ICC Note:

As the U.S. State Department once again announced its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), a designations set aside for the worlds worst violators of religious freedom, Pakistan was once again omitted from the list. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a government body set up to monitor and advise on international religious freedom matters, has been calling for Pakistan to be designated a CPC siting many instances of religious intolerance against the country’s Christians and other religious minorities. According to USCIRF, Pakistan is the worst violator of religious freedom not currently on the CPC list.  

4/18/2016 Pakistan (CNS News) – For a record 14th year in a row, the State Department has overruled the advice of an independent statutory watchdog and decided not to blacklist Pakistan for religious freedom abuses.

The decision not to designate Pakistan a “country of particular concern” under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) comes despite its government’s continuing rejection of calls to amend or rescind the world’s most notorious blasphemy laws – which carry the death penalty and are frequently used to target Christians and other minorities.

It also comes just days after a new U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report highlighted dozens of instances of intolerance of religious minorities being promoted in public school textbooks in the Islamic country.

This year’s “country of particular concern” (CPC) designations, announced by State Department spokesman John Kirby on Friday, are little different than those listed every year of the Obama administration.

The core of eight countries – Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan – remains unchanged since 2007. In 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry added Turkmenistan to the list, and this year he has made one additional designation, Tajikistan.

The USCIRF, which like the CPC designation itself is a creation of the IRFA, has called on the current administration and its predecessor every year since 2002 to designate Pakistan – to no avail.

The U.S. potentially wields significant leverage over Pakistan. It is the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, with the administration requesting $742 million in aid for the country in fiscal year 2017.

Pakistan’s omission is not the only disappointment for the USCIRF. It called in its last annual report for an additional seven countries not listed by the State Department to be designated CPCs. Of those seven recommendations only one, Tajikistan, has now been accepted. (The other six are Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and Vietnam.)

Still, the commission, whose mandate is to advise the administration and Congress on promoting religious freedom abroad, says Pakistan is the single worst case among countries not currently listed as CPCs.

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