**3. Critique 1—Ine** ff**ectiveness of IRF**

Having set out the case for promoting IRF, I now turn to consider criticisms of successive administrations' lack of willingness to invest in and pursue IRF as a priority for US foreign policy. Writing towards the end of the George W. Bush administration, Thomas Farr lamented that the commitment to IRF by the Bush and previous Clinton administration was 'sporadic in its application and minimal in its e ffects' (Farr 2008). Four years later, commenting on the Obama administration, he lamented that it was di fficult to find any significant progress (Farr 2012a). This has remained an ongoing problem. Successive presidents and secretaries of state, including Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hilary Clinton, John Kerry and Rex Tillerson have all proclaimed the importance of IRF and ye<sup>t</sup> the foreign policy apart from a few prisoner releases have very little to show for their e fforts.

A recurring criticism of the implementation of policy concerns the unwillingness of those charged with the responsibility to actively promote IRF because of a secularist approach adopted by foreign service practitioners, where religion is considered a private matter and the first amendment misinterpreted as precluding governmental involvement in promoting religious freedom (Farr 2008, 2012a, 2012b, 2013; Seiple and Hoover 2012; Seiple 2012). While e fforts have been made to train foreign service o fficers, such training has been voluntary and insu fficient to change a secularist mindset (Farr 2013; Mandaville and Silvestri 2015). There also remains a lack of clarity among foreign policy practitioners between religious tolerance and religious freedom (Rie ffer-Flanagan 2019). The OIRF sits within the Bureau of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, alongside eight other o ffices and bureaux and reports to the Under Secretary, rather than directly to the Secretary, signalling that IRF is but one of a number of competing interests within the Department of State, and not a high priority. This is a perception encouraged by the lackadaisical approach in appointing Ambassadors-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, mandated under the IRFA. Barack Obama took over two years to appoint Suzan Johnson Cook, in April 2011, who resigned from the position in October 2013, and a further fourteen months to appoint her successor, David Saperstein. The Trump administration left the position vacant until the appointment of Sam Brownback, an early supporter of the IRFA, in February 2018.

Alongside the relatively low status accorded the o ffice, successive administrations have failed to consider religious freedom strategically in relation to actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to emphasise its importance during the Arab Spring. In countries where the US has invested considerable resources, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan, religious freedom has diminished rather than improved (Farr 2012b). Obama failed to capitalise on his Cairo speech to the Muslim majority world by involving religious freedom in subsequent policy actions in the region, or indeed to include IRF in the 2009 National Security Strategy (Farr 2012a). The rhetoric of IRF has been proclaimed, but this has not translated into action on the ground. The OIRF produces comprehensive reports highlighting abuses of religious freedom and the USCIRF detailed reports on countries of particular concern annually, but countries are not held to account or sanctioned for their behaviour on religious rights, even where these are extreme including imprisonments, torture, judicial killings and destroying places of worship. In over two decades, only Ethiopia has been sanctioned by the United States for abuses of religious freedom (Farr 2013). Presidents are able to waive sanctions in what they consider to be the national interest, usually where there is a strategic or economic interest involved, such as Saudi Arabia or China.

This is not to say that successive administrations have been indi fferent to IRF, the recognition of its importance as an innate human right, the development of an IRF infrastructure through the development of the OIRF and USCIRF, the regular reporting to Congress, and training for foreign service o fficers, all point to a willingness to promote IRF and protect the rights of people, in accordance with Article 18 of the UNDHR. Promoting religious freedom is hard domestically, but even more so internationally, where motives are impugned, foreign service o fficers are sceptical and governments are unwilling to be held to account by another country pursuing its own national interests. While advocates

of IRF are conscious of the failings of successive administrations in fulfilling the spirit of the IRFA, the appropriateness of promoting and protecting international religious freedom is strongly contested.
