In the 25 years since the U.S. State Department has designated countries with the worst records of religious rights violations as “Countries of Particular Concern (CPC),” it has applied sanctions related only to those violations just three times, according to a new report.
Sanctions are among the actions the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) calls on administrations to impose on CPCs, but those specifically in response to religious freedom violations have been used in only 1.8 percent of the 164 CPC designations since 1999, all in reference to Eritrea, according to the report this week by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
CPC designations resulted in application of sanctions already in place for other reasons in 67.7 percent of cases, USCIRF reported. In 24.4 percent of the CPC designations, countries violating religious freedom were granted a presidential waiver from sanctions based on “national interests.”
“Failure to apply sanctions has diminished the effectiveness of the U.S. State Department’s annual designation of countries as violators of religious freedom,” stated the report by USCIRF, which interviewed former and present department figures and other stakeholders. “Interviewees viewed the limited use of specific actions as the primary barrier to greater effectiveness of the Act.”
Of the 114 times CPC designations resulted in sanctions, 111 of those were instances of “double-hatting,” where sanctions were already in place for other reasons, such as geopolitical and economic factors. Presidential waivers were granted to CPCs 47 times, 40 for reasons of “national interest” and seven to “further purposes of the Act,” through other diplomatic means.
Asked about the report’s assertion that limited use of specific actions such as sanctions is the primary barrier to greater effectiveness of the 1998 IRFA, a State Department spokesperson said each country designated as a CPC presents unique challenges and a different potential for change.
“The measures the United States carries out or waives with respect to a CPC are part of a broader strategy that aims to improve religious freedom protections in that country,” the spokesperson told Christian Daily International.
Waivers justified on grounds of furthering the purposes of the IRFA were used five times for Saudi Arabia and twice for Uzbekistan, according to the report.
“For both countries, these waivers were granted in connection with ongoing and significant diplomatic engagement on religious freedom concerns, which saw meaningful, if incomplete, progress on some religious freedom violations,” the report states. “A former senior State Department official recalled that in both instances, these waivers came amid intense negotiations with those governments that made clear what violations required a CPC designation and what steps could be taken to address them in the particular context of each country.”
Saudi Arabia, where public expression of any non-Islamic faith is prohibited, has been designated a CPC every year since 2004, but due to its role as key strategic ally in the Persian Gulf and a major energy partner, U.S. administrations have not imposed IRFA sanctions, the report stated.
In 2006, the State Department announced that bilateral discussions related to Saudi Arabia’s CPC designation had produced a list of policy changes the Saudi government would implement, accompanied by an indefinite sanctions waiver “to further the purposes of the Act” implicitly tied to the pursuit of those policies, the report stated.
“Primary among the requests were revisions to intolerant content in school textbooks, protections for non-Muslim private worship, and limitations to the notoriously overreaching state religious police,” USCIRF stated.
Despite marginal gains on these issues at the time, in redesignating Saudi Arabia as a CPC in July 2014, the State Department again granted a sanctions waiver, citing “important national interests of the United States.” Every year since, USCIRF country reports have recommended against the waiver, but the State Department has renewed it.
The State Department’s primary engagement on religious freedom issues in Saudi Arabia have included ambassador-level discussions on human rights, meetings between U.S. religious freedom officials and Saudi government officials, pressure applied to the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information on the textbook issue and educational exchanges to build religious tolerance, according to the report.
“While the Saudi government did not meet the desired timelines on the policy outcomes it agreed to in 2006, progress on all three can be seen today,” the report states. “In the case of textbooks, reforms were made in fits and starts through the mid-2000s.”
In 2020, an independent Non-Governmental Organization observed several improvements, though some problems persisted.
“While legal protections for the private religious practice of non-Muslim faiths have not been enacted, human rights groups report a de facto loosening of restrictions and oversight, especially when compared to the environment of 20 years ago,” the USCIRF report stated. “In the case of the religious police, royal decrees gradually reduced their autonomy, and in 2016, an act by the royal Cabinet revoked their authority to arrest, interrogate, and detain independently.”
While these policy outcomes happened amid a decade of U.S. government engagement, domestic changes within Saudi Arabia had the most significant effect on improvements in religious freedom – namely, Mohammed Bin Salman bin Abdulaziz’s ascension to Crown Prince in 2017, followed by a renewed focus on reform and a desire for religious moderation, according to the report.
Bin Salman’s reforms included further marginalizing of religious police, codifying laws previously at the discretion of religious courts and some limitations on the male guardianship system, the report stated.
“However, Bin Salman has also used many of these developments to consolidate his power domestically and appeal to foreign partners by nodding to liberalization without enacting policies that create systemic change,” USCIRF stated. “Egregious violations of religious freedom persist under the new Crown Prince, some at a scale previously unseen.”
In 2022, for example, Bin Salman presided over the largest mass execution in Saudi Arabia’s history of people convicted of holding “deviant beliefs” and terrorism, with over half of the prisoners from the Shi’a minority, the report stated.
“Laws that criminalize blasphemy, apostasy, and atheism remain in place and still result in executions,” USCIRF reported. “U.S. engagement has had ostensibly little effect on changes to these laws. While some aspects of the religious freedom situation in Saudi Arabia have improved through the period of IRFA engagement, grave violations remain.”
Saudi Arabia’s position as a special partner significantly complicates U.S. diplomatic attempts to improve the Saudi human rights framework and has been an impediment to the United States imposing meaningful sanctions based on the CPC designation, the report noted.
“Further, U.S. sanctions waivers predicated on bilateral discussions have not produced results in a timely manner,” the report stated. “While tangible gains have been made, many of the more recent changes are linked to considerations and developments within the country rather than the CPC designation, which has, over time, been rendered all but toothless given nearly two decades of uninterrupted waivers.”
The 40 times U.S. administrations have used “national interest” waivers pertained to six countries – Nigeria once, Pakistan six times, Saudi Arabia 10 times, Tajikistan nine times, Turkmenistan 10 times and Uzbekistan four times, according to the report.
“Interviewees expressed concern about the perpetual use of the waiver,” USCIRF stated. “One former official noted that repeatedly waiving punitive measures can make the CPC designation ‘be seen as worthless, especially by regimes who will not care unless there is some economic impact.’”
At the same time, the former official noted, when there was a robust policy of engagement and genuine economic impacts, there were examples of both short-term (e.g., prisoner releases) or longer-term progress in some countries. Another former official recalled an IRF ambassador’s questioning of a longstanding waiver becoming an incentive for change.
“When the possibility of removing the waiver was included in a letter to the foreign minister, the IRF ambassador understood this as a type of ‘saber-rattling,’” the report stated. “It became part of a ‘carrot and stick’ approach that led to a ministerial-level change in that country and improvements resulting in it ultimately coming off the State Department’s CPC list altogether.”
While recognizing the necessity of the waiver, legislative or policy fixes that would “limit the amount of waivers before you take action” would be a significant development, a congressional staffer told USCIRF researchers.
Doing away with indefinite waivers that require no meaningful actions was one of the changes to U.S. international religious freedom policy most frequently suggested by interviewees.
“The perception of the waivers as perpetual and without conditions undercuts the value of the CPC designation as a tool for advancing international religious freedom,” the report stated.
