From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
Religious Leaders Convened by OAS Analyzed Dialogue with States of Latin America and the Caribbean
By OAS
Dec 6, 2011 - 4:50:53 PM
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Religious
leaders from throughout the Western Hemisphere convened by the
Organization of American States (OAS) analyzed the subject,
“Dialogue between Religious Communities and the States of Latin
America and the Caribbean,” during the Organization’s 36th Policy
Round Table, held in Washington, DC.
Participants in the two
panels—“Religious Freedom and Non-discrimination” and “The
Contribution of Religious Leaders to the Design of Public
Policies”—were Robert John Araujo, S.J., Professor in the School of
Law at Loyola University; Muhamma Yusuf Hallar, Vice Moderator of
the Latin American and Caribbean Council of Religious Leaders
“Religions for Peace” and Secretary General of the Islamic
Organization of Latin America and the Caribbean (OIPALC); Claudio
Epelman, Vice Moderator of the Latin American and Caribbean Council
of Religious Leaders “Religions for Peace” and Executive Director of
the Latin American Jewish Council (CJL); Julio Murray, President of
the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI); Ajq'ijab Cirilio
Pérez, Chief Elder of the Continental Council of Indigenous Elders
and Spiritual Guides of the Americas and Extraordinary Itinerary
Ambassador for Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala; and Galen Carey,
Vice President of Government Relations for the National Association
of Evangelicals (NAE). The sessions were moderated by Nerea
Aparicio, specialist in the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR) and Evelyn Zentner de Falck, coordinator of the Latin
American and Caribbean Network of Women of Faith.
The
Director of the OAS Department of International Affairs, Irene
Klinger, recalled that the treatment of discrimination and exclusion
in general, including the religious kind, “has been present in the
international juridical framework and at the OAS, and occupy and
important place on the agenda, as well as the promotion and
protection of human rights in general.” Also, she asserted that
“through the different resolutions issued by the General Assemblies
of our Organization, the Member States of the OAS have considered
for several years that racism and discrimination in their diverse
forms threaten the principles and practices of democracy as a way of
life and government and, most certainly, seek its
destruction.”
Robert John Araujo, of the School of Law of the
University of Loyola, recalled that authentic religious freedom is a
right belonging to people because of their nature and dignity, and
is not conferred by the State; also, it can serve as an “antidote”
to the problems that persist in some modern societies. “Today we
live in a world where, as Pope John Paul reminded us in 1988,
religious freedom is an essential condition for peace, for justice;
and even in the Western democracies of which we are a part this is
not always the case, our Western cultures of today are highly
secular, and though this in itself is not the problem, the problem
emerges when these cultures demand full cooperation with the
platform of nominalism, exaggerated individual autonomy, and a lack
of understanding of the common good that is designed to achieve an
objective moral order.”
Muhammad Yusuf Hallar, of the Islamic
Organization of Latin America and the Caribbean (OIPALC), recalled
that currently there exists a tendency to “politicize the different
religions and turn them into military ideologies at the service of
political economic interests and of a doctrinaire fanaticism.” That
is why he highlighted the importance of interreligious dialogue,
which “is no longer a protocolary language, but an appeal to the
human conscience so the protagonists of retrograde traditionalism
and ideological politicians may stop manipulating international
affairs as circles closed to but a few, and to make of values and
the moral ethical system a base for the progress of
humanity.”
Claudio Epelman, Executive Director of the Latin
American Jewish Congress (CJL), said that freedom of religion has to
do with “each person’s identity and the way in which each person
chooses to express himself or herself and acquire the possibility
for transcendence and religious communication with God, creator of
the universe,” which, he argued, means that the negation of this
right “is to deny the right to be ourselves.” In this sense, he
highlighted the importance for a society to choose the right
mechanisms to fight discrimination. “In all societies there exist
radicals, extremists, crazy people who doubtless will carry out acts
of discrimination, but that does not have to be what characterizes a
society, but rather how a society as a whole reacts before this
factor of discrimination and how mechanisms are generated within a
society to protect, in this case, the weakest.”
Julio Murray,
President of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI), recalled
that Latin America and the Caribbean “have lived important
transformations,” though “we have realized that in the last few
years this panorama of change also has become degenerated, and there
have been some steps backward.” This fact, he asserted, raises the
significance of the role of religious leaders in the design of
public policies. “Churches and organizations that belong to the
Latin American Council of Churches do not wish to identify with any
one government, because it is not enough for our societies to have
only peaks of democracy while lacking a solid base in civil society
that may help in making that democracy sustainable,” he said.
“Democracies without an organized civil society, with a clear
political vision, run the great risk of slipping into chaotic
democratism or towards populist authoritarianism.”
Ajq'ijab
Cirilio Pérez, Chief Maya Elder, said that “since the creation of
the State” the Mayan people have been left “at the margins of
society,” and that legislators “never have taken us into account” in
the design of public policies. He recalled that “culture is the
greatest richness of a people,” that it “constitutes the thread of
its history, its tradition and the sustainability of its identity,”
and that therefore it “must be respected by the authorities of the
State.” Pérez concluded by making a call for mankind to change “its
way of being,” its “way of living” and that “we understand that we
are flowers of the earth and not destroyers of mother
earth.”
Galen Carey, Vice President of Government Relations
for the United States National Association of Evangelicals,
highlighted from the Evangelical Christian perspective that
religious leaders contribute to public policies through the
articulation of moral values, among which the primary one is human
dignity. He also emphasized that personal freedom originates in
human dignity and that governments must act in a limited way, with
checks and balances, with power distributed among a variety of
institutions. Finally, he said that “we need to protect churches and
religious communities from being used by politicians,” and “we need
to create a space where all people who come in to our community to
worship are equally welcome regardless of their political
commitments. When we do that we will retain the authenticity which
we need as religious communities.”
In conclusion, Elías
Szczytnicki, Secretary General and Regional Director of Religions
for Peace Latin America and the Caribbean, an organization that
collaborated with the OAS in organizing the event, said that “we
trust that in this event will be one more step forward towards the
continuation of our work with the OAS, along with the Latin American
and Caribbean Council of Religious Leaders, in building a permanent
mechanism to link faith-based communities and the inter-American
system.”
The Round Table was held in the context of the
commemoration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Inter-American
Democratic Charter, which in its Article 9 states: “The elimination
of all forms of discrimination, especially gender, ethnic and race
discrimination, as well as diverse forms of intolerance, the
promotion and protection of human rights of indigenous peoples and
migrants, and respect for ethnic, cultural and religious diversity
in the Americas contribute to strengthening democracy and citizen
participation.”
For
more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.
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