On February 3, the International Religious Freedom Roundtable (IRF Roundtable) was held in Washington, D.C., in the Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building, with a large representative delegation from Ukraine.
As Maksym Vasin, Executive Director of the Institute for Religious Freedom, reported, “The delegation from Ukraine was one of the first to get the floor to speak about Russian terror aimed at Ukrainian churches in the occupied territories and the interference of Russian religious centers in the internal affairs of Ukrainian churches.”
The roundtable was attended by Dr Viktor Yelensky, head of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Bohdan Movchan, and Mykhailo Brytsyn, the main author of the report “Faith Under Russian Terror.”
According to Maksym Vasin, this time, the event was attended by many more participants, including online.
Today, February 4, the Summit on International Religious Freedom begins, and additional events will be held in the U.S. Congress. Once again, testimonies of Ukrainians who survived the Russian terror will be heard, and evidence of Russian war crimes and genocide in Ukraine will be presented.
The organizers of this year's summit are former U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, Republican Samuel Dale “Sam” Brownback and former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, Democrat Yvonne Katrina Swett (née Lantos).
According to the Center for Public Monitoring, on February 4-5, the 5th Annual International Religious Freedom Summit will bring together leaders in the field of religious freedom, human rights activists from around the world and a diverse coalition of civil society representatives who passionately support religious freedom around the world.
The program of the summit includes three plenary sessions. On February 4, the sessions “Looking to the Future” (presentation of priorities for the next IRF Summit administration) and “What We Face” (mass migration and religious pluralism; a cross-section of the religious freedom movement) will be held. On February 5, the session “How We Win” (countering dictatorial plans; building on the successes of the global International Religious Freedom movement).
The second plenary session will be followed by a Ukrainian briefing and reception.
The third session will feature a keynote address by Oleksandra Matviichuk, Nobel Prize winner and Vice President of the International Federation for the Protection of Human Rights.