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Project “Towards the creation of a Spiritual Forum for World Peace at the United Nations”
Brief report submitted to the 2003 annual meeting
of the International Interfaith Organizations Network (IION), Oxford,
17-20 September, 2003 by Dr
Gerardo Gonzalez, Project Director
In my presentation during our first meeting, on March 2001 at Oxford --when the IION was created-- I emphasized that we are not an organization, but a project; that the Spiritual Forum for World Peace is not an existing body, but a dream which will need a lot of participatory work and a long process of consultations to became true; and that the SF should come to complement and to strengthen the work being done by the interfaith organizations, not to compete with them. After two years and some months, we can repeat the same, although some significant progress has been achieved.
Since that occasion our main immediate objective has been to establish a task force, labeled by us “Partnership Committee” (PC), which will work on this seed-idea transforming it into a consensual proposal, developed through a collective effort by a wide spectrum of spiritual leaders, religious institutions and interfaith organizations.
Efforts were made during 2002 to hold the first workshop and constituting meeting of the “Partnership Committee” at Bellagio, Italy, on October 2002, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Unfortunately, that foundation received too many requests for supporting meetings at their Bellagio Conference Center during that period, being able to approve only one third of the requests and ours was not included. So the workshop had to be postponed and eventually will be held in Geneva, 8-11 May 2004, at the John Knox Conference Centre.
One of the most significant expected outputs
of the workshop will be a draft proposal, which must be agreeable to
a wide spectrum of religious institutions and spiritual leaders, politically
viable, economically feasible and consistent with the process of reform
going on in the UN. This first draft is likely to include alternative
suggestions and is expected to identify those critical issues which
ask for further analysis and elaboration. It would be only the first
step of a wide process of consultations aimed at developing a consensual,
collective proposal. Thus, after this first workshop, the members of
the PC will be expected to present the draft proposal to their institutions
and related spiritual leaders, bringing back their comments and suggestions,
which will feed the “snow ball” process of developing a
consensual proposal, collectively owned by a wide range of religious
institutions, spiritual leaders and interfaith organizations. The Parliament
of World’s Religions in Barcelona might be a very good opportunity
to present and start discussing this first draft proposal. The Symposium
that Josef Bohle is organizing seems to be the
right place for this discussion.
During the last year new contacts have been made in order to have a balanced composition of the PC in terms of religions and links with the main interfaith organizations. It is worth noting that all those who are being invited to attend the workshop and to join the PC are invited in their personal capacity, since it is too early in this process to look for formal institutional commitment. Nevertheless, the PC members are expected to perform as “informal bridges” with their religious communities and organizations in order to incorporate their feedback in the process of developing a new proposal.
Ishtar Adler, Project representative at 2003 network meeting
Although being a small group (16 for the time
being) will facilitate the active involvement of the PC members and
continuous interactive work in the future, one of its negative consequences
is the necessary limitation in terms of the number of religions and
organizations informally represented. At this stage at least, the group
should be small for practical reasons. Nevertheless, as soon as a draft
proposal would be ready, a wide consultation process will start involving
anybody willing to participate.
The project has been actively involved
in the network’s UN Working Group.
Introduction / Parliament / IARF / IIC / Youth Core / Peace Summit / Minorities / Peace Council / Temple / SpiritualForum / URI / WCRP / WCF / WFDD / WFIRC
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interfaith organisations network 2003 |