Let me be very frank to begin with. One of our operating understandings in the Office of Religious Freedom is to avoid any naïveté. I think whether it's in the Middle East or in Pakistan or in many other countries where you have the entrenched nature of this type of religious persecution and violations of religious freedom, whether through social hostilities, government restrictions, or government action or inaction, in many cases we're talking about multi-generational change.
In the case of Iraq—and by extension Syria—the two are linked. The persecutions taking place in Iraq have a particular flavour. In Syria we're seeing them in the context of a civil war.
My concern when I go over is really to have a better understanding of the immediate needs of these communities, especially religious minority communities, that have been displaced from Syria and Iraq and that are in countries of proximate migration, Lebanon and Jordan, and what they require to ensure they can remain in the region if they choose to. What do we need to do in terms of engaging our allies such as the Jordanians, the Lebanese, and others? How can we assist them?
Often it's through very small programming activities. It can be through advocacy on the international stage or through multilateral bodies—the UN or others. We're just in the process of building up an international contact group on religious freedom to bring together like-minded countries that seek to advance religious freedom.
It's not just western liberal democracies. We're engaging the Jordanians, the Indonesians, members of a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Moroccans, and the Tunisians to look at how, if we have this understanding about religious freedom, we can work both within multilateral institutions and together as a body to raise awareness about what is going on. I think part of that is also about engaging countries in the region that might need a little bit more support.