Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what the titles are of the 15 projects funded through the John Bunyan fund for Freedom of Religion and Belief.

In August 2019, we launched the John Bunyan Fund for Freedom of Religion or Belief. This is a designated funding stream. Last financial year we funded 15 research projects which cover the challenges faced by different communities, such as Christians, Yazidis and Humanists, as well as cross-cutting issues such as migration and the double vulnerability experienced by women from minority faith backgrounds. The research projects have provided the Government, and the wider international community, with more granular recommendations on how we might tackle the problem of persecution as it affects particular countries or groups. The titles of the 15 projects have not been published for sensitivity reasons, but we can confirm that the FCDO supported research projects in a diverse range of geographic regions, including Asia, the Middle East and Africa. All projects have reported back in line with FCDO agreed project management processes.