Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Explainer: Congress passes bill to help Christians and other genocide victims in Iraq and Syria
Explainer: Congress passes bill to help Christians and other genocide victims in Iraq and Syria
Mar 18, 2025 12:09 PM

What just happened?

Earlier this week the U.S. Congress voted unanimously to support HR 309, the “Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018.” The purpose of the bill is to provide relief for victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes who are members of religious and ethnic minority groups in Iraq and Syria, for accountability for perpetrators of these crimes, and for other purposes.

The bipartisan bill, first introduced in 2017 by Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where he’s expected to sign it into law.

What does the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act do?

This bill states that it is U.S. policy to ensure that humanitarian, stabilization, and recovery assistance for nationals and residents of Iraq or Syria, and munities from those countries, is directed toward ethnic and minority individuals munities with the greatest need, including those individuals munities that are at risk of persecution or war crimes, such as Christians and Yazidis.

The bill also allows the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide assistance, including financial and technical assistance, to support the efforts of entities, including nongovernmental organizations with expertise in international criminal investigations and law, to address crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes in Iraq since January 2014 by conducting criminal investigations, developing indigenous investigative and judicial skills to adjudicate cases consistent with due process and respect for the rule of law, and collecting and preserving evidence for use in prosecutions.

The State Department will now encourage foreign governments to identify and prosecute individuals who are suspected mitting such crimes, including members of foreign terrorist organizations operating in Iraq or Syria. Additionally, the State Department shall identify:

• threats of persecution, genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against members of Iraqi or Syrian religious or ethnic groups that are minorities in Iraq or in Syria with respect to whom the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) mitted such crimes in Iraq or Syria since January 2014 or who are members of other persecuted religious or ethnic groups;

• persecuted religious and ethnic minority groups in Iraq or Syria that are at risk of forced migration and the primary reasons for such risk;

• humanitarian, stabilization, and recovery needs of these individuals; and

• entities, including faith-based entities, that are providing such assistance and the extent of U.S. assistance to or through such entities.

Why is this legislation necessary?

According to Rep. Smith, the bill’s original sponsor, less than 200,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from 1,400,000 in 2002 and 500,000 in 2013, before ISIS swept through the region on its genocidal campaign. Many of the remaining Christians in Iraq are displaced, mostly in Erbil in the Kurdistan region and need assistance to return to their homes and stay in Iraq.

Many Christian survivors of the ISIS genocide in Iraq and Syria had reported receiving no aid from the U.S. or the UN Smith said and they had been pletely upon aid from donations of non-governmental organizations like the Knights of Columbus and Aid to the Church in Need.

“When genocide or other atrocity crimes are perpetrated, the United States should direct humanitarian, stabilization, and recovery aid to enable these people to survive-especially when they are minorities whose existence as a people is at-risk,” Smith stated on the House Floor before the vote Tuesday night. “HR 390 would ensure our actions match our words.”

Who supported the bill?

A broad range of Christian, Jewish, secular, and governmental organizations endorsed the legislation, including the Knights of Columbus, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Open Doors, HIAS, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Hong Kong’s extreme National Security Law wins second conviction
One more pro-democracy activist has been convicted under Beijing’s highly repressive NSL, which seeks to suppress “subversion” by crushing human rights. Read More… A Hong Kong court has handed down a second conviction under the wide-sweeping National Security Law (NSL), this time for chanting pro-independence slogans. According to ABC News, Ma Chun-man was convicted on Oct. 25 for inciting secession by chanting slogans such as “Hong Kong independence, the only way out” on 20 different occasions between August and November...
Constitution protects nonprofits despite political activism
Challenge the political agenda of the Gates and Ford Foundations, but do not use means that undermine the very rule of law that should be defended. Read More… A healthy state protects life, secures liberty, and defends property. A totalitarian state does the opposite: it arbitrarily pels, and seizes property. J. D. Vance recently appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson to discuss a verbal altercation between Arizona State University students, one of whom was the recipient of a Ford...
The political murder of Sir David Amess shines a light on the virtues of public service
The stabbing death of Sir David Amess as he met with constituents is both an occasion of mourning and horror but also a time to consider the animating principles of the best of our public servants, and the price they sometimes pay for mitment to the public good. Read More… The name of Sir David Amess, a Conservative member of the British Parliament for 39 years, was little known in the U.K., and almost certainly not at all known in...
How Hong Kong moved from two systems to one tyranny
Since the National Security Law was imposed Beijing in 2020, basic human and civil rights in Hong Kong have been increasingly crushed, with no end in sight and emigration the only short-term solution. Read More… Hong Kong has e the face of China’s dictatorship, the most dramatic evidence of Xi Jinping’s determination to extinguish even the hint of dissent among his people. Today residents of the Special Administrative Region are ruled pletely and cruelly by the Chinese Communist Party as...
We are a fractured nation, but there is still hope
The Founders worried about “factionalism” ing tyranny, but thought the nation so large and scattered that it would be impossible for the “like-minded” e together for evil ends. But modern social and mass media have helped turn citizens into mobs determined to destroy their political enemies. Do we have anything mon anymore? Read More… It’s e monplace observation that while we are indeed a divided nation, we have been divided before and, some claim, in much worse ways. The first...
Discovering human dignity in Villeneuve’s Dune
The much anticipated film adaptation of the Frank Herbert sci-fi masterpiece demonstrates that the best support of a noble ideal is to actually believe it. Read More… With an opening weekend revenue of $41 million, director Denis Villeneuve’s Part 1 of his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune has succeeded in getting Warner Bros. to greenlight Part 2, set for a 2023 release. Villeneuve’s Dune feels a bit like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings—visually stunning, perfectly cast,...
Czechs vote communists out of parliament
While the latest election marks a decisive symbolic victory munism and progressivism, it’s but one development in a larger realignment marked by a mix of populism and centrism. Read More… Since 1925, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia has had a seat at the table in Czech parliaments. While momentarily sidelined by the Nazi occupation during World War II, the party managed to centralize power rather quickly thereafter, working with Moscow to crush dissent and impose totalitarian control from 1948 until...
Pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai to receive the 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award
The entrepreneur’s fight for a free press and human rights in an increasingly authoritarian Hong Kong is recognized yet again, even as he sits in jail for violating the draconian National Security Law. Read More… At the annual International Press Freedom Awards, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will honor Jimmy Lai, longtime Acton friend and outspoken political dissident in Hong Kong, with the 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. The annual event, set to take place Nov. 18, presents...
Amnesty International to withdraw from Hong Kong
The human rights organization says it can no longer “work freely and without fear” as the Hong Kong government continues to repress fundamental freedoms. Read More… London-based Amnesty International has succumbed to the pressures of Hong Kong’s wide-sweeping National Security Law (NSL), announcing on Oct. 25 its decisions to withdraw operations from the city. The human rights organization will close its two Hong Kong branches, citing fear of “restrictions of freedoms of expression.” The nongovernmental organization (NGO) said its branch...
Beyond material prosperity, economic freedom fosters virtue and relationship
In addition to boosting material welfare, capitalism has the potential to strengthen the bonds of a virtuous society, inspiring sacrifice, generosity, trust, patience, friendship, self-governance, and more. Read More… In defending the cause of economic freedom, it can be easy to focus only on the material fruits, whether it be new innovations and efficiencies or the ongoing expansion of opportunity and abundance. But before and beyond our arguments about material es, we often neglect the foundations from which these successes...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved