Bahá’í World/Volume 27/The Bahá’í International Community, Activities 1998-99

Bahá’í World/Volume 27 The Bahá’í International Community, Activities 1998-99

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[Page 131]

THE BAHÁ’Í INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Activities 1998-99

The Bahá’í International Community (BIC) is the non-governmental organization that represents the more than five million Bahá’ís living in at least 235 countries and dependent territories around the world. Its 179 national and regional affiliates work through a variety of forums to give practical expression to the Bahá’í Faith's central principles of peace and justice. Among the wide range of issues it addresses, the BIC is especially concerned with four major themes: human rights, moral development, the advancement of women, and global prosperity. Whether at the local, national, or international level, these foci give shape and substance to the Bahá’í International Community's activities.

Both the Bahá’í International Community's United Nations Office and its Office of Public Information play important roles in the promotion of this work. The United Nations Office, with fifty years of diplomatic experience offering Bahá’í perspectives on global issues and supporting UN programs, has in recent years worked with its national affiliates to enhance their efforts in these four focal areas. The Office of Public Information, which also represents the [Page 132]Bahá’í community internationally, disseminates information about the Bahá’í Faith around the world, oversees production of the award-winning newsletter One Country, and maintains the official Bahá’í web site.

United Nations

The Bahá’í International Community maintains offices at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, as well as representations to United Nations regional commissions in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, and Santiago, and to UN offices in Nairobi, Rome, and Vienna. In 1988 the BIC established an Office of the Environment, and in 1992 added an Office for the Advancement of Women as departments of its United Nations Office.

As part of the community of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in special status (formerly called "consultative status") with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) since 1970 and with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) since 1976, the Bahá’í International Community participates in a wide range of UN activities. It offers Bahá’í perspectives on the work of the UN and its agencies and works with both its national affiliates and other NGOs.

During the 1990s, the base of Bahá’í diplomatic work has broadened to rely more heavily on National Spiritual Assemblies, as a result of the involvement of a number of national Bahá’í communities in various United Nations conferences. Since then national Bahá’í communities, with the support of other like-minded organizations, have been finding ways to ensure that the promises of those conferences are translated into reality. As national Bahá’í communities have begun to take on responsibility for influencing governmental attitudes and policies on matters of global, not merely national, importance, the Bahá’í International Community’s United Nations Office has sought to provide them with support and training.

Human Rights

The Bahá’í International Community has been associated with the UN since 1947, and its focus on human rights education is part of its long-term efforts to promote respect for and understanding of a full range of basic human rights and responsibilities. In the Bahá’í [Page 133]view, a willingness to respect and safeguard the rights of all people is essential to the establishment of global order and sustainable peace in the world.

The Human Rights Education initiative, a global campaign involving Bahá’í National and Local Spiritual Assemblies in an effort to influence the processes towards world peace, was launched by the Bahá’í International Community in 1997 and gathered momentum during 1998-99. National Spiritual Assemblies that have chosen to participate in the campaign have begun finding ways to encourage their governments, often in cooperation with other organizations, to undertake activities in support of the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004).

The Human Rights Education Reference Manual, recently developed by the Bahá’í International Community's United Nations Office, was distributed to 145 National and Regional Spiritual Assemblies. The manual, which discusses both Bahá’í diplomatic work generally and human rights education specifically, is being used as the basis for a systematic program of diplomatic training offered to external affairs personnel of National Spiritual Assemblies throughout the world. The first such seminar was held at the Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine, USA, in October 1998.

At UN Headquarters in New York, the Bahá’í International Community cosponsored a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at which the need for human rights education was addressed by a number of prominent officials. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, H.E. Ms. Mary Robinson, acknowledged in her keynote address the contributions of the

H.E. Ms. Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaking at the 30 October 1998 symposium "Towards a Universal Culture of Human Rights: the Role of Human Rights Education." [Page 134]Graduates of a diplomatic training seminar, sponsored by the Bahá’í International Community’s UN office and designed to train Bahá’ís to influence the processes towards world peace at the governmental level, held 11-17 October 1998 at the Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine, United States.

Bahá’ís towards human rights education and mentioned the arrests of Bahá’í university professors in Iran. The meeting was co-sponsored by the NGO Committees on Human Rights, the Status of Women, and Freedom of Religion or Belief.

At the fifty-fifth session of the Commission on Human Rights, held March-April 1999, three Bahá’í International Community statements were circulated as official UN documents. One addressed the protection of minorities; another the human rights situation of the Bahá’í community in Iran in general; and the third the creation and subsequent crackdown on the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education in Iran. The plight of the Bahá’ís in Iran was also addressed in an oral intervention during the Commission’s deliberations.

With other NGOs, the BIC signed joint statements on the Girl Child, the Draft Report of the Working Group on the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, and on the need for a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders.

Protecting the religious freedom of Bahá’ís throughout the world is an important aspect of the work of the Bahá’í International Community’s office in New York and the primary focus of work for the BIC office in Geneva. Working through the UN offices, commissions and committees that monitor compliance with the various UN human rights agreements, the Bahá’í International

1. These statements appear on pp. 299-302, 279-86, and 287-93 of this volume, respectively. [Page 135]Community has for twenty years directed international attention towards the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran by providing the UN and national governments with reliable information regarding the current status of the beleaguered Iranian Bahá’í community.²

Interest in religious freedom is growing among governments and NGOs, and the situation of the Bahá’ís in Iran is seen by some as a perfect example of intolerance and discrimination based solely on belief. At the August 1998 Oslo Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief, for example, held to create an international coalition to fund programs that support religious freedom, the situation of the Bahá’ís was considered. In his address to that conference, the Principal Representative of the Bahá’í International Community’s United Nations Office, Mr. Techeste Ahderom, described the Bahá’ís as "a peaceful community whose members strictly adhere to the teachings of their Faith, which enjoins them to avoid partisan political involvement, subversive activity and all forms of violence. The Bahá’í community," he assured those gathered, "is not aligned with any government, ideology or opposition movement." After offering an overview of the situation of Iran’s Bahá’í community, the country’s largest religious minority, Mr. Ahderom narrated briefly the circumstances surrounding the execution of Mr. Ruhu’llah Rawhani, noting that during the last nineteen years more than two hundred similar executions have taken place, all in the name of the Islamic Revolution.

Environment, Development, and Global Prosperity

The World Faiths and Development Dialogue, initiated jointly by the President of the World Bank and the Archbishop of Canterbury, began in February 1998 at Lambeth Palace and continued this year with two meetings: one in Rome in December 1998 and the other in Johannesburg in January 1999. The Lambeth Palace gathering brought together development experts and spiritual leaders from nine major religions for two days of consultation on the relationship between material and spiritual development. The Rome meeting continued themes raised at Lambeth Palace and also set the framework

2. See pp. 151-54, 279-86, and 287-93 for further information regarding recent developments in the human rights situation of the Bahá’ís in Iran. [Page 136]for the faiths' participation in the larger meeting in Johannesburg between World Bank officials, organizations from African civil society, and various religious groups, which was held by the World Bank to garner ideas and suggestions for the World Development Report 2001 (WDR 2001).

Because the Rome meeting was small the fifteen participants were able to present ideas directly to members of the WDR 2001 drafting team but also to discuss issues in some detail. The Bahá’í International Community representatives in both Rome and Johannesburg emphasized the importance of basing development work on a broadly conceived and widely shared positive vision for the future instead of focusing on narrowly defined problems. For example, the faiths were encouraged first to define prosperity (or progress or development) and only then to seek to define poverty. Similarly, drafters of the WDR 2001 were urged to define social harmony and well-being before trying to measure social exclusion and vulnerability. Moreover, it was proposed that any approach to development must be animated by the conviction that, since humanity is one, each child born into the world is a trust of the entire human race.

At the Johannesburg meeting the question of how to measure the application of spiritual principles in development was addressed by the Bahá’í International Community in the form of the statement Religious Values and the Measurement of Poverty and Prosperity. This paper was presented at a workshop sponsored jointly by the World Faiths and Development Dialogue, Cornell University, the MacArthur Foundation, the Swiss Development Corporation, and the World Bank.³

Bahá’í youth are also active participants in UN activities around the world. Representatives of the Bahá’í International Community at the Third World Youth Forum of the United Nations System, held in August 1998 in Braga, Portugal, facilitated one of eight working groups. Representatives of the European Bahá’í Youth Council and the Bahá’í Youth Committee of Portugal were also active participants in the working groups, contributing substan-

3. See pp. 269-77 for the full text of this statement. [Page 137]tially to the Braga Youth Action Plan, the document prepared by the forum for ultimate presentation to the UN General Assembly. The BIC also participated in the historic First World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth in Lisbon in August 1998.

Advancement of Women

In keeping with the trend toward greater activity at the national level, the number of national Offices for the Advancement of Women grew this year to forty-nine, an increase of almost twenty-five percent since last year. The efforts of these offices are encouraged by a newsletter circulated by the Bahá’í International Community’s Office for the Advancement of Women, which includes stories of Bahá’í projects, news from the UN, and information about opportunities for involvement in regional activities to promote equality.

The BIC has been active in a variety of different activities pertaining to women at the UN. Since 1988, it has convened the Advocates for African Food Security: Lessening the Burden for Women; it was invited to attend the International Conference on Educating Girls: A Development Imperative, sponsored by UNICEF, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Inter-American Development Bank, held in May 1998 in Washington, D.C.; and the Bahá’í International Community was the only religious NGO present at an invitational seminar held in Beijing in June 1998, hosted by the All China Women's Federation (ACWF). The seminar, which was attended by approximately one hundred and eighty NGO participants, was called to discuss follow-up actions to the Fourth World Conference on Women and featured reports on largely grassroots activities to implement the Beijing Platform for Action.

One topic of interest noted by some members of the ACWF was strengthening national mechanisms for the advancement of women, one of the issues addressed at the Commission on the Status of Women held in March 1999 in New York. At the request of the UN Division for the Advancement of Women, the Bahá’í International Community organized an evening panel discussion during the Commission entitled "Building National Machinery for the Advancement of Women: The Role of Civil Society." It was cosponsored by the Division and the NGO Committee on the Status of Women. The [Page 138]BIC also signed a joint statement by the NGO Committee on the Status of Women's Task Force on Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women. As convenor of the Task Force on National Machineries for the Advancement of Women for the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, the Director of the Bahá’í International Community's Office for the Advancement of Women, Ms. Bani Dugal-Gujral, attended the expert group meeting on that topic, held in September 1998 in Santiago, Chile, where she presented to the experts the Task Force's recommendations.

Women and health, the second topic considered at this year's Commission, has long been a concern of the Bahá’í International Community. The expert group meeting on that topic, held in September 1998 in Tunis, Tunisia, to prepare for the Commission, focused on providing assistance to governments wishing to design and implement gender-sensitive national action plans for the health sector. BIC representatives attended the expert group meeting and contributed a written statement.4

The Future of the United Nations

As the United Nations moves into the new millennium, it is taking full advantage of what Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls "a unique and symbolically compelling moment for Member States to articulate and affirm an animating vision for the United Nations in the new era." The General Assembly session convened in the year 2000, designated "The Millennium Assembly," will include a "Millennium Summit" for heads of state and government and will be preceded in May 2000 by a "Millennium Forum," through which organizations of civil society can have input into the Millennium Assembly. The Bahá’í International Community, as Co-Chair of the organizing committee, hopes that through the Millennium Forum organizations of civil society will contribute to a new vision for the future of the United Nations and an organizational structure whereby the peoples of the world can participate effectively in global decision-making.

4. See pp. 295-97 for the text of this statement. 5. From a report to the UN General Assembly (A/52/850). [Page 139]

Meetings

The Bahá’í International Community chaired five NGO committees and task forces in New York and Geneva this year: the NGO Committees on Human Rights, on UNIFEM, and on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and the Task Force on UN-NGO Relations for CONGO (Committee of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Status with ECOSOC). In Geneva the Community chaired the Sub-Group on Education, Literacy and Mass Media of the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The BIC attended a seminar of experts on an Islamic Perspective on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights held November 1998 in Geneva, which followed Sub-Commission Working Groups on Indigenous Populations, Minorities, and Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Other meetings and UN sessions monitored by the Bahá’í International Community this year include the seventh session of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice; the twenty-seventh session of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; the fifty-first World Health Assembly; UN General Assembly Special Session Devoted to the Fight against the Illicit Production, Sale, Demand, Trafficking and Distribution of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court; the fifty-fifth session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific; the Substantive Session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council; meetings of the UNICEF Executive Board; the Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) Programme; the second session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of a Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime; and the seventh session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Public Information

Based at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel, with a bureau in Paris, the Bahá’í International Community’s Office of Public Information stimulates public information work throughout the worldwide Bahá’í community. [Page 140]The major publication of the Office during the year was Who is Writing the Future? Released in February 1999, this statement both reflects upon the events of the twentieth century in the light of Bahá’í teachings and relates global developments during the past one hundred years to the challenges now facing humanity, providing a Bahá’í perspective on events at this critical point in human history.6

The visitors' program at the Bahá’í World Centre continued to grow. Between Ridván 1998 and Ridván 1999, the Office of Public Information coordinated and welcomed more than two hundred visits and welcomed some 2,595 visitors from eighty-five countries. The Speaker and several members of Israel's Knesset, the State Comptroller, senior officials from several government ministries, and a former Supreme Court justice were among the Israeli guests. Ambassadors from Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Spain, Thailand, the Ukraine, and the United States, and Embassy officials from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Korea, and Thailand visited, as did government ministers and officials from Australia, China, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Hungary, India, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Thailand, the Ukraine, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe. Visitors from the field of academia included the Dean of the Catholic Faculty of the University of Vienna and several delegations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including the President, the Vice President, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, professors, and students. In October 1998, at the time of a seminar on the theme "Women's Development, Help Women Help Themselves," sponsored by the International Council of Women, the executive committee of the ICW and conference participants visited the Bahá’í World Centre. Journalists, media representatives, mayors from cities in the United States and Cyprus, and others also came during the year.

The Office, which was responsible for the production of the video Creating a Culture of Growth, shown at the Eighth International Bahá’í Convention in April 1998, subsequently distributed copies of the video to Bahá’í communities throughout the world. Another initiative of the Office was the establishment of a pilot

6. For the full text of this statement, see pp. 255-68. [Page 141]video bureau in the Congo Republic, which has produced short videos on Bahá’í projects in Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The Bahá’í World website, now in its third year, added two new sections one on social action, focusing on human rights, moral education, and the situation of the Bahá’ís in Iran, and the other featuring perspectives and profiles. The number of visits to the site doubled during the year. Plans are underway for the launch of an Arabic language version of the site.7

One Country, the official newsletter of the Bahá’í International Community, entered its tenth year of publication. Published quarterly in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and German, One Country reached an estimated 50,000 subscribers in more than 180 countries and garnered many more readers through its site on the World Wide Web. During 1998-99, One Country won an "Award of Excellence" for its overall content and design in the Apex '98 Awards for Publication Excellence. During the year, One Country reported on major international conferences, including the Oslo Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief (Norway, August 1998), which brought together governments, academics and non-governmental organizations to talk

H.E. Dr. Specioza Wondira Kazibne, Vice-President of the Republic of Uganda and Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Trade, shown with the Secretary-General of the Bahá’í International Community, Mr. Albert Lincoln, visited the Bahá’í World Centre on 18 April 1998.

7. The URL for the Bahá’í World website is <www.bahai.org>. 8. The URL for the One Country website is <www.onecountry.org>. [Page 142]about religious tolerance, and the Global Dialogue on Microfinance and Human Development (Stockholm, April 1998), which was co-sponsored by the European Bahá’í Business Forum. Major feature stories during the year focused on the highly successful "On the Wings of Words" literacy project sponsored by the Bahá’í community of Guyana; a distinctive grassroots community vegetable growing project undertaken by the Bahá’í community of Mongolia, which has become a model for the nation; and the global approach of the Santitham School, a Bahá’í-sponsored primary school in provincial Thailand. One Country also carried major news features on the efforts of the Honduran Bahá’í community to marshal international aid and disaster relief assistance following Hurricane Mitch in November 1998 and on the efforts of the Iranian government to shut down the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education.

The Paris bureau of the Bahá’í International Community's Office of Public Information was engaged in a wide variety of activities during the year. The office assisted the French Bahá’í community in its centenary celebrations, particularly in connection with the artistic evening "La nuit de l'espoir," and continues to liaise with the company "9 Productions" on a number of projects, including the organization of a second "Nuit de l'espoir." "9 Productions" is a joint effort of Bahá’í and non-Bahá’í artists with the aim of promoting the universal message contained in the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith to large audiences.

One of the Paris bureau's other major undertakings during the year was coordination of the "Promoting Positive Messages through the Media" project, which operates through the Royaumont Process. Office staff made preparatory visits to Bosnia Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and received approval from the Government of Luxembourg to undertake the second phase of the project, including a multinational seminar to be held in Romania in the fall of 1999 and pilot projects in a selected number of schools in Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania.

Training Bahá’í communities to undertake public information work is another thrust of the bureau's activities. This year, it hosted a three-day public information training program in Paris for

9. For a full account of this initiative, see pp. 145-50. [Page 143]representatives from Bahá’í communities in the francophone world and provided ongoing public information support to European and French-speaking National Spiritual Assemblies outside Europe, the European Bahá’í Business Forum (EBBF), and the German National Assembly in conjunction with the Expo 2000 project in Hannover.

Conclusion

More than a century ago, Bahá’u’lláh called for the creation of a system of international governance, based on the principle of collective security, which would encompass all of the nations of the world and lay the foundations for a lasting and universal peace. The Bahá’í International Community, through both its United Nations Office and its Office of Public Information, actively promotes this concept and seeks to engender justice, peace and prosperity at the international level. The Community's activities during 1998-99 bear witness to its commitment to these world-unifying ideals.