Indian Religious Leaders Raise the Voice for Securing Human Rights During the UN World Interfaith Harmony Week
India, Delhi – On February 10th, a peace conference with Indian religious leaders from Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Tibet Buddhism, Bahaism, and Jainism was held at India Habitat Centre in Delhi aiming to raising the awareness of human rights violations caused by religious intolerance in the UN World Interfaith Harmony Week. An international peace NGO, Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL) affiliated with the UN ECOSOC organized this conference in cooperation with Sarva Dharma Samvaad (SDS) and civil society organizations in India.
The participants had an interfaith dialogue seeking for the right role of religious leaders to ensure human rights and achieve peace within the religious harmony responding to the recent issue that occurred in South Korea where a young woman died due to the coercive conversion program, assumed to be driven by Christian pastors.
As the main speaker, Ven. Lama Lobzang, president of International Buddhist Confederation in New Delhi said, “I think the current society is facing with the moral crisis. As the religious practitioners who have common values and ideals of the religion such as truthfulness, mutual respect, we should join in together and raise our voice to keep such values especially from the violation of human rights in relation to religion.”
Syed Farid Ahmed Nizami, General Secretary of Sufi Cultural Organization, also said, “Religious leaders have a duty to maintain high ethical and moral standards and strive to cease to any conflict in their family and society. The goal of the religion should always be to achieve peace and justice.”
The host organization, HWPL, has globally carried out various peace projects including the interreligious dialogue meetings called the World Alliance of Religions’ Peace (WARP) Office, Legislate Peace Campaign for international law for peace, and peace walk to raise the awareness of peace building. The WARP Office meetings have been held at 216 offices in 124 countries and Legislate Peace Campaign has been conducted in 176 countries in cooperation with local NGOs and civil society.
