 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Melissa Nozel, and on behalf of the Religion and Inclusive Societies Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, it is my pleasure to welcome you here today. USIP was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical and essential for U.S. and global security. We pursue this vision of a world without violent conflict by working on the ground with local partners. We provide people, organizations and governments with the tools, knowledge and training to manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and resolve it when it does. USIP's oldest thematic program focuses on the role of religion in peace and conflict, harnessing the contributions of religious actors, practices, ideas and institutions to promote inclusive societies and build sustainable peace. We do this through research and direct action like training and convening. We are so honored to host this conversation today on the intersection of religion, human rights and peace building with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. At USIP, we understand that human rights are an intrinsic part of sustainable peace. Human rights violations increase fragility and can be a contributing driver of violent conflict. Religious actors can have a critical role to play in both building peace and promoting human rights. Religious moral values and lessons are often intertwined with human rights principles and can help inform and advance international human rights norms in local contexts. Religious actors including those formerly trained and those who are not trained religious clerics but motivated by their religious beliefs in their work, including women, men and youth, are often on the front lines responding to local peace and conflict dynamics. They're often trusted members of their communities and can be voices of moral authority and serve as advocates for the rights of their community members. You will hear today from our distinguished speakers who will share from their experiences engaging with or as themselves religious actors in the promotion of human rights for sustainable peace. You will also hear about resources that are fostering the thoughtful engagement and contributions of religious actors to human rights and peace building like the OHCHR's Faith for Rights Toolkit which documents and demonstrates in practical ways the manifold roles of religious actors and factors in this space. I'm now honored to welcome my colleague at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Human Rights Treaties Branch to say a few words. Ibrahim, thank you for joining us today and for your partnership for this event. Thank you very much, Melissa, for this opportunity and for the partnership we are having into trying to introduce or rather to accelerate some really important shifts in dealing with religion in international relations in development, in peace, and in conflict, as you said. The most impressive contrast, in my view, and all those who deal with religious phenomena at large from different perspectives is how far it can be, at the same time, a power for construction and for peace and for reconciliation and how, unfortunately, in other contexts, it can be the exact opposite. If one thing only, this says how powerful religion and faith traditions at large are and how important it is to engage with faith actors to unleash their positive potential and to allow them to be human rights defenders in their own right. USIP has a very interesting tradition in two ways. First, in acting on the ground with different communities, in enabling them. And secondly, in doing this in a way which is interreligious in many cases. And I can testify from my own experience as professionally to the amazing energy that is unleashed when people are talking from different faith traditions and identify what brings them together, what's most important and crucial for all of them. I feel that the program, today's program and the variety of experts who will share with us their testimonies and their lessons learned is very important in three ways. Number one, in transcending what I may call the oral tradition into a documented methodology of engaging with and among faith leaders. The issue is not just good intentions. Good intentions are useful to indicate actions that yet need to be taken. And the second shift, I believe, is the shift from sporadic events into really sustainable approach. And that's how we try to link the Faithful Rights Toolkit that will be presented today from different speakers to the peace building, because as you said, Melissa, very rightfully, nobody can overemphasize the link between peace and human rights and development. With these few words, I'm very happy to give you the floor back and to the moderators to run us through this very interesting group of people who will share their thoughts. Over to you. Thank you, Ibrahim. So we hope that our conversation today will be interactive. It's an informal discussion together. To that end, to those in the audience, I encourage you to participate by asking questions in the question box. You'll find it on the event page on usip.org below the event video. And in a later stage in our program today, we'll be taking questions in just a little while from that discussion box. So please, we encourage you throughout the program to be entering questions and comments there. I'd like to acknowledge that in our audience today, we have participants from our latest global campus course, Religious Engagement in Peace Building, that we launched recently with Search for Common Ground. This course is a resource that we hope will be useful to many of you at this intersection of religion, peace building, and human rights. And it's a resource that's available free of charge through usip.org. And we encourage you all to take a look and to participate. Now I will turn this over to Michael, my co-moderator today. And he will introduce our first panelist. Michael, over to you. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Melissa. And we're delighted to co-facilitate this interactive peer to peer learning discussion. And without further ado, let me introduce the first panelist. And obviously afterwards, we will go into an interactive discussion. And as Melissa was saying, please also feel free to jump in and have any questions and comments through the chat function. So Mustafa Bittari, he is a former United Nations Human Rights Minority Fellow. So he himself went through this fellowship program, which before COVID-19 hit was happening in Geneva physically. And now it's in a slightly different shape. He's a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Yarmouk camp in Syria. Now he has been living in the Netherlands and works as a program coordinator and workshop leader for various civil society organizations, including the Spotlight Team International Art. And that's precisely what I wanted to ask you the first question, Mustafa. If you could please tell us about your work with refugees, notably from religious minorities, and also how you in your work use music and other arts for their storytelling, and also in general for addressing what they went through. Hi, hi. Thank you, thank you very much for this opportunity. And are you hearing me well? Yeah, cool. First of all, thank you all for this opportunity. And actually, we are working with the most disadvantaged group here in Europe, to be frank, and most of them religious minorities. So we are working in the Zeal Zoukar Center or in the camps. We are working outside the camps through the art. We are collecting the people between each other to meet, to break the stereotype, to see each other, to talk with each other. Actually, we are building the real peace between these people through the art. So there is many steps that you have to take in these procedures, but also there is many efforts paying by the two parties inside this community. All of them like these kind of procedures, because through the art you are talking with the human, the inside the human. And they are breaking everything in the mind through these shows or music or projects, so as simple as this. But to be frank, we hope most of us use the art for real building the peace, because I think it's the easiest way to let the people talk with each other. Yeah, thank you. And what you just mentioned in terms of letting the people talk with each other, this is a fundamental part of the peer-to-peer learning where everyone is really equal and has lots to contribute and to learn from each other. And also the other feature is storytelling, so where really people share their experiences, good experiences, but also bad experiences. And you have prepared a short video, which we will show now, which illustrates precisely your work with these refugees and the Netherlands. So please, I... If you can add something in the video. In this video, there is seven projects with many organizations, one of them Verolikei, the other one Catching Culture Orchestra, and Spotlight. These projects, for example, Sufi Blue, it's an artistic platform where the people be with each other and do music and dance with each other. There is an Alinegma House or Alistar House, this house for the teenager or early teenager suicide in the Azid Zuckercentrum here in the Netherlands. And we built this house for them for music and dance and meditation. There is also music and in the HR, we made last year in the pandemic. The name of this video is Two Shadows. This is the most important project inside the video, and I hope you will enjoy it. Thanks a lot, Mostafa, and you increased even more our curiosity. So let's show the short video over to our colleagues. Many thanks, Mostafa. And I think it's really powerful to see also the way you use and to weave into your work with these various backgrounds of the refugees, also to really facilitate healing. And let me just give you a brief follow-up question also picking up something that the participants already sent through the chat, referring to also people from different religions who have created social initiatives. And I was wondering also if the different backgrounds of these refugees, if that facilitated, or at times it also created frictions and problems and tensions. So if you can quickly respond to that question. To be frank, I can answer yes. It is. And there's also differences between the people and our mission or our team. But it's right. The best to facilitate these differences. We are calling these things differences, not challenging. So yes, we are solving all of these issues, by the way, because through the arts, you can't solve it. Simply you can. Yeah. Thanks a lot for this honest, but also positive answer. Let me pass back to Melissa for the second panelist. Thank you, Michael and Mustafa. Thank you for your important work and for sharing this really powerful video with us. I'd now like to turn to Noci. She's the coordinator of the capacity building capacity building program in OHCHR's human rights treaties branch. Noci, I want to ask you a few questions. How and in what ways do the UN treaty body system, the group of bodies mandated to monitor the international human rights treaties, help to prevent conflicts? And how can human rights advocates, activists, and religious actors use the system? Thank you, Melissa. Thank you for the question. And I'm very pleased to take part in today's conversation. So thank you very much for the invitation. So thank you very much for the invitation. Maybe I can add a beat to what you say in your introductory remarks on the importance of human rights in conflict prevention. And we've seen in the video shown earlier and also so that history and also in what's happening right now in many countries that the violations of human rights really are the source of most conflicts and crisis, I'd say. And it could be inequalities, power imbalances within a society, a group that is marginalized, social unity that is threatened by direct discrimination, exclusion, repression or intimidation of minorities, minorities, you name it. So I think it's obvious that the protection and promotion of human rights should be a critical component of all efforts of conflict prevention. And we've seen in processes like constitution redrafting, but also in truths and reconciliation processes that human rights are very much at the base or at the heart of this initiative. So sometimes it would be adding a new chapters on human rights in a constitution or seeking justice and also holding accountable those that have committed human rights violations. So coming from the branch of the officer to high commissioner for human rights that deals with the human rights treaties and then you mentioned the bodies that monitor their implementation. We're very much aware of the role that the system plays or can play or can contribute to conflict prevention and to sustaining peace. So if I may recall briefly that a human rights system was actually designed to address the issues that I mentioned earlier and other ones, these issues that lead to conflict and crisis and this was after the world wars. So for that reason, that system, the human rights system, including the treaty bodies play a crucial preventative role and it is at the disposal of states and the international community in general, but also at the disposal of other actors like civil society organizations, human rights advocates and activists. So on one hand it has this body of international norms and standards that help frame and can help legitimize grievances, for instance. So when a group sees that what is done to them is a violation of right that is protected by international law, it legitimizes their claims and grievances. And then next to that you have the system, the various bodies that provide avenues for bringing these claims. So as I say, the human rights system including the system are only tools at the disposal of actors. So they would not solve a crisis. They will not on their own prevent conflicts, but I think they are crucial tools. So going back to your question, how do they prevent conflict first? The system, including the treaty bodies, they are the only parts of the UN, the United Nations, that consistently and regularly assess countries on their human rights record, including with regard to the key factors that drive conflict and crisis, physical protection, legal protection, political participation, civic space, cultural participation, inclusiveness and so on and so forth. So as the scrutiny is based on legal commitments that states have freely entered into when they ratified the treaties, I think the scrutiny has a very solid basis for engaging on, engaging or challenging or engaging on the difficult human rights concerns without challenging national ownership or sovereignty, because very often those would be the response to states when you look into their human rights situation. So I'd say a fewer than 20 states that are member of the United Nations have not ratified either international covenants on human rights. That is the international covenant on civil and political rights and international covenants and economic social and cultural rights. So that means more than 170 countries have ratified these two covenants that provide legal protection against discrimination and grounds like race or religion or language that these two covenants also provide legal recognition and protection of rights to freedom of religion or belief, protection of the rights of minorities or the right of the right to cultural participation. So these states are subject to an international and independent scrutiny by the two bodies monitoring the two international covenants. And in addition to that, we know that all states are parties or have ratified at least two human rights treaties. And most of our actually ratified most treaties. So this is really this whole scrutiny system that is in place and that can have a preventative impact. Let's say a treaty like the convention on the elimination of racial discrimination can be used to address discrimination against person whose religion identity has been racialized for instance. So the other treaties also that cover for instance specific groups like the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women or also the convention on the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities. They do provide protection of the fundamental freedoms of these people. So the other question is how human rights advocates activists can use the system. The scrutiny exercise that I described by treaty bodies is actually a participative exercise. Service society organizations, national human rights institutions, academics, even have used it regularly to present information on the human rights situation including the situation may lead or may escalate into conflict. And then I know that for several years now the religious actors are grouped at the office of the high commissioners has specifically sought to mobilize to engage with the human rights mechanism or the treaty bodies. So in addition to bringing the human rights concern to the human rights community in addition to bringing the human rights concern to the attention of the bodies activists and advocates could also suggest specific recommendations. And as an example in this case I could say for instance that the rights of rights or entitlements of asylum seekers and refugees are an example of a common or recurrent features of these recommendations coming from several treaty bodies. The human rights committee, the committee on economic social and cultural rights, the committee against torture and so on and so forth. So and there are measures in place to reduce the risk of reprisals for instance by allowing the submission of the information on a confidential basis. And apart from this regular periodic scrutiny treaty bodies also have other procedures that have very specific prevention purposes. So for instance the committee on the elimination of racial discrimination has an early warning procedure that aims to prevent existing human rights situation to escalate to preventing to situation to escalate into conflicts. So really the subject of today's discussion and that same committee has also a procedure that it's called urgent action that seeks to respond to problems or situations that require immediate attention to prevent or limit the scale of the human rights violation. So these two procedures that I just described the early warning procedure and the urgent actions are almost exclusively for the use of human rights advocates and activists and who can reach to the committee to denounce the situations and for the committee to ask the state to act upon them. Maybe I would and saying that it's sometimes it's difficult to show the result of this work or more generally of any preventive prevention works because we know that prevention succeeded when nothing happened. So I hope I've answered your questions. Melissa. Thank you, Nozi, very much so. I appreciate your thoughtful response there. One follow up question. The Faithful Rights Toolkit is an excellent tool and resource and I'm wondering if you can explain a little bit more about how that tool and perhaps other tools that exist out there can contribute to prevention efforts and how is that resource used? Okay, thank you. First, I think the toolkit helps I think develop a good understanding of the relevant international norms and standards relevant to, let's say, religion and the interpretation of these norms are often presented in documents that are not easily understandable for the lay person and sometimes they're even difficult for us to work on human rights to read and understand. And these interpretative documents or the interpretative explanations are often found in multiple documents. So a tool like the Faithful Rights unpacks these norms that are found in multiple treaties and put them in one place and the toolkit unpicks the connection between religion, and rights in a clear and actionable way. So in this sense I think the toolkit is groundbreaking. It's a tool that we don't have yet on other subjects on other issues for instance like business and human rights or let's say the health that is covered by several treaties. And that knowledge that you can acquire through the use of this toolkit can be used by human rights activists and advocates to prepare submissions to the treaty bodies and to help hold states accountable to their treaties obligations. And second, I think it's in the office we repeat this program of the offices based on this. It is crucial to create at the national level among the population and understanding of human rights to raise awareness and to ensure that it exists effective remedies and channels for resolving disputes and so on. And the toolkit or the general the Faithful Rights framework and the toolkit are part of the efforts to create that understanding and awareness at the national level. And of course religious actors are part of in that sense part of a national system of protection of human rights. And I like to repeat the message by the High Commissioner for Human Rights but also I think Ibrahim Salam also mentioned this impressing upon the importance of national dialogues on human rights issues of national ownership of solutions addressing the human rights concerns and the national expertise on those matters. There's only so much that treaty bodies that meet a few times a year in Geneva can bring about changes on the ground. Any change meets action taken by actors at the national level. So with that in mind what we're planning to do so coordinating or HCHO's Global Capacity Living Program on the Human Rights Treaties with activities in close or maybe 100 countries we're aware that we can use this reach to provide a greater platform for disseminating the faith for rights toolkit and then maybe also make this initiative more sustainable. So in the short term that is next year maybe for six, nine months we plan to develop a new learning version of the toolkit then the objective is to take advantage of the possibilities offered by online courses in terms of accessibility and scalability and we'll be working with academic institutions and hopefully with the US the US Institute for Peace to do that and this goes in line with commitment number 18 of the Faith for Rights Framework to use technology in order to use technology for capacity building and outreach purposes so that we make the Faith for Rights toolkit available for use at the national level and then obviously we'll build on partnerships with academic institutions that have been developed since the beginning of this Faith for Rights Framework the partnership that were developed under the commitment number 17 of the framework so we're very much keen to explore an interest in developing a partnership in this regard thank you. Thank you so much Nussi. I've been so impressed by the Faith for Rights toolkit and it's really a fantastic resource to build the capacity of religious actors to be engaging very directly in the protection of human rights to hearing how the tool will evolve and how it will be engaged more in the digital space and I'll just note that there is a link to the toolkit to the Faith for Rights toolkit through the USIP event page so those of you who are tuning in and watching you'll be able to find that link directly on our webpage there with that I'll turn it back to Michael who will introduce our next speaker. Thank you. Many thanks Melissa and also just to mention that the Faith for Rights framework and toolkit is also embedded and mentioned in the most recent USIP online course so in that sense it's all basically in sync and cross-referencing. We have talked a lot and emphasized the role of religious leaders and faith-based actors so our third speaker Dr. Munir Elkaderi-Buchish will be able to also bring in this perspective directly. He is the president of the Foundation Almutaka in Morocco and director of the International Sufi Forum so I will ask him a question and due to technical issues he had to pre-record his answer so the question that I asked him is what are the sources of conflict between and within religions? First of all allow me to thank Mr. Ibrahim Salama as well as the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights for their kind invitation. We must remember that wars and conflicts are a constant in history. Conflict is human phenomenon caused by economic and political ideologies that want to expand and dominate others. Violence and combat dominates people's minds, wars struggles, games of informal or state alliances highlight the limits of human organizations which too often seek violence as privileged mode of conflict resolution. On the opposite the spiritual methods of religions and general and Islam in particular is to call for peace. We can read in the Holy Quran however takes a like unless as a punishment for murder or mischief and it will be as if they killed all of humanity man qatal nafsin bighari nafsin nama qatal nasa jami'a Islam and Sufism which is its spiritual dimension teach us how to find inner peace at the individual level and to find peace on the outside. This journey of peace starts by leading the great flight against our ego the grand jihad because it is one of the main source of conflict within ourselves as the prophet said. Today it is very important to say that our interpretation of religion must be guided by peace mercy, unity and living together. Religion must be a factor of sharing peaceful coexistence, discovering others and appeasement. In Hadith the prophet peace be upon him said God the compassionate one has mercy on those who are merciful. If you show mercy to those who are on the earth, he who is in heaven will show mercy to you. The central objective of Islam and the Sufism is to pacify social relations with itic and the moral code of conduct guided by respect for one's neighbors whatever he rejuice or cultural affiliation. For the great Sufi master Ibn Arabi peace and mercy are central universal values when he said in compass by mercy and gentleness all animals and all don't deprive anyone who asks for help even by a good word even by a good word. Finally I must say that the practice of Sufism who is the station of excellence in Islam is an antidote against conflicts it helps us create a bridge between people and societies today it is necessary to create such platforms of dialogue to create links between different fates let me finish by thanking you for your efforts in this direction. Peace be upon you Thank you Dr. Munir for this thoughtful intervention I would like to turn it over to Nox Tames Nox is a senior visiting expert on the religion and inclusive societies and Middle East and North Africa teams at the U.S. Institute of Peace he is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement. Nox I would like to ask you in what ways are religious actors well positioned to advocate for human rights in Geneva we are seeing some questions coming into this I am wondering if you might speak to some examples. Thank you. It is great to be here and to be speaking to this wonderful issue and salute the great work of our colleagues at the High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva for focusing on how faith actors have developed over the past couple of decades focusing on religious freedom internationally and issues of protecting religious minorities I think the missing link has been religious leaders, faith communities to advocate for the other we have seen progress made with more governments coming into the work of promoting freedom of religion or belief we have seen experience from different political philosophies different religious backgrounds, different regional regions of the world joining this cause to promote freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief and NGOs, the advocate community has been there of course for a long time in touch with the persecuted bringing that information to policymakers and so the next step it needs to be is to focus on protecting the inherent dignity of everyone to pursue truth as their conscience leads and why are they important? Well, they have such a strong moral voice they are community leaders, they can speak to their societies in ways that certainly international actors can't in fact elected leaders, government officials they attune to the views of religious leaders and are looking for them for guidance how far can they go to lead their society forward to create more civic space for diversity of thought so there has been progress made in this at one step in setting the framework so you go back for Catholicism with Vatican II that transformed the position of the Roman Catholic Church to being an advocate for religious freedom and that's what we've seen thanks to the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah Bambaya in America's Declaration talking about in an Islamic majority context the right of non-Muslim minorities to be treated as equal citizens and then just two years ago a really remarkable event in the UAE where the Pope and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar came together to issue the document of human fraternity talking about how these two great faiths shared the inherent dignity of the individual which includes freedom of conscience so that's sort of setting the framework, those have been positive steps and now I have experienced sort of the second part of where faith actors have set an example where they've been that advocate on the ground I remember when I was working at the State Department I visited Sri Lanka and I was in the capital Colombo and I was meeting with Muslim leaders and Evangelical Christian leaders at the main mosque in downtown Colombo and they were both experiencing problems and what was so remarkable both each community leader took times advocating for the other so the Muslim leaders were saying we've got a lot of problems but these Christian minorities you should help them they really need your help and the Christian leaders were saying no, no, no, no yes we've got some problems but the Muslims are really being targeted for attacks and violence you should help them first and I thought that was such a great example of communities from different backgrounds who have deep theological disagreements coming together around the idea of human dignity of the inherent rights of every individual to pursue truth I've seen that in other places with Muslims protecting churches Christians advocating for atheists Hindus advocating for Muslims and Christians and these are the positive steps that we need to see more of and I think this is where the faith rights toolkit this faith rights movement that Ibrahim and Michael have been so such leaders in is exciting and is needed because here you're starting to sort of translate these dry technical UN documents into tools that faith leaders on the ground in situations of instability human rights abuses they actually can use them they can take what's been established at a global level and apply it to a community level and if we can get that growing we can see those roots really go down deep into the soil then we're really going to be getting into a new phase of human rights advocacy where I'd like to say there are four legs to an advocacy stool the religious community fully engaged in I think it'll be a benefit to so many suffering people around the world Thanks Knoks and thanks for some of those really powerful examples I wanted to flip to the question a little bit and ask you from the religion inclusive society's team's perspective and a lot of the research that we've been doing over the years we've been very careful in engaging religious actors and there are sometimes situations where it might be less effective to bring in religious actors or to engage them in very particular ways and perhaps not in others and so I'm wondering if you might reflect on if you agree in what situations might it be less effective perhaps to engage religious actors in this space I think at one level we need to be mindful that governments don't try to manipulate religion to achieve some sort of political role in the temporal to use the spiritual to achieve something in the temporal and we know throughout human history in every region of the world and every community that temptation is there everything from the 30 years war in Europe to the challenges you see in the Middle East today to the flash points religion is a powerful a powerful motivator for incredible acts of charity and kindness and seeking justice but we also know that it can be misused and abused and be a justification for acts of violence and hate so it's incumbent that those who are working on human rights issues either from the governmental side or civil society side are are consistent in saying we're advocating for the right for everybody that's not to say communities shouldn't advocate for their own we want communities to advocate for their own that's a very natural thing to do but it's in a context of enjoying the right for all while being mindful that there are going to be negative actors that want to twist things to achieve a political goal that is detrimental to the cause and I think this is where this idea of creating civic space of protecting an environment in every society where people can debate ideas and philosophies and theology without fear of harm or imprisonment or persecution that that actually is going to help a community find that equilibrium where different when new ideas come in they can be debated they can be accepted they can be rejected if no one can resort to violence to try to settle an argument that's otherwise spiritual and that's hard though we've seen in a lot of contexts where there's weak rule of law there's failed or failing states those protections aren't there and then you see the loudest usually most extreme voices coming to the top because they're willing to use violence to to promote their ideology and create a lot of the growth of extremist violence and extreme human rights abuses so it's creating that civic space so that there's freedom of debate and thought exchange of ideas setting firm rules of the road and being mindful of how people try to misuse religion to advance other goals Picking up your point Nox about creating this vital civic space and then freedom of expression and freedom of religion I believe let me also introduce one of the questions that just came in through the chat so thanks a lot for that question and I'm reading it and perhaps I will address it also to to Ibrahim because he has been working on on on this for years so the question is I'm trying to visualize what the toolkit might look like in a practical sense could you provide an example of what this actually looks like and what would be a statement or a question and if it just may add what are your experiences in piloting this over the past two years in the COVID-19 context thank you thank you Mikey for this very important question I think the main difference between the toolkit on faith for rights and what I may call the traditional ways of approaching religion is that religion is usually top down it's predominantly about submission to something higher and it's very rarely about debating these fundamental issues so allowing or introducing critical thinking into the religious sphere is one of the main innovations here which is done very respectfully as Melissa said at times one has to be very careful about approaching religious issues not to offend people or have a counter effect by involving them in the wrong way so in a very respectful way the toolkit provides methodologies and models and examples of exercises that faith actors are recommended to use into their own engagement within their own communities and particularly on an interface basis it's really hard to ask religious actors to stop preaching but it's not far from that, it's transcending preaching into reflecting together and I think the whole idea of religion it's a deep conviction but at the same time it's a conviction which does not deny reasoning and which does not preclude others rights to believe in different things and Max mentioned this very concrete example I think the main test of a genuine faith is the moment when you defend people who believe in other faith traditions with the same vigor rather than defending yourself it's at this point in time when I personally feel that this faith speaks to me personally so to come back specifically to the question we take any issue of attention between different faith traditions or between them and human rights abortion speech that might incite to violence excommunication, judging others theologies or religious thoughts in a manner that might lead to discrimination against them and we take these misgivings or misactions or manipulations of religions and we try to provide exercises in the form of unpacking in the form of storytelling in the form of case studies to discuss it from different perspectives without preconceived conclusions without the right and wrong at the beginning but people reach it at the very end I don't know if this transmits it or not but to link this question Michael to another question about the availability in different languages we are working on the toolkit it's now in numerous languages maybe four or five Michael will correct me but we are working on soon launching the French and the Arabic version for the participant to ask why there's no Arabic it takes much more time to bring all these nuances into the Arabic languages but we are working on it and this will come but the main shift is critical thinking the main shift is nobody is higher than the other the main shift is nothing should be taken for granted even in the name of belief you have the right to put aside your mind if you so wish anybody and believe in something but others are entitled to question it and you should be able to engage with them and my personal experience is that it's amazingly empowering to allow faith actors from different traditions to address thematic issues from different perspectives without a preconceived or an imposed or a top-down prediction on what should be the final solution it's this intellectual suspense about what is the most rational way to deal with these issues and you will find that at the end almost all faith traditions have a very valid angle that adds value to the understanding of any social issue it's difficult to transmit this you need to try the toolkit in terms of engagement and that's why the whole exercise of peer-to-peer learning is based on mutual literacy that is needed between the faith camp if I dare to put it this way and the rights camp again if I link it very quickly to the question from a colleague in Bulgaria about why is culture not used I think it's another fundamental question very much related to the question on the toolkit why is the toolkit conceived in a dynamic way because you have three terms of reference or three channels of communication of engagement, of prevention and of resolution of conflicts you have the law you have faith at large including religion and then you have culture the problem is that at the multilateral level there are silos most of the time and one of the main aims of the toolkit is to break these silos and to create a horizontal link of culture, faith and law law is too boring unless it really factors those to which it's supposed to be applicable lawyers need to realize the limits of law and appreciate the richness of culture and the power of faith over to you many thanks and as you rightly mentioned law is not everything and really needs to be complemented through other forms of communication and their art and what Mostafa was showing and also spirituality what Dr. Sidi Munir explained as important let me pick up quickly one question again coming from the chat box addressed to NOx thank you for sharing those comments and capturing those examples is important and has been a point of conversation do you know anyone trying to track those data points I think that's really a fundamental point so over to you Nox there are a few sources that I've relied upon but none as specific as probably you're looking for and I think that's a space where we can always have better data more precise data and I'm a bit biased here but the State Department, International Religious Freedom Reports always have a section that looks at societal actors the good and the bad the practice of governments it covers every country in the world except the United States the United States has its own reports from our Department of Justice that does similar activities but those reports are very comprehensive they rely on firsthand information that been gathered from U.S. embassies so that's a good source of information secondly the Pew Research Forum has been doing really innovative work to bring together different data points to analyze the state of government or societal hostility towards religion in every region and country of the world and there's about a two year lag on their findings but they're still very influential and they seem right that they continue to find very high levels of hostility towards free practice of faith by governments and or societal actors in every region of the world the last statistic I recall correctly almost three out of every four people live in a country with very narrow lanes of permissible religious activity that doesn't mean three out of four people are being persecuted but rather if those individuals step outside of those established frameworks either by government or society they're going to immediately feel a backlash or a negative reaction from the authorities, from their neighbors or both and that's become a real foundational document for people doing human rights work focused on religious freedoms I would commend those two reports to you but also flag for you and others listening that there's a lot more room to do more study here and additional data would be appreciated Thanks Nax I have another question that's come in here that I would like to direct to Mustafa this question I'll read it from the top this is awesome this sounds like an interfaith approach encouraging people to see the commonalities and primarily to celebrate our common humanity I really like the critical thinking part of the toolkit but isn't religion about faith and not thinking Mustafa would you respond to this question Could you please just raise your voice a bit just give me the question because Yes, yes One line of the question is isn't religion about faith and not thinking and I'm wondering if you can talk about this from the perspective of your work I'm not hearing you, I'm sorry I'm not hearing you So just to paraphrase the question Please repeat and Just to paraphrase the question because the comment was appreciating the critical thinking part but then wondering if religion is not about faith and not about it's more about faith rather than critical thinking or thinking in the first place So in your work for example with the refugees Does this come up? Okay, it's a very good question to be frank Yes, it's not about religion it's about the thinking and the way of thinking of these targeting group let's say and you have many tools to work with these thinking or because it's coming with the culture also it's not just coming with the religious religious habit or coming with real there is real differences between all of these groups and you have to be really clever how to solve it and how to enter to it but simply you can and just you have to believe that I can and you have to see which tools that you have to use in front of these differences and then you will be very good to solve it I see Ibrahim has raised his hand Over to you On the same question Michael I think it's a general perception and also a general practice that faith is associated with basically submission and this is one of the main sources of tensions between human rights and religion religion is generally taken to be a submission so you don't discuss you just take it you believe or you don't believe otherwise you are blasphemous on the other hand human life doesn't accept anything without scrutiny hence the animosity between the two spheres so introducing and intersecting the critical thinking into the religious spheres and then to say who said religion is only about submission I mean faith can only be deepened if you think about it if you don't think about it it's superficial it can go away, it can be brushed by doubts either by people or by circumstances or by misfortunes of life and there is a huge heritage of faith traditions which is amazingly meeting together intersecting converging on these facts it's not the most visible side of the story of religion the most visible side is people who are impressively respectful and you hardly talk to them and you take from them and you run away and you repeat the best you can it's not only about that there is also another side and I'm very much like what Dr. Munir Rakadiri Bucic mentioned because I think it shows the missing horizontal link to paraphrase you Knox about the missing links the missing horizontal link between compliance because if you work on your inner resistance on your own ego first you control the deepest source of tension at the origin before they become two egos fighting and each one of them haven't even sorted out his own ego or her own ego in advance so religion adds something you cannot reach this by just faith you need to reflect, you need research and dots that need to be linked between the three disciplines low faith and culture over to you Michael great thank you and I've seen some questions come up about if there will be a manuscript or transcript available at this event and it's just like to mention that this event has been recorded as being recorded and it will be available through the same website the event page on usip.org from which you're able to watch the event today on YouTube we'll also be linking the recording to the faith for rights toolkit as well as to usip's global campus course on religious engagement in peace building so it's we hope will be also a resource that you all can turn back to as you'd like I'll also mention our hope to continue collaborating in this space and welcome opportunities to engage this really important intersection and hope that this is only the start of a bigger important engagement here and look forward to engaging many of you in the audience as part of some of those conversations as well I'd also like to mention again that the faith for rights toolkit is available online I know there have been some more questions about how to access it it is linked in the event page on usip.org I think it's been added to the chat there as well in the Q&A chat and in addition you can find it simply online by googling faith for rights with number four toolkit and OHCHR and it should come up there as well and of course it's linked also through our global campus site we've had a couple questions come up about engaging with religious minorities and specifically some of the context where the rights of minorities have been violated and I want to ask maybe Nosei you'd like to comment on the dynamics around the Uighurs in China and that situation and how you'd respond there. Thank you Melissa I think there was a question asking about the peace building and the section of religions and discrimination against Uighurs so and then another question to say what can the UN do to ensure that this minority has rights so just to say I think that question already a response because it says that we cannot talk about peace when there's discrimination so it's just you reverse it and then you have the answer we can ensure peace is only when we address discrimination and I can also say that minorities have rights so that's guaranteed and the question is whether they can exercise the rights and sometimes they are provided let's say the environment to exercise their rights. What the UN does the UN to start is at the very basis it's an intergovernmental entity so states among themselves have addressed the issues of minorities through resolutions of the UN Council but also through the UN human rights mechanisms if you're familiar with it let's say the Human Rights Council but also the issues of minority are dealt with regularly by the treaty bodies that I've mentioned in my presentation thank you. I'll now turn to Nox Nox if you'd like to offer a closing reflection and perhaps taking into account some of the additional questions we're receiving more generally about religious minorities and the protection of those who are persecuted over to you Nox thank you. Thank you and I think the questions about the situation of Christians or Uighur Muslims and others really gets to the point of this conversation like how do we bring religious actors into the work of advocating for the persecuted and in the context of China there's really no space internally for religious actors to petition their government to end their abusive practices but this is where faith actors in other countries can motivate their own governments to take actions to speak up to speak out where faith actors can engage their elected leaders where faith actors can challenge other communities to join them in coalitions to speaking up and speaking out and I think that's the part where this sort of cross-pollination can be so important where you see communities that have deep theological differences on the inherent dignity of the individual understanding the international human rights standards that have been established through the UN and other regional bodies and then finding ways to add their voice to bring their credibility to bring their moral standing and moral suasion into these arguments as I said earlier that's sort of the missing link that's the part that the four-legged stool that's the wobblyest and I would also tie it back to you know about a few weeks ago we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1981 UN Declaration against discrimination based on religion or belief and I would commend a great article that Michael and Heiner Bielefeldt roll wrote on the history of that drafting process but I think what it shows is there's been a sort of a series of evolution of growing standards and now the standards are set and we're in this new phase of okay how do we push these standards forward how do we get everyone involved in advocating for freedom of religion and belief freedom of expression and the rights of the individual and so this is why I think this Faith to Rights initiative is so important it's so needed and it's filling a gap that needs to be filled so thank you very much and I appreciate the conversation we've had today many thanks Nox and just picking up very quickly a question about the translations just to confirm that the 18 commitments on Faith to Rights they are already available in 11 languages and by next March we plan to have and that was the question the toolkit also available in Arabic, French, English and Spanish and now I would like to hand over to Ibrahim for the closing remarks just two quick remarks both emanating from the chat box first the colleague from Bulgaria who ended his or her question wondering why there isn't enough emphasis by the United Nations on intercultural studies I can only agree with him and again my explanation is the silos and that's why we try to design the Faith for Rights toolkit to become one of the examples that can be built on in this directions my second closing reflection is the importance of art and here I'll be quoting Mustafa and actually seeing is believing as people say and you can disagree on ideas but on the same ideas you can never disagree on the beauty that you feel when these ideas are expressed even if you disagree with them