Religioni per la Pace Italia

ISPI MINISTERO AFFARI ESTERI PROVINCIA AUTONOMA TRENTO


"RELIGIONS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES"
Trento, October 22nd -23rd /2009

Preventing and managing conflicts: the transnational role of religions
Luigi De Salvia, secretary general RELIGIONS FOR PEACE/Italian chapter

Can religions have a transnational role in preventing and managing conflicts?
If yes, why and how?
We should realize that today the believers of world's great religions remain at a crossroad, notwithstanding the encouraging signals that many - probably the majority - are searching for the wise way forward.
In this crossroad, one path is the "status quo": we could largely go our own ways, respectfully of one another perhaps, but not truly engaged in common work. On this path our diverse religious communities could grow increasingly polarized and more vulnerable to being abused in support of violence and conflict. On this path our religious communities - billions of faithful - could fail to realize their potential as peacemakers.
There is another path: we can intentionally cooperate for peace: common action based on wise procedural principles and deeply held and widely shared moral commitments to peace.
This path can bring politicians, civil society and religious communities together around common goals of building peace.
This path, trough the capability of a broader communication on global media, could advance concrete multi-religious effort to resolve violent conflicts, prevent them from breaking out and addresses the injustice that may be linked to them.

Which are the inter-related challenges to advancing this path in relationship to violent conflicts?
1st MOBILIZING THE RELIGION POTENTIALS EACH RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY HAS TO BUILD PEACE
2nd WORKING TOGHETER TO ADVANCE A NEW NOTION OF SHARED SECURITY
3rd BUILDING A GLOBAL ALLIANCE OF MULTIRELIGIOUS MECHANISMS DESIGNED TO ADVANCE PEACE

Some brief comments on these three points.

1st MOBILIZING THE RELIGION POTENTIALS EACH RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY HAS TO BUILD PEACE
In recent years we have seen how great can be the religious strengths in working to build peace in many conflicts around the world: in the Balkans, in the brutal wars in West Africa, among religious believers in Middle East, in America and Asia.
Before examining these religious potentials, let me express the appreciation for the emerging field of "conflict resolution". Believers can learn many valuable and important lessons from its evolving methods and techniques; on the other hand they can give their own contributions to it, especially if they focus sharply on what is distinctive about religious communities.
We could say that is precisely religious communities' respective experiences of the "Divine" which is at the heart of their capacities to build peace.

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To speak of these centers of our experiences requires sensitivity, solid principles and care in use of our words, as we had to be firmly committed to respect genuine differences of belief that are present among our traditions.
Ordinary people in the midst of conflicts and gross injustice often show us that - despite their heavy sufferings - they are not separated from what might be defined by each tradition in its own way as the
Gift of Peace .
This gift is also perceived as a task, an urgent call to work for true justice and true healing … and yet it remains also as a gift.
Many of us could witness that believers have hidden strengths, spiritualities, a living link with Transcendent Mystery that ground their lives.
Often the dark night of affliction, gross injustices or withering losses … reveal the hidden strengths of spiritualities.
These strengths are also cultivated in the … "bright noon sun" … so as to foster individual acts of kindness, caring, honesty, a healing and strengthening of the reason and a commitment to building social systems that advance justice, function transparently and invite participation through which we can joyfully live together .
If each tradition works to build a link between its experience of the Gift of Peace and its spiritualities, then believers can gain enormous courage in confronting the blend of tragedy and human wickedness encountered in violence and injustice … and in countering messages of hate, calls for violence and other misuses of their religion for non-religious purposes.
Moreover, each community is challenged today to cultivate the respective spiritualities as truly irreplaceable resources for reconciliation and healing among and between conflicted persons and communities.

Other resources are represented by respective moral heritages, which are also great living discourses , shapers of character and conscience and cultivator of virtues. This heritage is an important compass for dealing with complex situations, including conflicts.

Last, but not of poor importance, the believers are the heirs of hundreds of thousands of churches, mosques, synagogues and temples that reach the far corners of the earth.

In short, religions have spiritual, moral and social potentials for building the peace and act for prevention and resolution of conflicts, also contributing to the emerging field of conflict transformation.

2nd WORKING TOGHETER TO ADVANCE A NEW NOTION OF SHARED SECURITY
Helping to put out of the fires of violent conflicts is important.
But … we should do more …
We can and should also contribute to the formulation of a positive notion of peace as a new practical paradigm.
This notion should echo the Gift of Peace; it should express the most basic moral consensus among religions of the world and - importantly - it must be expressed in a fashion that is intelligible in the public domain.
First of all, we should work together to forge a notion of "Shared security".
Let us confront "shared security" with other notion of security.
"State security" focuses upon security among or between the states. It does not address what happens within states. So, while it is important, it is not enough from a religious point of view.
The notion of "Human security" so helpfully advanced in the United Nations , goes beyond the notion of state security and includes respect to the basic well-being of persons within states.
However, even this expanded notion of human security does not adequately reflect for believers how their experiences of the Gift of Peace address two key concerns:

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1) Our fundamental vulnerability as limited finite human beings .
2) Our inter-relatedness as people.
A genuine notion of shared security needs address these two realities, as well as embrace enduring values to be found in the notions of state and human security.

There are radical existential religious questions posed by our traditions that relate quite directly to peace.
A multi-religious inspired notion of shared security should strive to find appropriate ways to knowledge
fundamental human vulnerability as a summons to solidarity with all others, especially the most vulnerable in practical terms.
Shared security also addresses our inter-relatedness. Each tradition has discerned for itself that its experience of Gift of Peace is directly linked to its own variation of what is termed the golden rule:
"Treat the other as yourself". This moral imperative to care for the other can provide the basis for a genuine notion of shared security.
Today… my security depends on your security.
Today, no walls can be built high enough to protect ourselves from the need of others.
Today, we are no safer than the most vulnerable among us.
Weapons of mass destruction, the environmental crisis and the recent financial crisis make our inter-relatedness increasingly clear to us.
So we know we have got to work together , we have got to take care of one another.
Honoring our deepest religious imperatives to care for the other is now the most practical way we can take.

In summary, shared security adds and expands upon the previous notions of state and human security in, at least, three ways:
1) It acknowledges that security is interdependent; it takes seriously the globalization of the world and recognizes that no nation, people or individual person can be genuinely secure until all others are as well.
2) It recognizes the common responsibility for solving problems and calls for a multi-national and multi-stakeholders approach.
3) It shifts the focus of security to those who are more vulnerable in practical terms. As a consequence we should correspond to the summons for genuine human solidarity. For religious people this summons is directly linked to their respective experiences of Transcendent Mystery.

3rd BUILDING A GLOBAL ALLIANCE OF MULTIRELIGIOUS MECHANISMS DESIGNED TO ADVANCE PEACE
I think we can agree that multi-religious cooperation for peace can in many situations be more powerful - both symbolically and substantively - than the effort of individual religious groups acting alone.
The symbolic strength arises when multi-religious cooperation helps to prevent or stop conflicts that can - directly or indirectly - involve different religious communities.
The substantive strength arises when cooperation helps diverse religious communities to align around common challenges to peace, offers them creative ways to take advantage of their complementary strengths , provides them with efficient modes for equipping themselves for needed forms of action and positions them for partnership with public institutions.
It follows that it's necessary to unite in order to build the simple and honest mechanisms that can serve principled multi-religious cooperation for peace on every level: local, national, regional and global.
The partnership should include also governments and other stakeholders.

CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, religious communities have priceless capacities essential to building peace.
They dwell - each in their own way - on the Gift of Peace. That gift relates to our common task to build peace, including both the task of addressing violent conflicts and the task of advancing a positive paradigm for peace such as the notion of shared security.