{"id":14138,"date":"2019-06-20T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T16:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/news\/?p=14138"},"modified":"2019-08-02T16:28:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T16:28:31","slug":"office-of-peacebuilding-and-policy-signs-letter-for-world-refugee-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2019\/office-of-peacebuilding-and-policy-signs-letter-for-world-refugee-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Office of Peacebuilding and Policy signs letter for World Refugee Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Office<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Church of the Brethren Office of Peacebuilding and Policy has signed a letter asking Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to strengthen US refugee resettlement as a core part of a robust international religious freedom agenda. The 42 signatories to the letter, which was coordinated by World Relief, represented a wide range of faith traditions. It was sent to the appropriate officials at the State Department and to the Vice President\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The letter dated June 20 marked World Refugee Day. \u201cAccording to just released data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 70 million displaced persons around the world,\u201d said an email from World Relief. \u201cHalf of them are children, and in 2018, 13.6 million people were newly displaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter\u2019s request to strengthen US refugee resettlement at a time of historic levels of displacement was intended to promote international religious freedom and life-saving protection for vulnerable refugees.<\/p>\n

The full text of the letter follows:<\/p>\n

June 20, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n

The Honorable Michael Pompeo<\/em>
Secretary of State<\/em>
U.S. Department of State<\/em>
2201 C Street, NW<\/em>
Washington, DC 20230<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Secretary Pompeo,<\/em><\/p>\n

The United States has long been a country rooted in the sincere belief that each person should be able to freely practice their faith. Even before the freedom of religion was enshrined as the first freedom in the Constitution, colonists came to these shores seeking a place to freely and safely practice their religion. They sought to be a \u2018city upon a hill,\u2019 a light among nations that would protect liberty and freedom for all. The below signed organizations are committed to upholding those ideals today and seek policies that ensure religious freedom for all persons around the world. We commend this Administration\u2019s focus on international religious freedom and urge you to take steps to protect a vital population that faces religious persecution: refugees. Specifically, we urge that the U.S. continue to be a place of refuge for those experiencing religious persecution around the world by admitting 30,000 refugees in FY2019 and increasing the refugee admissions number for FY2020 to return to historic norms.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1980, the U.S. formally established its tradition of serving as a place of refuge in a program known as the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) to admit refugees seeking protection from persecution. From the start, this program offered a critical pathway to be admitted to the U.S. and receive the right to worship without fear or interference. Since 1980, faith communities have worked alongside recently arrived refugees to ensure they can thrive here and enjoy the liberties and protections offered by our nation. Over three million refugees have been resettled to the U.S. since the inception of the USRAP and have become citizens, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, and have contributed enormously to our country.<\/em><\/p>\n

At a time when the world is facing its worst refugee crisis and religious persecution remains a significant threat globally, we are concerned about the significant reduction in the admission of refugees to the U.S., particularly those refugees who have fled religious persecution. Since 1980, the average annual ceiling for refugee admissions has been set at 95,000, but the Presidential Determination for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 was set at the drastically lower level of 30,000. As of May 31, 2019, only 18,051 refugees have been resettled to the U.S. Based on this level of processing, we are concerned, like FY2018, that the U.S. will not meet its stated admissions level.<\/em><\/p>\n

According to data from World Relief, based on the number of arrivals through the first half of FY2019, it is projected that the full year FY2019 arrivals from countries where refugees have been persecuted as religious minorities will have declined by the following percentages, compared to FY2016:<\/em>
\u2022 58.8% among Christians from Pakistan<\/em>
\u2022 62.2% among Muslims from Burma (primarily Rohingya)<\/em>
\u2022 66.9% among Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan<\/em>
\u2022 67.9% among Christians from Burma<\/em>
\u2022 95.7% among Yezidis from Iraq and Syria<\/em>
\u2022 94.6% among Christians from Iraq<\/em>
\u2022 96.3% among Christians from Iran<\/em>
\u2022 97.8% among Sabeans-Mandean from Iraq<\/em>
\u2022 98.0% among Bahai from Iran<\/em>
\u2022 98.5% among Sabeans-Mandean from Iran<\/em>
\u2022 100% among Jews from Iran<\/em>
\u2022 100% among Zoroastrians from Iran<\/em><\/p>\n

These figures represent a dangerous aberration from U.S. historic commitments to the persecuted, placing lives at risk and drastically reducing our ability to protect religious freedom. By significantly reducing the annual refugee ceiling and the total number of refugee arrivals, while also putting in place stringent vetting requirements of certain nationalities who are coming from countries in which there are high levels of religious persecution, we have ongoing concerns that the refugee resettlement program is being jeopardized precisely at the time when it should be a robust, humanitarian tool helping victims of religious persecution abroad. Indeed, the 2018 annual report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) includes as one of its key recommendations to promote religious freedom the need to \u201cresettle vulnerable refugees, including those fleeing religious persecution, through the [USRAP].\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

We are grateful that the Administration continues to prioritize the promotion of international religious freedom as a core foreign policy goal. We believe having a robust U.S. refugee resettlement program is part and parcel of promoting a strong, consistent international religious freedom agenda abroad. We urge the Department of State, in partnership with other agencies, to continue to strengthen the U.S. refugee admissions program as a life-saving foreign policy and humanitarian tool helping victims fleeing religious persecution abroad. We urge that the U.S. admit 30,000 refugees in FY2019 and increase the refugee admissions number for FY2020 to return to historic norms. The U.S. has promoted international religious freedom abroad as a core value and foreign policy agenda, and our acceptance of refugees signals to countries abroad that we value this fundamental freedom and are willing to protect those who are persecuted because of their faith.<\/em><\/p>\n

— Find the letter with the list of signatories at\u00a0https:\/\/worldrelief.org\/blog\/religious-freedom<\/a>\u00a0.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Church of the Brethren Office of Peacebuilding and Policy has signed a letter asking Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to strengthen US refugee resettlement as a core part of a robust international religious freedom agenda. The 42 signatories to the letter, which was coordinated by World Relief, represented a wide range of faith traditions. It was sent to the appropriate officials at the State Department and to the Vice President\u2019s office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":13743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1295,1262,1263],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-14138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advocacy","tag-ecunemical","tag-peace"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14139,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14138\/revisions\/14139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14138"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=14138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}