The United States International Religious Freedom Act, nonstate actors, and the Donbas crisis

This chapter explores whether recent changes to the United States’ 1998 International Religious Freedom Act furnish the United States government with effective tools for engaging with and taking potential action against nonstate actors, such as the self-proclaimed Donetsk and the Luhansk People’s Republics. The statute now provides the American government with the formal obligation to report on violent nonstate actors found to be violating freedom of religion or belief. In addition, the executive branch may designate those nonstate actors found to be violating freedom of religion in a “particularly severe” manner as “entities of particular concern.”