The Riva del Garde Declaration of the Sixth World Assembly, 1994
Nearly 1,000 participants representing many of the world's religions have
gathered in Rome and Riva del Garde, Italy, for the Sixth Assembly of the
World Conference of Religions for Peace, with the theme "Healing the
World: Religions for Peace." A women's meeting and a youth meeting
have formed an integral part of our conference. We who have gathered are
of different religions and different countries, we celebrate different
traditions and are shaped by different cultures, yet we have all come with
a common commitment to seek peace, to pursue justice, and to protect our
environment and our future as embodied in our children. We are also committed
to the development of a vision of common healing.
In this time of transition, as the world passes from the Cold War to a
new order yet uncertain, we race to keep up with events and technology.
As ideologies collapse and relationships become more ambiguous, signs of
brokenness abound. The encounter of richly diverse peoples, languages,
religions, cultures and economic systems is providing impetus for a new
world community. Yet poverty, injustice, lack of access to resources, oppression,
discrimination and violence continue to burden the lives of billions of
people. Amidst this, healing is evident where, after long struggle, injustice
is being transformed to justice, oppression to freedom, discrimination
to equity and violence to peace.
Many peoples enjoy greater economic, social and political freedoms. But
gross inequities still exist and even multiply. Development and technological
advances hold out many promises, but too often further separate the rich
from the poor and degrade the environment. Never before has there been
such an urgent need for an ethics to govern scientific advances, to harness
their potential for the greatest good.
Steps have been taken toward nuclear disarmament and more systematic regulation
of the arms trade, but arms proliferation remains unacceptably high. The
extent of the militarization of our societies gives evidence of skewed
values and priorities. The race of research and development continues to
produce ever more deadly weapons.
Steps toward healing in such places as the Middle East, Central America
and Northern Ireland bring hope of peace. We celebrate the binding of wounds
in South Africa. We are joyful that Namibia is newly independent, that
the peoples of Cambodia and Haiti have begun to rebuild their countries.
We remember those who have sacrificed their lives to bring justice in these
situations and others who continue to struggle.
A vision of a world community with rights and responsibilities is taking
shape. The human rights of the most vulnerable and marginalized members
of our society-women, children and minorities-are increasingly recognized.
Yet discrimination persists in our world, indeed even in our religious
communities. The sacredness of the earth and our unity with it are deeply
felt in many places, and remind us of our responsibility to act as stewards
of this fragile ecosystem which nurtures and sustains us. Yet the natural
environment is being devastated at unprecedented rates.
Great dangers and deep pain remain in the uncertainty of this age. Our
global society suffers a spiritual crisis so deep that positive changes
are prevented. As the search for identity accentuates the long-repressed
differences among peoples, disintegration and exaggerated individualism
threaten the international order. Many states are experiencing decreasing
social cohesion, leading to increased violence and weakened abilities to
achieve moral consensus across group lines. Conflict is fueled by nationalistic,
ethnic and religious violence.
Our time has seen the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the collapse
of social order in such places as Rwanda, Somalia, and Haiti. The world
has witnessed the terrible destruction of the Gulf War, the persecution
of the Kurdish community, and the atrocities of ethnic cleansing in Croatia
and Bosnia-Herzgovina. This war must be ended, and refugees and displaced
persons must be allowed and aided to rebuild their lives.
Despite some advances, the people of the world suffer terribly. Civilian
casualties in war have increased dramatically. There are 18.5 million refugees
and 20 million displaced people in the world today. Women, children and
the elderly are especially vulnerable in these times. Famine and disease
have accompanied violence in such places as Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.
HIV and AIDS reach epidemic proportions throughout the world.
As religious peoples, we are particularly saddened that religion is misused
at times to legitimize violence and wars and stir hatreds. We strongly
condemn destructive religious nationalism and religious extremism as crimes
against religion. In response, we call not for uncompromising secularism
but for authentic religion, which we believe must be a powerful force for
human rights, freedom and non-violent political transformation; the impulse
of religion must be toward peace, not war. We also call for increased dialogue
between religious and non-religious approaches for healing the world.
On the threshold of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, we
honor its accomplishments and note the challenges it faces. Since 1990,
it has drawn and will draw together world leaders to discuss children,
the environment, human rights, population and development, social development
and women. The U.N. has and will draw attention, through yearlong emphases
on indigenous people, the family and tolerance.
The work of healing and building peace and security in a fractured world
presents new challenges to the U.N. and other international bodies, which
are stretched beyond their capacities. We support the work of these organizations
and affirm the renewed commitment of Religions for Peace to the U.N. as
it advances a more comprehensive understanding of global security through
sustainable human development. Human security, which acknowledges the universalism
of life, is embedded in the notion of solidarity among people. It acknowledges
our interdependence and our broad-ranging needs for security: economic
security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal
security and political security. Meeting the challenge of human security
is essential to establishing peace.
A Call For Common Healing
We, from each of our religious traditions, envision a harmonious and peaceful
universe as the goal of life and spiritual effort of humans. We begin our
quest for community and harmony with the experience of a world that is
broken and hurt. Each religion analyzes, in its own way, the causes of
suffering and disharmony, and proposes concrete means to overcome them
and build community. Religious communities have a particular concern for
the victims of human systems, the poor and the oppressed, reaching out
to them and advocating justice and fellowship.
As religions agree upon the experience of disharmony, they also agree that
the causes are human and ethical in nature, and that people can overcome
them through individual and social action, in the horizon of an Ultimate.
Such action must focus on the various levels in which healing is needed
to move from disharmony to community and peace.
Collaboration in Healing
While, in the past, each religious group may have looked at this need for
healing and harmony in the context of its own community, today people of
all religions live together. In such a pluralist context, religions too
are sometimes causes for division. This is one more element that needs
healing. However, there is a growing conviction that people of all religions
must collaborate together in the healing of divisions and in the building
of community locally and globally.
The Process of Healing
The movement toward community from division and brokenness involves a process
of healing. Religious groups find inspiration and motivation for this ethical
and social project in their own traditions. They must avoid the danger
of becoming instruments of economic, social or political agendas, thus
losing their spiritual-prophetic dynamism. In conversation with other religious
groups, they seek to evolve common perspectives and concerns at the ethical
and social levels. Such a convergence is emerging in the contemporary discourse
concerning human, social and economic rights and duties, though the process
is not always without pain, tension and struggle. A next crucial step is
to translate this ethic convergence into plans of common action, inspired
and supported by religion, in the social, political and economic fields.
The Power of Healing
The power of healing in its various dimensions-personal, social, global-must
come from religious and other ethical and spiritual resources, in which
people transcend their immediate concerns and needs and look from themselves
to others, seeing life and the world in the context of an Ultimate. While
promoting and profiting from positive resources of their own religion,
religious groups should not only guard against abusing it for narrow political
ends, but also highlight and develop its universal perspectives that make
it tolerant and actively receptive to the religious experience and perspectives
of other groups. Religions themselves need to be healed of any narrow fanaticism
and exclusivism, precisely in the broader context of the Whole that transcends
the limited experience of the group. Such healing releases the prophetic
and spiritual dynamism of each religion for the transformation of society.
Personal Healing
The inner personal healing of every person in a social context is facilitated
by his or her own religion. Through its experience and ongoing rituals,
particularly those that respond to crises in the lives of individuals and
of the group, religion provides ultimate significance to the whole of life.
Healing Society
Religious peoples can engage in conversation and common action for the
promotion of shared ethical values for the building of community. Such
common action focuses on healing the various ills of society, with reference
to the relationships of people to the cosmos and to each other.
Healing Communication among Religions
Such common action may lead to and be enriched by dialogue and sharing
at the religious level. Dialogue can help us learn from history, remove
prejudices and promote mutual understanding. In the context of healing,
this might involve a confession of sin and shortcoming, on the one hand,
and an act of forgiveness, on the other, leading to reconciliation. Sharing
of sacred texts, respectful observance of other religious traditions and
participation in common meditation can facilitate mutual enrichment and
inspiration and even challenge. In this process, religions, without detriment
to their identity and truth claims at the properly religious level, may
discover themselves as being convergent and complementary at the socio-ethical
level.
A Specific Option
One way of showing the authenticity of one's commitment to promote shared
ethical values in society is to champion peace with justice for all, including
the poor, the marginalized, the defenseless, women, children and the oppressed.
In this manner, attention and effort are devoted to special areas where
the healing touch of religions is particularly required. Religions speak
of this special attention to the victims of society in terms of compassion,
justice, equity and love. Today such an option may include conflict, although
we believe resolution of conflict must be non-violent and oriented to peace
and harmony.
Isolation and Fragmentation: Searching for a Common Ethic
Dynamic forces in our fast-changing contemporary societies have created
a new willingness to seek guidance and inspiration from religions on issues
facing humanity.
Humankind is one great family. We have basic spiritual values arising from
our common human experience and our shared planetary home. However, as
individuals and as groups we have lost touch with the harmonizing spiritual
values by which our religious traditions have encouraged us to live. We
have become isolated fragments, often indifferent to what happens to our
neighbors and to other groups.
We therefore encourage all members of our human family-whether materially
rich or poor, young or old, with or without academic education, to join
in the process of uncovering and sharing the treasures of their communities.
Our hope is that each community may be re-inspired by its own values, that
we may be enriched by the sharing of others' traditional values, and that
we may seek convergences in our basic ethical principles.
While our ethical criteria are inextricably rooted in our varying spiritual
traditions and diverse cultural contexts, we are nonetheless interdependent,
not only with other humans but also with other forms of life. This interdependence
is expressed in common values such as helpfulness toward others, reverence
for life and compassion.
Such common values commit us to put them to work in ourselves, propose
them before local, national and international institutions, and introduce
them to our young generations.
Violence and War: Building Peace and Security
Violence and war are further evidences of deep-seated social, political,
economic and religious ills. Currently more than 40 wars, most of which
are civil, are wreaking their destructive powers on virtually every continent.
The causes of such conflict are many, found in selfishness and in psychological
drives for power and control; economic and political exploitation and domination
often manifest in patterns of neo-colonialism and market manipulation;
ethnic and nationalistic chauvinism playing on the hatreds and prejudices
of the past and manifesting themselves in civil war; ethnic cleansing leading
to genocide; and religious fanaticisms stimulated by social and psychic
insecurities.
Such conflicts are complicated by two factors. First, the level of violence
has been heightened by the increased destructiveness of the arms that are
readily available on world markets, with ever more diabolical weapons emerging
from the arms research and development laboratories. Second, the instruments
of international peacemaking and peacekeeping are insufficiently developed
to facilitate the resolution of conflict.
Yet we know that war and violence are preventable. Their prevention requires
effort in the spiritual as well as practical realm, both economic and political.
In the spiritual realm we need to practice the concepts and processes of
reconciliation, which require a willingness to repent, to ask and grant
mercy and forgiveness, to acknowledge that the purpose of historical remembrance
is not to lay the seeds of future conflict, but to insure the evil of the
past is never repeated.
In the political realm the task is to end the arms race, the manufacture
and trade in deadly weapons of destruction, and to build the regional,
international and inter-religious instruments of conflict prevention, peacemaking,
peacekeeping and peacebuilding. In the economic realm the requirement is
to redress the economic and social ills that lead to conflict.
In all relations-political, economic, spiritual, social-the building of
trust and confidence is essential. Only with such commitments can the world
achieve the goal set out 50 years ago in the creation of the United Nations:
to end the scourge of war.
Injustice and Poverty: Struggling for Equitable and Sustainable Development
The crying need for a healing touch is evident in the socio-economic condition
of the human family, a condition that is characterized by widening inequality
between and within nations, reflected in the great disparities of lifestyles
and the absolute poverty of a billion people worldwide. Crushing debt and
the imposed economic structural adjustment programs burden developing countries,
which have inadequate means to eliminate them. The ongoing militarization
of many societies with repressive systems reflects the continuing impact
of the arms race. Systemic inequities in the distribution of opportunities
and resources persist between men and women in all countries. The planet's
natural resources are plundered, and ecological devastation is left in
the wake of environmental pollution. The exponential growth of the world's
population has undermined the capacities of weak political systems to satisfy
even the barest of human needs. The absence of sufficient meaningful employment
and the continued marginalization of many peoples mark societies worldwide.
These accumulated ills have generated familial and societal discord and
degeneration, fostered political mistrust between religious communities,
engendered endemic conflict and violence between ethnic groups, and contributed
to tension between nation-states.
These inequalities are a systemic characteristic of our global community.
They mark the condition of an anarchical world society, devoid of effective
collective procedures and dominated by an international system that is
competitive rather than cooperative. There is a lack of commitment to the
common good, embodied in a system that too often uses its resources and
power to perpetuate rather than heal inequality. These inequalities also
reflect the inadequacy of national sovereignty, which must yield to interdependence.
Such an interdependence will not only be technical, environmental and economic,
but also ethical. One way in which this can be shown is through fair and
just trade.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Marxism has dashed
the hopes which millions of idealistic people held that Marxist economic
theories would build a just society where unemployment and poverty would
be eliminated. At the same time, the individualistic ethic of capitalism
has similarly failed to provide justice and the elimination of poverty,
even in the wealthiest and most developed nations. The world's religious
communities must seek a third way, which respects the communal and interdependent
dimensions of humanity; a way based on mutual love and respect for individual
rights, but which incorporates an acceptance of communal responsibility
for our brothers and sisters.
Aware that the ultimate values of religion are impossible without the eradication
of poverty and injustice, we, religious peoples, must work to fulfill the
ethical obligation to foster human community which engenders the fullness
of spiritual life.
Oppression and Discrimination: Affirming Rights and Responsibilities
Oppression and discrimination are symptoms of the world's brokenness and
its need for healing. Victims of human rights abuses remind us that oppression
and discrimination take many forms. Murder; massacre; torture; communal
and domestic violence, especially against women and children; genocidal
war; attack and intimidation; imprisonment; displacement; apartheid; the
destruction and vandalism of houses of worship and the private property
of religious minorities; oppression of marginalized groups; and the denial
of religious freedom, of citizenship rights, of access to jobs and education,
and of entry into other countries are powerful examples.
These actions are intolerable denials of that dignity inherent in the very
being of the human. We affirm that every human being has both rights and
responsibilities.
The right to religious freedom is basic to and inseparable from other human
rights. In relations of religion and the state, when an interfaith ethos
of pluralism is upheld by the state, the well-being of minorities, as well
as that of the whole nation, are fostered.
Religions and religious leaders frequently fail to defend human rights.
For religious people, there can be no such thing as neutrality in the face
of injustice. Defense against injustice must be carried out in non-violent
and non-repressive ways. People of religious commitment must search for
and find constructive ways to build a new world of peace and justice.
Wasted Life: Caring For The Child
Our traditions inform us that societies will be judged ultimately by the
condition of their most innocent, most dependent and most vulnerable members-their
children. We are to be held accountable for the impact of violence, including
that which occurs in our own homes and in war upon children-maimed bodies,
destroyed homes, broken families, spiritual traumas. We are to be held
accountable for the ravages of poverty on children-the malnutrition, the
toll of preventable diseases, the stunted growth, the lack of education
and opportunity, and extinction of hope. We are to be held accountable
for the victimization of children-through child labor, sexual exploitation,
forced military service. We are to be held accountable for the destruction
of their inheritance as the environment is permanently damaged and non-renewable
resources are consumed.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides us with
a framework to guide our efforts on behalf of children, including a "First
Call," which embodies the concept of a priority to save, protect and
care for children.
Children's rights belong in the mainstream of human rights. Yet they are
broader than individual rights. Children have a right, and we have an obligation,
to ensure that the environment in which children live is one that supports
and nurtures their development.
Educating children about the beliefs and values of their own religious
tradition and those of others is of paramount importance in seeking a peaceful
world. Families are the first educators of children, and must be supported,
sustained and strengthened by religious communities.
"The sacredness of life, honored in our religious traditions, founds
our belief in the ultimate meaning and value of the child. The sacredness
of life compels us to be a voice of conscience...The grim realities we
confront demand our outrage because they exist; they demand our repentance
because they have been silently tolerated or even justified; they demand
our response because all can be addressed." [from the Declaration
of the World's Religions for the World's Children, World Conference of
Religions for Peace, 1990]
Our goal is the harmony of humankind. In order to realize this objective,
we must work collaboratively using every available resource. The children
of today and tomorrow will be the torch bearers of a harmonious world.
Endangered Earth: Restoring Ecological Harmony
Nature groans and all life on earth calls for help to survive. The environment
urgently needs healing. The earth's ecological components and its people
are interdependent. Each species of life is dependent upon other species.
The survival of all is predicated on the maintenance of a subtle balance
and harmony. We are called not only to recognize the oneness of all life
on earth, but also to protect it. If one element of life is endangered,
all will suffer.
Many religious people only belatedly came to realize this ecological interdependency
of earth, in spite of relevant teachings in their religious traditions.
Often we have been too engrossed in the achievements of modern science
and technology, economic development and material consumption, and have
forgotten the oneness of life and nature. We have dominated nature as if
we were entitled to do so. This arrogance is a root cause of the present
ecological crisis. In our work to restore harmony and common living, we
must begin with repentance for our destructive actions and must effect
a paradigm shift from an anthropocentric to a life-and eco-centered model.
Religious communities, working jointly, have much to contribute to the
development of a common environmental ethic calling for new ways of thinking
and new lifestyles. This ethic will require attitudinal and structural
changes so that equitable and sustainable development may be achieved without
causing damage to the environment. Further, it will call for just and benevolent
relationships between humans and nature, between the more developed and
developing worlds, and between present and future generations. Religious
communities should make it a priority to educate their members, especially
their children and youth, in the common environmental ethic.
The voices of women in the development and institution of this ethic must
be central, for many of the world's women work and live close to the earth,
often tending its fields and gathering its fuel and water for the survival
of their families. Moreover, an attitude of caring, nurturing and healing
should be encouraged in society in its relation to the environment.
Religious communities are called to stand with the poorest and weakest
members of society. Now we must extend this concept of solidarity to the
environment. If the air is contaminated, if a species is on the verge of
extinction, if the soil is eroded, if the forest is lost, if the water
is polluted, all people will suffer with them. We, especially, as religious
people, must be their voice and their protection in the world, so that
all people are urged to work for the healing of ecological infirmities.
The elements of nature have a right to claim healing; we have a responsibility
to help realize that healing.
Restoring ecological harmony means peacemaking with nature. Accordingly,
our concern about environment is an integral part of our striving for peace.
Healing the World: Religions for Peace
As this Assembly draws to its close, we call upon all members of Religions
for Peace to be fully committed to the proposals and creative action plans
presented by each Commission. Therefore, we take upon ourselves the solemn
responsibility of translating the spiritual vision shared by all of us
in healing the ills of the world in collaboration with all people of good
will. We are critically aware of the serious situations facing humanity.
We will vigorously seek to nurture, tap and harness the human spirit to
ease suffering and to create families, communities, nations and a world
based on reverence for every individual human being. Toward this end, may
each of us humbly seek courage, patience, wisdom and compassion.