9. Agency for International Development · Minor
Integrate religious freedom into Country Development and Coordination Strategies
Printed page 262 9. Agency for International Development
“It should train all USAID staff on the connection between religious freedom and development; integrate it into all of the agency’s programs, including the five-year Country Development and Coordination Strategies due for updates in 2025; strengthen the missions’ relationships with local faith-based leaders; and build on local programs that are serving the poor.”
What has happened
- Not started
The five-year Country Development and Coordination Strategies due for update in 2025 were USAID instruments; they ceased with the agency on 2025-07-01 and no updated strategies integrating religious freedom were published. A Federal Register phrase search over the window returns zero documents for "Country Development Cooperation Strategy". Religious freedom was integrated organisationally instead - it shares an Under Secretary with foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs - and programmatically through the $40 million international religious freedom line and the faith-based partnership awards, but not into a country development strategy of the kind the Quote names.
- Secretary Rubio, "Making Foreign Aid Great Again" (State Department Spanish translation): as of July 1 USAID officially ceases to implement foreign assistance
- Report to Congress on Expansion of International Religious Freedom Activities
- State Department media note: United States Announces Historic $2 Billion in Health and Humanitarian Assistance to Faith-Based Organizations
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Leveled on this ask rather than on the adjacent one: an organizational merger is not the integration of religious freedom into country development strategies (progress is measured on this ask, not an adjacent one). The negative search was one search covering this ask together with a group of related asks.
- Action
- other
- Object
- Five-year Country Development and Coordination Strategies
- ID
- 678