The Biden State Department once again has refused to designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), despite Christians being killed by militant Muslim groups almost daily with no effective intervention by the Nigerian government.
Over the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and pleas from religious freedom advocates, the Biden administration, for the second year, left Nigeria off of a list of 12 other nations designated as CPCs in an announcement on Dec. 2. The Trump State Department had designated Nigeria as a CPC, but the Biden administration dropped that label in 2021.
The CPC designations are announced annually by the State Department to spotlight the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.
Since 2011, the terrorist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have murdered more than 40,000 Christians in Nigeria, in addition to thousands more killed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen, Genocide Watch reports. In 2021 alone, according to the persecution watchdog group Open Doors, some 4,650 Nigerian Christians were murdered by these groups—equal to one Christian killed every two hours.
Open Doors estimates that Nigerians made up nearly 80% of the world’s Christian martyrs in 2021.
The State Department’s announcement revealed a sharp disagreement over Nigeria between the Biden administration and the members of the USCIRF, which is an appointed commission mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
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