This site is not updated. I want to thank everyone here for joining or participating directly as members in the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad which is conducting its first meeting. We are very pleased to see the level of public interest in this Committee's work, and of course I welcome all the Committee members who have had an opportunity to get acquainted over the last day. I'm John Shattuck, the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. I have been appointed by the Secretary of State as Chair of this Advisory Committee which is perhaps unique among advisory committees in that its work will be reported both to the Secretary of State and, by its mandate, to the President of the United States, emphasizing the great importance of the issue that we are here to discuss this morning.
Religious freedom is one of the most important issues in the world today.
It is a bedrock issue in our own country. We were founded on the principle of religious freedom and it is a principle of freedom of religion for all religions. Many persons have come to this country escaping religious persecution, and freedom of religion is enshrined in our own Constitution. For the past half-century, it has been reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other International Covenants and is now a part of international law. So the work that we in this Committee do and that the United States does to promote freedom of religion around the world is not only a result of our own national values and commitment in this area, but also of very important elements of international law that protect freedom of religion.