"Preventing incitement to violence" common goal of 232 religious guides from 7 different countries
The UN headquarters in Vienna hosted the international meeting behind closed doors from 13 to 15 February 2018 Practical Declinations of the Action Plan for religious guides and promoters to prevent and counter incitement to violence that can lead to hate crimes.
This is the Action Plan launched by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in New York on July 14, 2017: a document defined as "pioneering", the first of its kind to involve religious leaders around the world in the implementation of local strategies, suitable for from time to time to different companies and countries in the prevention of hate crimes.
But the Action Plan itself is the result of a long journey: the first consultation was hosted in 2015 by the Kingdom of Morocco in Fez, with the final result of the Fez Declaration. This was followed by five other regional consultations in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, each of which merged into the final Action Plan, involving 232 religious leaders from 7 different countries and all major religions such as Hinduism. , Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and numerous minorities. At each of the five meetings, at least 30% of the participants were women.
The UN partner in this initiative is also the KAICIID (the international center for interreligious dialogue named after the Saudi King Abd al Aziz), the World Council of Churches and the Network of Religious and Traditional Peacemakers.
The Italian COREIS (Islamic Religious Community) has actively taken part in the stages of this path in collaboration with the UN continuously and internationally for years. In particular, we worked on practical versions of the Action Plan shared with the United Nations Office for the Prevention of Violence (and Responsibility for Protection) in Fez (2015), Treviso (2015), New York (2017) up to this last stage of Vienna (2018).
"In order for our action to prevent speeches and hate crimes to be effective - said Imam Yahya Pallavicini in Vienna - it is necessary to intervene simultaneously on several levels: political (religious freedom), social (integration of migrants), media ( give space to different cultural models), educational (intercultural and interreligious courses in schools and prisons) and finally religious (non-opportunistic dialogue between religious and common safeguarding of sacred places) ".