President Obama approves bill that protects religious freedom globally

Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a bill that would strengthen the nation's efforts to protect religious minorities around the world.

The Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), H.R. 1150, which was signed by the president on Friday, updates the 1998 bill that formed a religious freedom office within the U.S. State Department, Christianity Today reports.

The bill, which was named after a recently retired congressman from Virginia who championed global religious liberty, also created the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

The updated legislation serves to improve the federal government's efficiency to promote religious freedom. It ensures that there would be an ambassador-at-large for religious freedom who will report directly to the Secretary of State.

The bill establishes a minimum number of full-time employees at the International Religious Freedom Office, and it mandates religious liberty training for all foreign service officers.

H.R. 1150 also creates a category for "entities of particular concern" for non-government actors like the Islamic State and the Nigerian terrorist organization Boko Haram. The new category serves as a companion to the "countries of particular concern" (CPC) classification which has been in use for nearly 20 years.

The State Department recently added Tajikistan in its CPC list. Other nations in the list include Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, hailed the legislation as "a vital step toward protecting conscience freedom for millions of the world's most vulnerable, most oppressed people."

"Millions, including many of our Christian brothers and sisters, have experienced the most brutal forms of persecution, and entire cultures are now on the brink of extinction. This is an urgent human rights crisis, and global religious liberty is too important to become a partisan wedge issue," said Moore in a statement.

The newly signed act also includes protections for non-religious people such as atheists and agnostics.

"(T)he freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs and the right not to profess or practice any religion," the act reads, according to Religion News Service.

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, described the act as "a significant step toward full acceptance and inclusion for non-religious individuals."