KAICIID: A Year in Review

KAICIID: A Year in Review

2017 has been an eventful year, and in many ways, a difficult one worldwide. At the same time, we are proud to look back at a year where we fulfilled our mandate of promoting interreligious and intercultural dialogue around the world, with the help of some very inspiring religious leaders, experts and organizations. We invite you to look back on the year with us, and explore some of our projects, programmes and events.

Text, Photo, Info Courtesy : http://www.kaiciid.org/

The year began with a meeting of over 100 key actors from diverse Nigerian communities, both Christian and Muslim, working to find common ground to build and support a platform for interreligious dialogue in Nigeria. Speaking at the opening in a speech that made headlines, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, the main spiritual leader of the Muslim communities in Nigeria, declared that Nigerian Muslims and Christians can live in peace only if they resolve to stand for peace and unite against hate preachers, who are enemies of peace.

In February, we expanded the KAICIID Fellows Programme to the Arab region.The KAICIID Fellows Programme is a training programme that connects interreligious dialogue (IRD) practitioners all over the world and supports them with dialogue training and introduces them to the international network of IRD practitioners.

In March, we completed the training of a team of dialogue facilitators as part of the Vienna Dialogue Facilitators Pilot project. The KAICIID dialogue facilitators are Austrian women with multicultural backgrounds who will be leading dialogue sessions among asylum seekers, recognised refugees and members of the host communities about integration-related themes.

In April, KAICIID Secretary General Faisal Bin Muaammar met Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, at the Council’s offices in the Vatican. Their cordial reunion focused on the Centre’s past, current and future collaboration with the Holy See, the Founding Observer.

In May, the Secretary General and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC)  High-Representative H.E. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to underscore their organizations’ commitment to collaborate in promoting interreligious and intercultural dialogue to ensure peaceful coexistence among peoples of different cultural and religious identities.

On the occasion of the United Nation’s World Refugee Day, the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) hosted the opening of the photo exhibition ‘Arrived.’, portraying the lives of people who have recently arrived as refugees in Austria. The event concluded KAICIID’s local outreach initiative supporting language learning for these “newly arrived” residents in Austria’s rural areas.

The first ever action plan specifically designed to enable religious leaders to prevent and counter incitement to violence – the Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent and Counter Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes – was launched in July by Secretary-General António Guterres at a meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The Plan of Action was developed over two years of intensive consultations at the global and regional levels organized by the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, with KAICIID, the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers.

In August, we launched the “Reinforcing Peace and Cooperation in the Heart of the Muslim Community” project on 8 August in Bangui, Central African Republic. The project trained more than 30 Imams on the values ​​of peace, dialogue and tolerance as well as to organize trainings and coaching sessions on dialogue and conflict facilitation in four regions.

Representatives of diverse religious organizations in Myanmar came together with their counterparts in civil society organizations in a powerful demonstration of interreligious solidarity and cohesion at a KAICIID-supported event in Yangon, Myanmar, to mark the United Nations “International Day of Peace” (21 September).

In a new exhibition,  we brought together artists from three different calligraphic traditions. The exhibition opened with a performance by the artists Abd A. Masoud, Feng Yu and Thomas Hoyer creating Arabic, Chinese and Western calligraphy respectively.

In November, we launched the KAICIID Dialogue Knowledge Hub, online database of resources, publications, and contact directories on interreligious dialogue.

Text, Photo, Info Courtesy : http://www.kaiciid.org/