International Religious Forum Summit 2024 in Japan.
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Religious Freedom For Everyone Everywhere - The Most Fundamental Human Rights
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The IRF Summit in Tokyo on July 22-23, 2024 featured former U.S. Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo as its keynote speaker. He was welcomed by his former colleague, co-chair of IRF, Sam Brownback.
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Brownback is a former Governor of Kansas, U.S. Senator, and former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and former Helsinki Commission Chairman. Pompeo and Brownback have previously helped launch the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in 2018 when they were both in government.
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The IRF Summit Asia was held in Tokyo due to the persecution of people of faith in several neighboring countries, such as North Korea, Myanmar, and China. The event was sold out within days, with many distinguished speakers from across Asia invited to give speeches and participate in panels. The management of IRF Summit believes that Japan as the largest democracy in the region can lead the work for religious freedom.
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The panels were well organized, with strong and diverse voices to help participants understand the impact of religious persecution and the importance of religious freedom.
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"Hang up, forget all about us, my mother told me. That was the last time I heard her voice. It's been seven years. I don't know anything about her or my other family's whereabouts," said Ilham Mahmut, an Uyghur activist in Japan.
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The summit also included discussions on persecution in other parts of the world, such as Nigeria, other parts of Africa and the Middle East.
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ADFA (A Demand For Action) is proud to partner with the IRF. We have been participating since the beginning, as we believe Religious Freedom is Human Rights, and they cannot be separated. ADFA introduced Asian human rights activists to our report "The Elephant in The Room" about the situation for Christian refugees in Lebanon from Iraq and Syria. We also spread the word about the Armenians that were forcibly displaced from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
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ADFA also attended the Freedom House second-hand trauma and psychosocial support training. One of the participants was a lawyer from Vietnam who wishes to remain anonymous. He is a Buddhist himself and is a member of an underground organization operating in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to help persecuted Christians. He goes by the name Nathan.
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"It's important that you study the religions of the victims in order to better understand their trauma, as their suffering is directly connected to their faith. You don't want to traumatize them further by triggering something. This is the reason that I, as a proud Buddhist, have studied Christianity," Nathan said.
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The motto at the International Religious Freedom Summit is "religious freedom for everyone, everywhere, all the time." Freedom of religion or belief is a human right protected in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is a core principle of a successful democratic society. Studies have shown that religious pluralism and respect for the dignity of every person can lead to increased stability and economic potential.
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The 2018 Ministerial that Pompeo and Brownback helped launch brought together governments, religious leaders, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector to "discuss challenges, identify concrete ways to combat religious persecution and discrimination, and ensure greater respect for religious freedom for all." The following year, the 2019 Ministerial was the largest religious freedom event of its kind in the world, with more than 1,000 civil society and religious leaders, and more than 100 foreign delegations invited. It focused on concrete outcomes that produce durable, positive change.
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The #IRFSummitAsia in Tokyo on July 22-23, 2024 continued this critical work championed by Pompeo and Brownback.
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ADFA is very grateful to the co-chairs Sam Brownback, Katrina Lantos Swett and the coordinators Peter Burns and Manus Churchill for their tireless work for religious freedom.