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Like every president before him, he’ll have to balance addressing religious persecution with competing policy goals and manage complicated relationships with faith groups in the U.S., said Luke Perez, an assistant professor of civic education at Arizona State University who is working on a book about religious freedom policy during the Cold War.

In terms of religious freedom, it plunges Myanmar further into a climate of religious nationalism that can only make life more difficult for diversity.

Europe is not the first place most people think of when they hear talk about threats to religious liberty. But Church leaders there have recently been cautioning about trends in that direction.

This would involve robust defense of Christians currently oppressed in the Middle East, India, China, North Korea and parts of Africa, along with oppressed Muslim Uighurs and Rohingyas in China and Myanmar, as well as Hindus, Ahmadis, Yazidis and Bahais elsewhere.

Remembering victims of the Holocaust and of the Nazi atrocities is important. Yet, it is also important to ensure that the memory of the atrocities is used to help prevent the commission of further mass crimes, genocides and crimes against humanity.

These early warning signs should be taken seriously. They should inform states’ approach to the prevention of mass atrocities in those countries most at risk.

Otherwise, they risk complicity in the persecution of millions of Uighurs.

Lessons we learned from helping Vietnam become the first country to be peaceably removed from the United States’ blacklist of the worst persecutors of Christians and other believers.

In the run-up to Human Rights Day on 10 December and the 20th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders on 9 December, CSW has been speaking with HRDs across South Asia to find out what it means to be a FoRB defender in the region.

A century-old sacred Hindu shrine in Pakistan was destroyed by a Muslim mob in December – the second ransacking and desecration of the holy site.