Bahá’í World/Volume 31/Women’s Leadership in Peace-Building
Women's Leadership in Peace-Building[edit]
Statement by the Bahá’í International Community to the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders, Geneva, Switzerland, 6-10 October 2002.
One of the most significant shifts to take place during the twentieth century is that the peoples of the world have finally begun seeing themselves as the members of a single human race, sharing the earth as a common homeland. Although conflict and violence continue to darken the horizon, prejudices that once seemed inherent in the nature of the human species—prejudices of race, gender, nation, and class—have been eroded to such a degree as to suggest that the end of religious prejudice might also be within the realm of possibility.
Sadly, religion, which should be at the forefront of efforts to promote social harmony and peace, is frequently one of the most formidable obstacles in the path of understanding and mutual respect, inasmuch as it has too often lent its credibility to fanaticism. It is here that women who, all over the world, have been rising to take their proper and equal place in society, can, in the field of organized religion play a crucial role in the emancipation of the human race from conflict and violence.
When religions have been faithful to the transcendent example of their illumined Founders, faith "has awakened in whole populations the capacities to love, to forgive, to create, to dare greatly, to overcome prejudice, to sacrifice for the common good, and to
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discipline the impulses of animal instinct." It is this positive and constructive power of religion that the United Nations has yet to grasp. It is inconceivable that a peaceful and prosperous global society can be established and sustained without directly and substantively involving the world's great religions in its design and support. At the same time, given the record of religious fanaticism and its resurgence in our own time, it is understandable that the United Nations has been hesitant to invite religions into its negotiations.
Women are not only an entire half of humankind that, in this past century, has been emerging as a force for change. They are, Bahá’ís believe, endowed with a special destiny for the establishment of world peace. The Bahá’í writings promise that "as woman advances toward the degree of man in power and privilege... most assuredly war will cease; for woman is naturally the most devoted and staunch advocate of international peace."2 A unique twofold challenge and responsibility, therefore, lies before us, the participants in this conference, as women and as religious and spiritual leaders.
With peace-building as our goal; with unshakable confidence in the One God; no matter how our different religious traditions conceive of the Godhead; armed with the certainty that hatred, violence, and blind prejudice are contrary to the divine will; we can exert an influence on the vision of all peoples that can overcome every obstacle in the way of establishing the world of tranquility, prosperity, and freedom for which all humankind must surely yearn.
1 Universal House of Justice, letter to the world's religious leaders, April 2002.
2 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912, rev. ed. (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1995), p. 375.