention to international religious freedom, which is why the IRF Act was passed in the first place. The statute made explicit Congress' intent that the religious freedom ambassador be given at least the status of other ambassadors at large by establishing the position as "principal advisor to the President and the Secretary of State."
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Not only have the State Department's other ambassadors at large been in place for many months, but a whole platoon of other senior foreign policy officials are now at work — for example, envoys for Global AIDS, Disabilities, Climate Change, Guantanamo, Global Partnerships, International Energy Affairs, Muslim Communities, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Farr recommends, in addition, that the administration adopt the foreign policy proposals of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
