Internal
Key Messages
Who are we?
In every society, in good times and difficult ones, multi-religious voices, and common actions, have a powerful role to play in building cohesion and securing peaceful coexistence. Bringing the voices together and raising them in a chorus for social justice…Providing the mechanisms that enable the institutions and the leaders to serve all, together…That is our mission.
- Religions for Peace, founded in 1970, is the largest worldwide alliance of religious communities devoted to advancing common actions for peace.
- Today Religions for Peace has Interreligious Councils in 90 countries and six regions. Together with our Global Women of Faith Network and our Global Interfaith Youth Network, they enable us to span the world and engage religious communities at all levels, from the local to the international.
- Religions for Peace is led by a World Council composed of senior religious leaders from 60 countries.
- The main religious communities represented in Religions for Peace, including many different denominations and Indigenous leaders, are (in alphabetical order): Bahá’í, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Indigenous, Islam, Jain, Judaism, Sikh, Taoism, and Zoroastrian.
What do we do?
- We bring different religious institutions and faith communities together to deliver common needs of populations
- Through those concrete services, we build trust and cultivate an enduring habit of collaboration.
- We not only respond to immediate crises, and help build the groundwork and facilitate mechanisms for collaborative responses to emergencies, we also help dismantle the distrust and factionalism that are the root causes of crisis and conflict.
- We are the only organization that brings together religious leaders and enables them to speak as one at the national, regional, and global levels.
- During our more than 50 years of multi-religious peace-building experience, this approach has proven:
- More powerful than the efforts of individual religions acting alone;
- More inclusive than endeavours solely within religious communities,;
- More efficient and sustainable than ad hoc or one-issue centred interfaith initiatives.
- When the Covid Pandemic struck our world, we built on the experience of years of interfaith work to serve emergency needs, to form the Multi-Religious Humanitarian Fund (highlight /bold and add a URL link) – a unique initiative and mechanism designed to enable religious actors to work together to serve the shared needs of their communities – together.
How do we do this work?
Our unique approach is to build, equip, and facilitate partnerships with Interreligious Councils (IRCs) which provide a platform for dialogue and common actions.
What are IRCs?
- IRCs are Inter-religious Councils composed of both clergy and lay leaders from the diverse religious communities in a particular area.
- The IRCs function as sustainable, legally registered, civil society cooperatives that can work together in times of peace, conflict, natural disaster, or public health emergency.
- While the IRCs are affiliated to Religions for Peace, each IRC is a locally owned and locally-led independent endeavour.
What do we do with and for the IRCs?
- We assist in establishing an IRC, responding to their needs around governance, management, fundraising and financial accountability. When possible, we provide financial support.
- We equip IRCs by training their staff members, providing technical support in areas such as peacebuilding and humanitarian assistance; and organising global capacity-building workshops as well as regular opportunities for them to connect with and learn from one another, sharing experiences, strategies, and support.
- We facilitate partnerships for IRCs with like-minded organisations, including multilateral entities (e.g. the UN) and the private sector. We train and cultivate religious leaders that are part of our network to become advisors to organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the United Nations in order to bring multi-religious perspectives and policy advice to global initiatives.
Where We Work
Internal
Key Messages
- Religions for Peace is the only multi-religious organization with affiliated multi-religious platforms around the world. No single religious community leads RfP. Rather, representatives from diverse r
- Religions for Peace has 90 affiliated national Interreligious Councils and six regional Interreligious Council. Membership within these 90 national and six regional Interreligious Councils (IRCs) is b
- Religions for Peace advances common action among the world’s religious communities for a comprehensive, holistic and sustainable peace.
- Religions for Peace builds on a 50-year legacy of multi-religious engagement nuanced, informed and challenged by diverse and complex contexts at community, national, regional and global levels. Since
- The strength of Religions for Peace is it’s embodiment of multi-religious cooperation as a powerful way to engage spiritual, moral and social assets of religious communities to advance shared well-bei
- The vision of Religions for Peace is that the world’s religious communities cooperate effectively for peace. Multi-religious collaboration is a powerful means to preempt fundamentalisms of any kind an
- Multi-religious collaboration can be more powerful than the efforts of individual religions acting alone, more inclusive than efforts solely within religious communities, and more efficient and sustai
- Our Six Key Priorities guide our ongoing initiatives.
- As a key partner of the United Nations, Religions for Peace brings together fresh thinking and diverse voices around multi-faith collaboration. We work behind-the-scenes, shaping negotiations and
- Religions for Peace engages youth and women in all areas of its work and will continue to support and empower them to build just, inclusive and peaceful societies around the globe and foster mutua