Religious freedom is a human right. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes that clear. Despite every UN member having signed onto this principle, religious persecution is on the rise globally. Christians are the target of most of it. For this reason, the new Labour government must make sure that the UK continues to be a champion of religious freedom. The fact that the government has still not appointed a new Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) is a cause of great concern.
Christians around the world are suffering increasing levels of persecution. The number of countries where Christians experience high to extreme levels of persecution has nearly doubled since the early 1990s. Currently, more than 365 million Christians are estimated by Open Doors to be facing high levels of religious persecution and discrimination. According to the International Society for Human Rights, four out of five acts of religious discrimination around the world are directed at Christians.
This dire situation was first brought to my attention when I was Foreign Secretary. Even back then Open Doors were estimating that at least 200m Christians were facing high levels of religious persecution.
Behind this shocking statistic were countless stories of suffering. One such story was a family of Christians from Pakistan who told me about the persecution they faced. After their children were falsely accused of blasphemy by school bullies – who had tried to forcibly convert them to Islam and later physically attacked them – the situation quickly went from bad to worse. In response to threats of further violence, the father took the boys into hiding. Eventually the family decided to flee to the UK to claim asylum.
I knew that the UK had a strong history of fighting for religious freedom around the world. Indeed, Prime Minister Theresa May had just appointed the government’s first Special Envoy for FoRB. I was not convinced, however, that we were doing enough.
On Boxing Day 2018, I announced that I had commissioned a report into the global persecution of Christians and that I had asked the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen, Bishop of Truro, to lead it. I wanted the report to investigate the extent and nature of the problem, review how the Foreign Office was responding and make recommendations for how we could improve. I asked him to report back to me by the following Easter.
The report’s findings were shocking. Not only did it find that Christians were the most targeted group for religious persecution, but it also suggested that current levels were arguably reaching the threshold for genocide. As I feared, it also found that the UK government had been inconsistent when speaking out against persecution and had been reluctant to call out the persecution of Christians if other interests were involved.
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