This dialogue will engage faith leaders across Europe and the Middle East and draw on other examples of conflict as relevant. It will also build on recent Wilton Park initiatives promoting Freedom of Religion or Belief and Inclusive Citizenship, which engaged religious leaders from the Middle East and Europe.
The meeting will gather up to 40 multistakeholder participants, including key multifaith actors, at Wilton Park to:
- Provide an opportunity for key multifaith actors to meet in a safe space and rebuild relations of trust given the global rise in hate and breakdown in trust that has followed the hostilities in the Middle East , with the recent surge in antisemitic and anti-Muslim violence and incitement to hatred in Europe and around the world.
- Provide an opportunity for reflection on the contribution of faith actors to peacebuilding and the role of interfaith dialogue given the conflicts in the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine.
- Explore how to support the positive contribution of faith-based actors to a healing process and enable a vision of a constructive future in areas of conflict, alongside preventing the exploitation of religious faith as a tool in conflicts.
- Reflect on how to build on the legacy of peacebuilding and reconciliation in this area undertaken by diverse governments and intergovernmental efforts such as the UN, OSCE, WCC and others.
- Contribute to resetting a common understanding between policy makers and faith actors in the pursuit of peace and co-existence and provide the opportunity for policymakers to understand the complexities of religious narratives.
- Contribute to inclusion, co-existence and peer-to-peer learning through feeding into the “Faith for Rights” commUNity of practices, the Parliamentary Conference on Interfaith Dialogue organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Italian Parliament, in cooperation with Religions for Peace, to take place in Rome in June 2025, and similar initiatives.
In partnership with
In partnership with the British Embassy to the Holy See and Globethics, and in association with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and with the support of The Religion and Foreign Policy Initiative of the University of Sussex.
