peace

Since 1993, UNESCO has held several conferences addressing the role of religion in conflict situations and at the 1994 conference in Barcelona issued a ‘Declaration on the Role of Religion in the Promotion of a Culture of Peace’. UNESCO has established an International Interreligious Advisory Committee and with the UN launched the year 2000 as ‘the International Year for a Culture of Peace.’

In 1998 a meeting on ‘World Faiths and Development’ was held at Lambeth Palace, London, jointly chaired by James D Wolfensohn President of the World Bank and by Dr George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury. From this emerged World Faiths Development Dialogue. This has brought together two actors on the development scene, the religious communities and the multilateral development agencies, which until now have gone their own way with considerable mutual suspicion. Now the hope is to bring together those who possess expertise in technical issues and faith communities which stand closer than any others to the world’s poorest people. Such a conscious step to forge an alliance should lead, in the words of Dr Carey and James D Wolfensohn, ‘to inspiration and learning among people from all sides and to ways of making some real changes in favour of those who most need them.’

In 2001, for the first time, the World Economic Forum - an independent foundation that engages business, political and other leaders of society seeking to improve the state of the world - invited religious leaders to share in their deliberations on globalisation at Davos in Switzerland. It was recognised that ‘religious traditions have a unique contribution to offer... particularly in emphasising human values and the spiritual and moral dimension of economic and political life.’

The most striking example of the new seriousness with which international decision makers are taking the contribution of faith communities was the historic Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, which met in UN General Assembly Hall in August 2000. Partly because of the opposition of Communist countries, The United Nations has kept itself at some distance from faith communities, although Religious NGOs have, for many years, made a contribution at certain levels, in particular to specialist agencies. The meeting, which issued a ‘Commitment to Global Peace’, was, therefore, of great symbolic significance. Subsequently the possibility of a Religious Advisory Council to the United Nations - an idea suggested as long ago as 1943 by Bishop George Bell of Chichester - is being actively discussed.

Some time ago Sir Sigmund Sternberg approached Signor Prodi, the President of the European Commission, about the European Union enlisting the support of the religions. Last September, Britain In Europe convened an interfaith meeting in London to consider shared values and also convictions about families and minorities, as well as relations with developing countries and with ethnic groups. It was felt that all believers in God should seek to raise questions about world justice and debt as well as poverty and peace and that Europe has the opportunity and the duty to make its contribution powerfully in these fields as the world tries to discover how to live together .