Strengthen religious freedom act, U. president urges

PROVO — Peru's attorney general visited Brigham Young University 11 years ago and went home with the belief that his country needed a law guaranteeing religious liberties.

The Peruvian Congress is considering the law now and could approve it by the end of the year. The man who chaired the commission that drafted the law celebrated that development Tuesday where it began, at BYU at the annual International Law and Religion Symposium.

"Thanks to this symposium, we will finally have a law outlining religious liberties," University of Lima law professor Guillermo Garcia-Montufar said.

Religious freedom is a major issue around the world — studies show a correlation between freedom of religion and economic prosperity — and became an official factor in U.S. foreign policy 10 years ago this month when Congress unanimously passed the International Religious Freedom Act.

This year's symposium concluded with a critical review of the act's first decade by University of Utah President Michael Young, who helped develop the federal law and spent seven years on the Commission on International Religious Freedom created by the Act.

"I'm not sure it's lived up to all its promise," Young said.

The act created an office on religious freedom within the U.S. State Department with an ambassador at large. The result was a person in every American embassy assigned to study religious freedoms in each nation.

The International Religious Freedom Act also forced the State Department to publish an annual report on the state of religious liberties in every country and what the United States is doing to advance freedom of religion in each.

"That meant there was someone in the State Department who would worry about this issue and only this issue," Young said. "They would form policy recommendations consistent with the values of the United States."

The 2008 report was released last month and included 198 countries and areas. The report is available at www.state.gov and concludes with the belief that the work done by the State Department "brings hope to repressed people around the world."

"In many ways, the report is the single most successful part of the legislation," Young said. "Countries don't want to be singled out by the United States for bad behavior."

Young called on Congress to retool the act to shore up weaknesses evident a decade after passage. Bureaucratic issues inside the State Department have reduced its effectiveness. The commission frequently issues descriptive reports rather than provide policy recommendations.

The annual reports on each country also aren't as effective as they could be, but that is not the fault of the act, Young said.

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