Global religious hot spots get their own U.S. envoy

Lauren Markoe

WASHINGTON (RNS) As the Islamic State tears across Iraq and Syria this summer, sending religious minorities fleeing for their lives, Congress created a new job at the State Department — one the president needs to fill immediately, say those who pushed for the position.

The job: “Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia.”

Those regions “are the hot burning center” of the global problem of religious persecution,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, who heads the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which Congress created in 1998 to monitor the issue independent of the State Department.

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/08/20/new-job-u-s-envoy-religious-freedom-mideast/