US State Department drops reports on religious freedom

(Catholic Culture) The US State Department has eliminated sections on religious freedom from its latest reports on human rights in the world’s nations.


The Country Reports on Human Rights, released May 24, did not contain the sections on religious freedom that have appeared in each previous annual edition. Instead the State Department referred readers to a previous year’s International Religious Freedom Report.


The latest Country Reports on Human Rights covered developments in 2011. An in-depth report on religious freedom, on a country-by-country basis, might have been particularly interesting because they could have covered the impact of the “Arab Spring” uprisings and their aftermath on the religious minorities of the countries involved.