UN Meeting on Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue

Oct. 4-5, 2007, New York, USA

Report from Patrice Brodeur, Ph.D.

Brief Description:

This event took place at the United Nations during two days: 4-5, October, 2007.  The valuable concept paper for this event, which provides a solid background to this theme and its history in terms of various UN efforts is provided in Appendix 1 (4 pages).  The general program of those two days can be found in Appendix 2, with the panel speakers listed in Appendix 3. The first morning and the second day took place on the floor of the General Assembly.  The afternoon of the first day took place in a smaller hall, equally set up for translation and with panellists and invited guests, clearly identified.  While the number of NGO representative invited to speak was small and gave only a few appetizers to the variety of activities in the field of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, it was a good beginning.  

What strike me is twofold.  First, the language used for this UN initiative reflects the Western heritage with its divided language of “culture” and “religion”, going back implicitly to the ideational debates (and at many times outward conflicts) around the role of religion in the public sphere, especially that of politics.  Second, the cases chosen reflected a clear bias towards interreligious rather than intercultural dialogue.  There was therefore not enough balance in the choice of panel speakers in this regard.  Finally, the large number of countries that officially presented reports as to what their countries are doing in this field was impressive: over seventy!  This is a link where many useful documents can be accessed:
http://www.un.org/ga/president/61/follow-up/hld-interreligious.shtml

Context

This event was the fruit of a chain of events that has many sources, many of which can be found in more details in Appendix 1.  One of them is the efforts of the Interreligious Roundtable of religious NGOs working in partnership with various UN agencies.  Another is the efforts of the UN Philippines delegation over the last few years to promote a UN resolution on this topic.   A third is the context of the UN after 9/11, 2001, which passed a resolution regarding terrorism and security as well as organized several events at the UN following those events.   These efforts eventually led to the consensual adoption by the General Assembly of UN Resolution A/61/221 on December 20th, 2006, entitled:  “Promotion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, understanding, and cooperation for peace.”  The October 4-5 two-day event at the UN was part of an agenda to implement this resolution.

Analysis

In my opinion, this UN High Level meeting was a historic event for two main reasons.  First, the consensus that has emerged in December 2006 and the resolution of May 2007 to organize this two-day event represents a global commitment on the part of all leaders of nation-states associated with the UN, which is almost all nation-states worldwide, to promote intercultural and interreligious understanding.  This consensus is unprecedented, as well as the speed it took to reach it (less than five years in comparison to the over 20 years it took for the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief”.  This contrast reflects two very different eras: the first declaration was elaborated during the Cold War years, while the second emerged within our current post-9/11/2001 era.  

The second reason for the historic nature of this event stems from this very contrast: unlike the Cold War period when the world was divided into two super-powers, whose dichotomous and competing discourses forced the creation of a third, non-aligned, alliance of nation-states, the present period is marked by a clear recognition of the interdependence in which all human beings and nation-states find themselves.  This acknowledgement of our human interdependency leads more easily to the forging of global consensus on a variety of topics.  These efforts began more visibly with the UN 1992 International Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro.  Other topics followed: Population and Development (1995), Social Development (1996), Women (Beijing), etc..  It is therefore not surprising that, under the pressures of a USA-led campaign for putting national security at the heart of international relations in the fight against terrorism reduced often to its religious forms (i.e., reading between the lines Islamist extremism), a need for bringing interreligious dialogue from the margins of power dynamics into the center arose, resulting in the present consensus resolution on interreligious and intercultural understanding.  Indeed, the language used could not be only interreligious, so intercultural and interreligious were brought together.  This growing habit of putting the two side by side reflects a positive development in what has been traditionally a most difficult topic to address, especially for Westerners or Westernized persons, because of a particular Western European heritage of power dynamics between religion and secular forms of ideology, which had pushed aside the religious forms of discourse in the international community, sustained by areligious or at times anti-religious scientific forms of discourse affecting international relations (ex: the concept of “development”, etc.). For these two reasons, therefore, the October 4-5 event at the UN General Assembly was truly historic.  

Conclusion

I want to end this brief report with two small prescription notes for the future. First, it may be that one day this cumbersome language (carrying both “interreligious” and “intercultural”) will be changed to the simpler language of “interworldview dialogue, understanding, and cooperation for world peace”.  This would help also move a little beyond a particular Western history, opening the international language to becoming more global in its implicit references.  Second, it may be that one day, and sooner than we expect, the UN will develop an office for linking religious communities in particular to its many agencies and activities worldwide.  It remains to be seen what are the advantages and disadvantages of continuing the system of asking religious communities to become NGOs and submit their membership to the UN via the Economic and Social Council of the UN, like any other NGO.  The case of the Vatican being already an exception to this situation provides food for thought as to what structural reforms would be necessary to ensure a more just role of all religious communities at the UN.  It also remains to be discussed whether such a role would be separate or within existing interreligious organizations, a few of which already have strong ties to the UN as INGOs.  It therefore leads to the question of whether or not GHFP may want to play a role in studying these questions, together with the existing efforts of WSA on this direction.