Meet the 3 Leading Candidates for Trump Religious Freedom Post

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Saturday, February 11, 2017

Nina Shea

Nina Shea, a former commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in which she served from June 1999 until March 2012, is also said to be in consideration for the position.

Shea is an international human rights lawyer and the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the D.C.-based public policy think tank Hudson Institute with a distinguished 30-year career in advocating for human rights.

She has also been appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations' main human rights body by Democratic and Republican administrations and was a member of the Clinton administration's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad.

In January of 2009, she was appointed as a member of the U.S. National Commission to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Shea has also been credited with playing a leading role in building support for the passing of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

Shea's advocacy has focused on human rights conflicts across the globe.

According to the her bio on the Hudson Institute website, there was a period of seven years in the late 1990s and early 2000s where she helped lead a coalition of churches and religious organizations that worked to end a war against non-Muslims in southern Sudan.

In 2014, Shea lead a coalition of hundreds of religious leaders to issue "The Pledge of Solidarity for Persecuted Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian Christians and Other Minorities." The pledge was released by a Congressional panel in May of that year.

Shea even met with Pope Francis in 2014 to discuss the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Shea, along with Moore, was another prominent advocate encouraging the U.S. to label IS' treatment of Christians as "genocide."

In her work with the Hudson Institute, Shea organized events for persecuted believers from across the globe. Prior to joining Hudson Institute, Shea worked with the watchdog organization Freedom House for over 10 years. At Freedom House, Shea directed its Center for Religious Freedom.

Shea's efforts have helped many across the religious spectrum and she even received an award from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA when she was given the inaugural "Ahmadiyya Muslim Humanitarian Award" in 2011.

Shea has also voiced her disapproval of the United States' inability to help persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria, even though Sec. of State John Kerry declared the situation a "genocide" last March. In October, Shea penned an op-ed titled "The U.S. and U.N. Have Abandoned Christian Refugees."

One of the main criticisms of the U.S. government humanitarian policy is the fact that it is too reliant on the United Nations to disburse aid and refer for resettlement. Although the United Nations is helping provide aid to displaced families, Christians and other religious minorities tend to stay away from U.N. camps because of fear of being persecuted by extremist groups entrenched in those camps. Therefore, no money or aid is making its way to displaced Christian communities unless it comes from the donations of Christian groups and churches.

"Genocide is the most heinous human-rights violation," she wrote. "For America to entrust the survival of communities on the brink of extinction to a U.N. operation that routinely fails them is the height of cynicism."

Shea has also written a number of op-eds advocating for persecuted Christians that have been published in the National Review, CP and other news outlets.

Although Starr appears to be the frontrunner for the position, some speculate that Shea might be a good fit for the new National Security Council position of Special Adviser to the President on International Religious Freedom that was created under the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act passed last December.