Last month’s sudden and unexpected capture of the historic Syrian city of Aleppo by Islamic fundamentalist rebels has highlighted a distressing aspect of this year of global armed turmoil: Christians are often among those who are most in danger when armed conflicts erupt.

The Syrian rebel faction, which formerly was allied with al-Qaida but now says it’s independent of that previous affiliation, has claimed it will respect the rights of Aleppo’s minorities, including Christians. But without international actions on behalf of this beleaguered religious community, there’s scant reason to trust in such promises. 

That’s why it’s so important for Catholics and other people of goodwill in the U.S., and in other democratic Western countries, to stand up strongly against the unjust persecution of Christians and other religious believers elsewhere.

But some problematic new trends in democratic countries are interfering with the prioritization of international religious liberty. One is the increasing propensity of governments to focus solely on the economic and security concerns that come into play with ongoing crises like the current conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine. This results in greatly diminished attention by decision-makers to the religious-persecution dimensions that are frequently associated with these conflicts.

Another damaging trend is the increasingly prevalent idea that religious freedom should be regarded as merely a subordinate component of the right to freedom of thought, rather than as a preeminent human right itself — as specified in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other seminal international human-rights documents. Obviously, when the right of religious freedom is downplayed this way, governments are less inclined to prioritize it.

And, as reflected by the “Persecuted but Forgotten” title of Aid to the Church in Need’s annual report that documents attacks on Christians around the world, it’s not as though international religious freedom has ever received as much attention as it deserves. 

ACN’s recently released 2024 report notes that, as in previous years, Christians’ religious liberty is under most intense attack in some Muslim nations. But, it points out, the “epicenter of militant Islamist violence shifted from the Middle East to Africa,” identifying Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Mozambique as nations where this is particularly true. 

One heartening aspect of the international landscape is that the U.S. continues to pay more attention to the issue of religious freedom than do most other Western countries. The federal government has an institution, the U.S. Commission on International Freedom, dedicated entirely to this issue. The State Department also publishes an annual list of nations that it judges to be “Countries of Particular Concern,” in terms of transgressing against religious liberty.

However, questions have surfaced periodically about the Biden administration’s dedication to this matter. These concerns have focused in particular on the State Department’s puzzling refusal to designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern, despite the murderous terror campaigns being carried out there against Christians by Boko Haram Islamic militants and by Fulani herdsmen, a Muslim ethnic group.

Under the first Trump administration, defending international religious freedom seemed to be a higher foreign-policy objective. But Catholics and all people of faith shouldn’t assume this will necessarily be the case going forward. So during President-elect Trump’s second term, it should be our solemn duty to press Washington to prioritize religious freedom internationally, as well as here at home.