Bahá’í World/Volume 25/The Bahá’í International Community, 96-97

Bahá’í World/Volume 25 The Bahá’í International Community, 96-97

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[Page 125]

THE BAHÁ’Í INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Activities 1996-97

For almost fifty years the Bahá’í International Community has the United Nations (UN), supporting UN programs, sharing Bahá’í perspectives on global issues at UN meetings and conferences, and working with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), primarily in New York and Geneva. National Bahá’í communities, for their part, have supported the UN by observing special UN days, years and decades, and by cooperating in UN initiatives. An important trend during the last decade, however, has been the increasing involvement of national Bahá’í communities in the work of the UN and with issues of global significance. The growing capacity and commitment of national Bahá’í institutions to work with their governments and with other organizations for social progress became evident during preparations for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and has gathered strength, in part, through participation in the global conferences held throughout the decade.

The Bahá’í International Community, which both encompasses and represents the worldwide membership of the Bahá’í Faith, was granted consultative status as an international non-governmental [Page 126]organization with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1970, and with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 1976. This status has allowed the community to offer Bahá’í perspectives on the work of the UN and its agencies and to work with other NGOs in consultative status to support UN efforts to promote unity, peace, justice, and prosperity in the world. Over the years, the Bahá’í International Community has established a record of dependability and consistency in support of such critical issues as the advancement of women, human rights and responsibilities, universal education, and sustainable development.

The Community represents over 5 million people in at least 235 countries and dependent territories and has 174 national and regional affiliates around the world. It maintains United Nations offices in New York and Geneva, and representations to United Nations regional commissions in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, and Santiago, and to UN offices in Nairobi, Rome, and Vienna. In recent years an Office of the Environment and an Office for the Advancement of Women have been established as sections of its United Nations Office.

Apart from its United Nations activities, the Community is represented internationally by an Office of Public Information, based at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel, and with a branch in Paris, which disseminates information about the Bahá’í Faith around the world and oversees the production of an award-winning quarterly newsletter, One Country.

United Nations

The Bahá’í commitment to human rights involves both protecting the right of Bahá’ís to practice their Faith and promoting respect for a broad range of human rights and responsibilities, which Bahá’ís see as a prerequisite for peace and order in the world.

Safeguarding the religious freedom of Bahá’ís in various parts of the world has been a significant aspect of the work of the Bahá’í International Community offices in both New York and Geneva for almost twenty years. The extraordinary responsiveness of the UN system to the plight of the Bahá’ís in Iran has been due, in large measure, to the coordinated efforts of national Bahá’í communities around the world. National Spiritual Assemblies have appealed [Page 127]regularly and directly to their national governments to intercede on behalf of their Bahá’í brothers and sisters in Iran.

In August 1996, the Bahá’í International Community's United Nations Office held its first seminar for National Spiritual Assemblies on the diplomatic work related to the defense of the Bahá’í community. Held at Landegg Academy, Switzerland, the event brought together 37 participants including representatives of 21 National and Regional Spiritual Assemblies, the Bahá’í International Community's United Nations Office, the Office of Public Information in Haifa, and the Bahá’í World Centre. The National Spiritual Assemblies invited were those whose governments have consistently cosponsored UN Resolutions condemning the violations of human rights in Iran.¹

Statements promoting human rights were presented this year at both the Commission on Human Rights and the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Support for the Decade for Human Rights Education was offered in a Bahá’í International Community written statement to the Commission on Human Rights. A joint written statement on the status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child authored by the Bahá’í International Community was signed by 34 other NGOs.³ Other joint statements signed by the Community addressed racism and racial discrimination, commented on the work of the Commission on Human Rights, and encouraged the drafting of a declaration on the right and responsibility of individuals and organizations to promote and protect human rights. At the Sub-Commission, the Bahá’í International Community read a joint statement on human rights and youth on behalf of eight NGOs.

The Bahá’í International Community was also an active participant in NGO activities aimed at educating people about human rights, encouraging respect for both rights and responsibilities, and helping to develop and apply human rights standards in the form of covenants and conventions.

1. Developments regarding the human rights situation of the Bahá’ís in Iran are treated at length in a separate article on pp. 147-56 of this volume. 2. See pp. 283-86 for the text of this statement. 3. See pp. 287-91 for the text of this statement. [Page 128]

Environment, Development, and Global Prosperity

One and a half years of preparatory activities by the Community's Office of the Environment culminated in June 1996 with the World Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in Istanbul.4 In December, in Geneva, the Community also took part in an International Conference on Globalization and Citizenship—the first in a series initiated by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) as a follow-up to the Social Summit.

The conference was a colloquium consisting of a two-day closed meeting for interchange among some 25 political scientists, sociologists, and experts, followed by a one-day public meeting attended by the experts and some one hundred and twenty NGO and UN representatives. The Bahá’í International Community was honored to be one of very few NGOs representing civil society invited to participate as an expert in all three days of the colloquium.

The Rio + 5 Forum, held 13-19 March 1997 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was one of a number of events marking the fifth anniversary of the Earth Summit, the first in the decade-long series of global conferences on critical issues facing the world community in the 1990s. Emerging from the Rio + 5 Forum, an international gathering of some 500 NGOs and UN leaders, was a draft Earth Charter, whose preamble boldly asserts, "In the midst of our diversity, we are one humanity and one Earth community." Emphasizing human oneness, the Charter challenges the world to make a "fundamental change of course" toward sustainable development. Backers of the Charter, who believe it can provide a critically important moral guide for building a sustainable world civilization, plan to hold year-long, worldwide consultations on this draft. The goal is to produce an Earth Charter in late 1998 for submission to the UN General Assembly around the year 2000.

Organized and coordinated by the Earth Council, an international NGO based in Costa Rica, the Rio + 5 Forum was by invitation only. The Bahá’í International Community representative assisted in the process of drafting the Earth Charter. Among the leading activists and specialists in environment and development

4. For a full report see pp. 137-46. The statement presented by the Bahá’í International Community at Habitat II can be found on pp. 275-81. [Page 129]taking part in Rio + 5 were Maurice F. Strong, Secretary-General of the Earth Summit and President of the Earth Council; Juan Somavia, chairman of the World Summit for Social Development; Wally N'Dow, Secretary-General of the Second UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II); Bella Abzug, President of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO); and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, now President of Green Cross International.

Again this year, the Peace Monument in downtown Rio de Janeiro, a gift to the people of Brazil from the Bahá’í International Community and the Brazilian Bahá’í community on the occasion of the Earth Summit in 1992, moved closer to realizing the vision behind its creation. Five meters high and shaped like an hourglass, the Peace Monument was designed to be filled with 1 kilogram of soil from each nation on earth. At the Summit, soil from some 40 nations was deposited in the monument. Each year more soil, often from historically significant sites, is received, and added to the monument on World Environment Day. The nine nations that donated soil in 1996 were Cambodia, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lesotho, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nicaragua, Peru, Sierra Leone and Slovenia, bringing the total number of contributing countries and territories to 93.

The World Food Summit, sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, was held in Rome in November, 1996. The Office of the Environment represented the Bahá’í International Community at the Summit and at the parallel NGO Forum. For the Bahá’í International Community, it was an opportunity to network with other NGOs and to support the work of the Advocates for African Food Security: Lessening the Burden for Women. The Advocates, a coalition of NGOs, governmental and intergovernmental organizations, has been convened by the Bahá’í International Community since the coalition's founding in 1988.

The United Nations is encouraging youth to become involved in its activities, and Bahá’í youth have responded, becoming involved both in Habitat II and in the biennial UN World Youth Forum. The Bahá’í International Community participated in the Planning Committee for the Second Biennial World Youth Forum of the United Nations System, attending two of its meetings and the Forum itself [Page 130]Bahá’i International Community representatives Giovanni Ballerio, Betty Mosley, and Beth Bowen at the United Nations World Food Summit and parallel NGO Forum in Rome, November 1996.

in Vienna in November 1996. More than 400 youth were present at the Forum, including seven Bahá’í youth from five countries.

Advancement of Women

The Bahá’í International Community was pleased to be one of ten NGOs invited to present model development projects for consideration by participants in the Midterm Review of the United Nations New Agenda for Development in Africa in the 1990’s (UN-NADAF). The Bahá’í projects presented represent two different strategies for improving the life of the community by raising the status of women. The Traditional Media as Change Agent Project in Cameroon, which was funded by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), focuses on changing women’s status by changing the attitudes of men. The Banani International Secondary School for girls in Zambia focuses on educating rural girls, providing an internationally recognized certificate of graduation with an emphasis in science and agriculture. A report on the two Bahá’í projects was published by the UN in a background document distributed to all governments and UN agencies participating in the mid-term review.

Efforts by national Bahá’í communities to involve men in implementing the principle of the equality of women and men are gaining international recognition. Tiati à Zock, a member of the Continental Board of Counsellors of the Bahá’í Faith in Africa and director of the Traditional Media project in Cameroon since its

5. See pp. 293-302 for the text of this statement. [Page 131]inception in 1991, was invited by UNICEF Cameroon to present the project at the annual Association for Women in Development (AWID) Conference in Washington, D.C. The seminar on "Gender Equity in the Family, the Role of the Male," in which Mr. à Zock participated, was the only workshop (of approximately 700) at the conference in which men took part. While in the U.S. Mr. à Zock also consulted with the UNICEF Task Force on Men in the Family and the president of the Confederation of YMCAs for Latin America and the Caribbean, who expressed interest in the project's potential for lowering the level of machismo in young males, a matter of great concern in Latin America. Attending the UN-NADAF mid-term review in New York as the Bahá’í International Community representative, Mr. à Zock reported to an NGO panel on food security that, in some of the Bahá’í communities participating in the Traditional Media Project, men broke with tradition and began helping their wives in the fields. As a result, food production increased markedly. Participants were astounded that a single behavioral change should have such a profound positive effect on domestic food production.

An encouraging development during 1996-97 has been the establishment of some 30 national offices and committees to promote the advancement of women. Along with the Community's Office for the Advancement of Women, they have been involved in the processes leading up to and following the Fourth World Conference on Women which brought Bahá’ís the world over into relationship with other NGOs. For example, since Beijing the Australian Office for the Advancement of Women, founded in 1993, has worked closely with CAPOW, a coalition of national women's organizations, to support task forces on "Women and Peace" and "Women in Decision-Making," focusing on two of the twelve critical issues identified in the Beijing Platform for Action. The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States is co-chair of an NGO working group composed of more than 100 organizations working to win US government ratification of the UN Convention on Women. The Assembly has appointed a National Committee for the Advancement of Women and recently issued

6. See article in The Bahá’í World 1995-96, pp. 145-58. [Page 132]a statement on women, to stimulate discussion on equality issues. In Germany, the Bahá’í Women’s Forum, founded a year ago, now has some 130 members in ten regions of the country. In June, the Forum held a major conference on the development of a “violence-free culture” in conjunction with its annual meeting. In France, the Association of Bahá’í Women for Development, Peace and Unity, founded in 1989, now has eight regional branches.

The Bahá’í Community of Equatorial Guinea sponsored a functional literacy course for women in Malabo and Bata from November 1996 to April 1997. Working with the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, the Community also used Bahá’í Centers in those cities for courses in reproductive health, nutrition, and basic mathematics. In Ghana, the Bahá’í National Women’s Committee has focused on programs aimed at promoting healthy families and helping women to realize their full potential. Austria’s national Task Force on Women has organized a nationwide series of seminars on the themes “Encouragement,” “Change,” and “Service.” Singapore, where a Bahá’í Women’s Committee has been in existence since 1972, has seen a gradual transformation of attitudes of both women and men in the community itself, with more women now being elected to the administrative bodies of the Faith and men and women working side by side on committees and at Bahá’í events and in other aspects of community life. In Denmark, the Danish Bahá’í Association of Women, formed in January 1996, has organized a series of meetings in Copenhagen on such topics as “Women and AIDS,” “Female Genital Mutilation,” and “Families Who Have Been Subject to Torture.” In the future, they hope to work with immigrant women.

The Bahá’í National Women’s Committee in the United Kingdom, in addition to following issues from the Beijing conference, has worked with other religious groups to support the passage of legislation that would bring to justice UK citizens who have been involved in the exploitation of children overseas. The Committee gathered nearly 10,000 signatures from 159 cities and towns in support of the legislation, which was approved by Parliament on 21 March 1997.

The commercial sexual exploitation of children was also addressed by the Bahá’í International Community this year. At the [Page 133]invitation of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) and UNICEF, the Bahá’í International Community participated in a multireligious consultation on this issue, whose goal was to prepare a statement for the World Conference against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in August 1996, and to ascertain how the various religious communities in the world view the problem. The Bahá’í contribution to this consultation, entitled "Moral and Ethical Concerns of the Bahá’í International Community in the Face of the Widespread Sexual Exploitation of Children," was published by WCRP for circulation at the Conference.

Meetings

Meetings and UN sessions monitored by the Bahá’í International Community during 1996-97, other than those already discussed, include the Commission on Sustainable Development, both the Intersessional meeting (February) and the Fifth session (April) in New York; the Commission for Social Development in New York; the Commission on the Status of Women in New York; the World Food Summit in Rome; the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna; the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in San José, Costa Rica; the Commission on Human Settlements in Nairobi; the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Vienna; the Governing Council of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi; the Substantive Session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council; the meeting of the UNICEF Executive Board in New York; and the Second Biennial Session of the Youth Forum of the United Nations System in Vienna. The Bahá’í International Community also attended the 36th session of the South Pacific Commission held in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Much of the work of NGOs in consultative status with the UN is carried out through NGO committees and task forces that address specific issues. During this last year, the Bahá’í International Community held the chairmanships of the New York NGO Committee on the Family, the New York NGO Committee on Human Rights, and the New York CONGO (Committee of NGOs in Consultative Status with ECOSOC) NGO Task Force. As part of the ongoing discussion of UN reform, the CONGO NGO Task Force organized [Page 134]an all-day consultation on increasing access to the UN General Assembly, its main committees, and all areas of the work of the UN. The consultation, chaired by a Bahá’í International Community representative, brought together representatives of governments, high-ranking UN officials, and leaders of over forty of the most active NGOs at the UN. The Bahá’í International Community was also represented on the Planning Committee for the Second Biennial Session of the Youth Forum of the UN System.

Public Information

The major initiative of the Office of Public Information during 1996-97 was the launch in July 1996 of its site on the World Wide Web, The Bahá’í World, which was further developed throughout the remainder of the year.

The Haifa office continued to host an increasing number of special visitors to the Bahá’í World Centre. During 1996-97 some 3,473 dignitaries, media representatives, and other special visitors from 82 countries were received in 220 separate visits. Film crews came from Korea, Jordan, Dubai, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Hungary, and the United States.

Bahá’í International Community representative Guilda Walker officially participated in the launch of "Forests for Life," the World Wildlife Fund's Global Forest Campaign, at a gathering held 26 February 1997 in London. The event, which took the form of a diplomatic dinner, brought together 46 ambassadors, high commissioners, charges d'affaires, and minister counsellors representing European, African, North American, Latin American, and Asian countries, as well as a number of high-ranking government officials. Speeches by Claude Martin, Director-General of WWF International and by H.R.H. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, both paid tribute to the efforts of the Bahá’í International Community for its strong support of the Forests for Life campaign. In his remarks, the Duke of Edinburgh recalled that the Bahá’í International Community was the agency that had initiated the process of a forestry campaign at a 1994 gathering at St. James' Palace. At the 1997 event, a commemorative brochure carried a message from the Universal House of Justice, along with the text of the addresses given by the Duke of Edinburgh [Page 135]and Dr. Martin and statements from governments of countries that had committed to implement the forest protected areas target established by the World Wildlife Fund. The message from the House of Justice stated, in part:

It will be only through deliberate and considered action that forest ecosystems-the repositories of so much of the world's genetic heritage can be safeguarded from further devastation. The protagonists in this enterprise must be both national governments and the peoples of the world, acting through the host of non-governmental organizations they have created. For its part, the Bahá’í International Community will continue to do all in its power to safeguard the common interests of the human family.

Another project being undertaken through the Office of Public Information involves the Bahá’í community's collaboration with WETV, a new global television network, with which the office held a number of conferences and training seminars in Kenya, India, Jamaica, and Brazil. The object of this initiative is to empower people from various parts of the world to acquire the means and skills to tell the world their own stories about their own communities.

The Paris branch of the Office of Public Information was also involved in a variety of activities. A representative cosigned, with other major religions, an appeal by the international NGO ATD Quart Monde and participated in a ceremony to commemorate the United Nations' International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The office was also represented at the Fifth International Dialogue on the Transition to a Global Society in Budapest in October 1996, and a conference on Global Governance in London the following month.

Other collaborative efforts included work with the international media and public information activities before and during Habitat II in June 1996, the coordination of a number of artistic presentations and projects throughout the year, and collaboration with the Continental Board of Counsellors of the Bahá’í Faith in Europe and the European Bahá’í Task Force for Women on issues related to women throughout that continent. The Office prepared materials in various languages, and organized public information training seminars in several European Bahá’í communities. [Page 136]One Country, the Office of Public Information's newsletter, which has been published for eight years and now appears in six languages with a circulation of over 30,000 in some 170 countries, brought out four issues during 1996-97, again winning an award for the excellence of its design and content. Coverage this year included stories on Habitat II, the World Food Summit, the Micro-credit Summit in Washington, D.C., and the recognition of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Bahá’í Faith in Brazil. A hospital in Honduras that seeks to empower its rural clients, microcredit in Colombia, and the development of a stone-breaking machine in South Africa were among the development features. The Bahá’í community of Russia was profiled, as were two individual Bahá’ís: Kevin Locke, a Native American hoop dancer who promotes the vision of world citizenship in his international travels, and Omid Djalili, an actor and stand-up comic from Iranian background whose mission is as much to educate and elevate as it is to entertain. Another report outlined the current situation and international concern raised over the death sentences passed on two Bahá’ís in Iran.

Conclusion

Work at local, national, and international levels was carried out by the Bahá’í International Community's various offices throughout the year, focusing mainly on the advancement of women, human rights, sustainable communities, and the environment. At all levels the community spoke with one voice, supported by its various publications, advocating the perspective enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh over a century ago and captured succinctly in His own exhortation, "Let your vision be world-embracing."