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With the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its guiding principle “Leave no one behind”, the international community has set itself the goal of improving the living conditions of poor and marginalised groups. In many cases, these groups include migrants and refugees. A sophisticated review process has been set up to monitor the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Here, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play a decisive role. Migrants and refugees were explicitly included from the outset. However, this creates additional data requirements: Data disaggregated by migratory status is necessary to capture changes in the living conditions of migrant population groups within the structured review and follow up process of the SDGs. This disaggregation allows to draw conclusions about the well-being of migrants and refugees. SDG 17.18 explicitly calls for the differentiated consideration of this population group in the SDGs, where relevant, and the necessary building up of capacities for data collection and analysis.
Census data, data from national administrative registers and sample surveys are possible data sources to achieve this objective. These data sets, however, differ in their scope and extent to which they capture different types of information. Hence, each represents only a partial reality.
Five years after the adoption of the SDGs, the balance sheet is sobering: Data disaggregated by migratory status are still lacking in most countries. As a result, there is a growing danger that existing disadvantages will become more permanent or more pronounced. In line with its overarching commitment to the implementation of the SDGs, the German government should work to ensure that migrants and refugees are systematically taken into account in the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda. For the remaining period until 2030 – touted as the Decade of Action and Delivery - the following recommendations are derived:
•    Harmonise migration definitions: Data collections should apply definitions and methods recommended by the UN Statistical Commission.
•    Support data collection: The personnel and financial capacities of the national statistical authorities in partner countries should be systematically strengthened.
•    Strengthen synergies: Bridges should be built between migration-specific data initiatives and thematically broader data initiatives that are closely linked to the SDG process.
•    Expand migration expertise in the SDG review process: Migration expertise should be more systematically integrated into the SDG review process than has been the case to date in order to take greater account of changes in the living conditions of migrants and refugees.

With the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its guiding principle “Leave no one behind”, the international community has set itself the goal of improving the living conditions of poor and marginalised groups. In many cases, these groups include migrants and refugees. A sophisticated review process has been set up to monitor the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Here, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play a decisive role. Migrants and refugees were explicitly included from the outset. However, this creates additional data requirements: Data disaggregated by migratory status is necessary to capture changes in the living conditions of migrant population groups within the structured review and follow up process of the SDGs. This disaggregation allows to draw conclusions about the well-being of migrants and refugees. SDG 17.18 explicitly calls for the differentiated consideration of this population group in the SDGs, where relevant, and the necessary building up of capacities for data collection and analysis.
Census data, data from national administrative registers and sample surveys are possible data sources to achieve this objective. These data sets, however, differ in their scope and extent to which they capture different types of information. Hence, each represents only a partial reality.
Five years after the adoption of the SDGs, the balance sheet is sobering: Data disaggregated by migratory status are still lacking in most countries. As a result, there is a growing danger that existing disadvantages will become more permanent or more pronounced. In line with its overarching commitment to the implementation of the SDGs, the German government should work to ensure that migrants and refugees are systematically taken into account in the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda. For the remaining period until 2030 – touted as the Decade of Action and Delivery - the following recommendations are derived:
•    Harmonise migration definitions: Data collections should apply definitions and methods recommended by the UN Statistical Commission.
•    Support data collection: The personnel and financial capacities of the national statistical authorities in partner countries should be systematically strengthened.
•    Strengthen synergies: Bridges should be built between migration-specific data initiatives and thematically broader data initiatives that are closely linked to the SDG process.
•    Expand migration expertise in the SDG review process: Migration expertise should be more systematically integrated into the SDG review process than has been the case to date in order to take greater account of changes in the living conditions of migrants and refugees.

Die Ergebnisse des EU-Gipfels kommentiert Marcel Fratzscher, Präsident des Deutschen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin), wie folgt:

Der EU-Gipfel war ein quälend langer Prozess – doch das bedeutet nicht, dass am Ende nichts Zählbares herausgekommen wäre. Im Gegenteil: Die Ergebnisse und Beschlüsse zu einem europäischen Wiederaufbaufonds mit einem Gesamtvolumen von 750 Milliarden Euro sind ein größerer Erfolg, als es zunächst scheint. Es handelt sich nicht bloß um Transfers und Kredite, die die von der Corona-Pandemie gerissenen wirtschaftlichen Löcher stopfen sollen. Der Wiederaufbaufonds schafft ein neues Instrument, um europäische Aufgaben gemeinsam zu bewältigen. Er ist der Startpunkt für eine Transformation in den Bereichen Klimaschutz und Digitalisierung, kann die europäische Wirtschaft neu und zukunftsfest aufstellen und besser für künftige Krisen wappnen. Das Programm könnte der Grundstein sein für eine europäische Fiskalunion, denn es gesteht erstmals explizit ein, dass fiskalische Transfers nötig sind, um Europa voranzubringen – und das dafür auch die gemeinsame Aufnahme von Schulden sinnvoll ist. Auch wenn hierzulande viele erst einmal jammern werden, ist der getroffene Kompromiss ein großer Gewinn, gerade auch für Deutschland. Gegenüber dem immer nationalistischeren Auftreten Chinas und der USA können wir unsere Interessen nur als Teil eines starken Europas wahren. Es kommt jetzt darauf an, dass Europa nicht nur auf dem Papier des Gipfeldokuments, sondern auch in der Praxis auf den Weg des Miteinanders und der Integration zurückfindet. Dann hätten Kanzlerin Merkel und Finanzminister Scholz direkt zu Beginn der deutschen EU-Ratspräsidentschaft einen großen Erfolg gelandet.

Changing defaults—the preselection that becomes effective without active choice—is becoming a prominent policy tool, after having been proven to be effective in areas as varied as retirement savings, organ donation and product customization. Yet, little is known about how default effects spill over to subsequent similar behaviors. In an online shopping scenario, we found standard default effects on the share of organically produced products in the overall selection of products. These effects did not spill over to subsequent active shopping choices. This was true for defaults that were hard and easy to change (Exp. 1, N = 90), for immediate and delayed subsequent choices (Exp. 2, N = 106) and for self-selected defaults (Exp. 3, N = 181). These findings suggest that the reach and scalability of default manipulations in policy making may be limited, but also speak against the possibility for negative spillover.

Changing defaults—the preselection that becomes effective without active choice—is becoming a prominent policy tool, after having been proven to be effective in areas as varied as retirement savings, organ donation and product customization. Yet, little is known about how default effects spill over to subsequent similar behaviors. In an online shopping scenario, we found standard default effects on the share of organically produced products in the overall selection of products. These effects did not spill over to subsequent active shopping choices. This was true for defaults that were hard and easy to change (Exp. 1, N = 90), for immediate and delayed subsequent choices (Exp. 2, N = 106) and for self-selected defaults (Exp. 3, N = 181). These findings suggest that the reach and scalability of default manipulations in policy making may be limited, but also speak against the possibility for negative spillover.

Changing defaults—the preselection that becomes effective without active choice—is becoming a prominent policy tool, after having been proven to be effective in areas as varied as retirement savings, organ donation and product customization. Yet, little is known about how default effects spill over to subsequent similar behaviors. In an online shopping scenario, we found standard default effects on the share of organically produced products in the overall selection of products. These effects did not spill over to subsequent active shopping choices. This was true for defaults that were hard and easy to change (Exp. 1, N = 90), for immediate and delayed subsequent choices (Exp. 2, N = 106) and for self-selected defaults (Exp. 3, N = 181). These findings suggest that the reach and scalability of default manipulations in policy making may be limited, but also speak against the possibility for negative spillover.

As more and more states and organizations adopt a gendered approach to international policy, trainings on how to conduct gender-based analysis and integrate gender perspectives into policies and programming have proliferated. But despite this increase in gender trainings, it remains unclear how effective they have been due to challenges related to their design, delivery, targeting, and evaluation.

After mapping the ecosystem of gender trainings in the realm of international peace and security, this issue brief unpacks each of these challenges. It concludes with a set of recommendations for improving gender trainings, suggesting that those designing gender trainings should consider the following:

• Conducting a preliminary needs assessment to adapt trainings to their audience;
• Soliciting feedback at every stage of the training, including “live” feedback during the training;
• Grounding training in local contexts and providing evidence to back up claims; and,
• Generating self-reflection by both participants and trainers during evaluations.

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In recent years, pastoralism has increasingly become associated with violent conflict. In the Sahel, pastoralism-related insecurity is directly linked to macro-level conflict dynamics in contexts with UN peacekeeping missions, including Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, Abyei, and South Sudan. However, the UN system has been slow to adopt a coordinated response to this phenomenon.

This issue brief provides a preliminary overview of peacekeeping missions’ efforts to mitigate growing pastoralism-related insecurity in their areas of operation. It analyzes six missions that are active within or near the Sahel region. After framing pastoralism-related security, it explores how the Security Council has addressed this issue in mission mandates. It then looks at how missions have tried to address pastoralism-related insecurity and how they can leverage partnerships with other actors as part of a multi-stakeholder approach.

The paper concludes that while peacekeeping missions are not the primary means for addressing the multidimensional drivers of pastoralism-related insecurity, they can help mitigate risks, including through political and logistical support to other actors. Together with these partners, peacekeeping missions should leverage their comparative advantages to help address pastoralism-related insecurity in the Sahel.

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Despite advances in some areas of sustainable development, countries around the world are still not on track to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and implement the 2030 Agenda. As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes more and more important to renew the multilateral cooperation around the SDGs, but a major challenge to doing so is the disconnect between the local, national, regional, and global levels.

On July 16th, the International Peace Institute (IPI)—in collaboration with the government of The Gambia and the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security, along with the governments of Japan, and Switzerland—addressed this question with a virtual interactive discussion and launch of a report on how to design locally led strategies for the 2030 Agenda entitled Localizing the 2030 Agenda in West Africa: Building on What Works (available in French and English).

The meeting followed up on one held last October in Banjul, and Mamadou Tangara, the Gambian Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the Banjul Forum had made clear the importance of inclusive engagement and multilateral cooperation around the SDGs. “The process must include actors at various levels of the development process. As the famous African proverb goes: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Mr. Tangara praised UN Secretary- General António Guterres for his “build back better” pledges to go beyond just restoring the UN in the post-COVID period but making sure it was more effective than before. “If there could be anything like a bright side to the pandemic, it is that it has shown us the resilience of the UN spirit in the face of adversity,” he said. “If we are to succeed in localizing the 2030 Agenda, we must possess this spirit of resilience. Better communities make better countries. Better countries make better regions. And better regions create a better world. It all starts with our communities.”

Read his full remarks here.

Munyaradzi Chenje, UN Development Coordination Office (DCO) Regional Director for Africa, said the word “local” was key to successfully implementing the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs and to combating the effects of the COVID-19 virus. “We build from the ground up and not the other way around,” he said. “Local means data and information on where everyone is, knowing those who have been left behind, those at risk of being thrown back into poverty and vulnerability because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the young adults… Our success will hinge upon empowered communities as a driving force with national, regional, and sub-regional partners.”

Also emphasizing the importance of building up from the local level was Tamba John Sylvanus Lamina, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development in Sierra Leone. “Sierra Leone is in the midst of a pandemic, and that speaks to the issue of how we should use home grown methods to help achieve the goals. The more we focus our attention on the issues and ensuring that people have buy-in, especially at the local level, then the more progress we’ll make as a nation.”

He said that in the aftermath of its civil war, Sierra Leone had created a “People’s Planning Process ” which it is now taking forward in implementing its national development plan. “Consultations were done all over the country to formulate that document, and after that, we moved around the communities for validation of that document to find out what the communities wanted to prioritize.” One of the priorities that emerged from that consultation was an emphasis on education, and particularly secondary school courses in science for girls. “Moving forward, the people’s participatory framework is a social mobilization tool where people sit together and discuss issues together as we would in our traditional homes around the fireplace.”

Georges Ki-Zerbo, World Health Organization Representative in Guinea, spoke about the localization of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Guinea. “Two days ago, I was in the municipality of Kaloum in Conakry, and the Kaloum mayor, who was with us at the Banjul Forum, the Minister of Communication, and religious leaders from Conakry joined in to discuss how to best strengthen community engagement in stopping COVID-19. I learned from that discussion that by engaging communities at the district level, the Kaloum municipality was able to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections from 380 to five cases in just a few weeks. This amazing local success was possible through engaging the elders, religious leaders, and women’s and youth associations who went around with the medical teams, promoting face masks and helping families with food, hygiene kits and other commodities. This is a success story, and it shows that we can leverage community networks for responses to scale up the COVID-19 responses and improve social protection and development.”

Noting that as part of commemorating the UN’S 75TH birthday, this year had been designated a year for “listening,” he declared, “Listening will be key for localizing the SDGs and leaving no one behind. In addition to listening locally, we need to work better across borders, not only geographical borders, but also cultural, religious, gender, and age group borders to rebuild after COVID-19 so that we can have the unique ability to innovate.”

“With the added challenge of COVID-19, it is evident that we must consider the decade of acceleration towards the SDGs with the highest possible level of humility, gravitas, and resolve,” Mr. Ki-Zerbo said.

Raheemat Omoro Momodu, Head of Human Security and Civil Society Division, ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Division, said that in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis people would be expecting more from their states and governments. “And that’s how ECOWAS will become more relevant,” she said. “We are going to see greater relevance of intergovernmental organizations.”

As a consequence, Ms. Momodu said, ECOWAS had mainstreamed its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “ECOWAS will need to re -strategize, innovate, and reform to be a better fit for a redefined course in a post-COVID world. We need to reexamine our approaches, listen more and get more connected to the local community. We need to start the local transformation in such a way that we are informed by what the local needs are.” As part of that transformation, she said, ECOWAS was promoting community-based economic growth “so that people at that level can survive day by day.”

Dominique Favre, Deputy Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the UN, noted that in his country the 2030 Agenda was applied at both the federal and cantonal level. “At the international level, Switzerland is promulgating the same approach regarding all levels of actors for implementation of the agenda, including the local level, civil society, and public authorities. Local partners are priority partners. It’s indeed at the local level that solutions are lived. It’s at the local level that leaving no one behind seems most personal and applicable. ”

Nérida N.M. Batista Fonseca, CEO of Innovation, SARL, in Guinea- Bissau, said that the greatest needs in her country were upgrading the health and education systems and thereby helping young people, who make up 64% of the population. She said that civil society organizations and the private sector could help in several key areas like agriculture. “Our country relies on agriculture mainly so we need to create new entrepreneurs who can collaborate and work within certain areas to meet the needs of the population.

The biggest problem was political, Ms. Fonseca said, because there were frequent changes of government and consequently little stability in the country’s institutions. Also, there was little interaction between the private sector and the UN. Accordingly, she said, “we will only be able to continue the work if we create a commission on sustainable development with innovators from all sector of society that remains a constant platform that withstands the political upheavals.The training of people is crucial because it helps their inclusion in the work force. And we need to support the female entrepreneurs as well if we really want to achieve the 2030 Agenda.”

The authors of the report are Jimena Leiva Roesch, IPI Senior Fellow and Head of the Peace and Sustainable Development Program, and Masooma Rahmaty, IPI Policy Analyst for the Peace and Sustainable Development and Women, Peace, and Security programs.

Citing highlights of the report, Ms. Leiva Roesch said it contemplated a more “people-centered and context specific” approach to putting the SDGs into effect. “We can’t think that we’re going to parachute the SDGs into a local context and just think that municipalities will follow. The 2030 Agenda needs to be perceived as a flexible format that allows for greater inclusion and participation. It’s like opening a door so we can all speak a common language, the SDGs language.”

She also questioned approaches taking up the SDGs in a siloed manner. “The SDGs were designed as a tapestry of connections, so once you focus solely on a specific SDG, the tapestry falls apart and you lose the complexity of the framework. If you’ve ever seen the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, shrinking the SDGs from the national to the sub-national level makes it less overwhelming to tackle the SDGs from a local level, but it hopefully becomes less overwhelming when it’s beyond the national level to the subnational but still keeps the holistic nature of the framework.”

Ms. Leiva Roesch recalled that at last year’s Banjul Forum, the seating was designed to be “non-hierarchal,” with ministers mixed in with local leaders and municipal figures. “What happened there is that national representatives had an ‘aha’ moment where they realized that they had so many resources at home, that there were so many initiatives happening within. We should become aware that there’s a lot more inside than we originally thought. For international actors, it has to be a more humbling process. When you’re trying to localize the SDGs, there’s already so much inside that we have to build on what’s there already.” With COVID-19, this way of working becomes more relevant and urgent than ever.

In brief comments, Alex Konteh, a municipal authority leader from Sierra Leone who participated in the Banjul Forum, asserted that “we must prioritize local cultures as the yardstick of measurement for the realization of the SDGs.”

In concluding remarks, Toshiya Hoshino, Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the UN, said the SDGs were “widely promoted” in his country and embodied Japan’s commitment to the “human security agenda,” something he said had become even more relevant with the COVID-19 pandemic. He termed it “politically important to include the concept of human security in the process of localizing the SDGs.”

Ms. Leiva Roesch moderated the discussion.

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“What’s true is that a world organized by multilateral cooperation is a more just world order based upon sovereign equality of states, the rule of law, the practice of diplomacy, and not ‘might makes right’ in which a strong country can simply take territory from another country, as we saw for all of human history, up until the 20th century,” said Adam Lupel, IPI Vice President, during an event hosted by the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA).

He added, “This is important for small countries, though the strong countries also have an interest in this system, because we all have an interest in peace, and there is no doubt statistically that interstate war has been [on] a dramatic decline since the creation of the UN.”

Dr. Lupel spoke extensively on multilateralism during a conversation with Peter Yeo, President of the Better World Organization, on July 15, 2020, at an event moderated by Rachel Pittman, Executive Director of UNA-USA.

“I think today’s context of a pandemic is a real case in point,” Dr. Lupel pointed out. “This is a global phenomenon and even the strongest country in the world can’t handle it in isolation—it’s something that we need cooperation to handle.”

“Also, it’s only through multilateral cooperation that we can aspire to do the really big things—end poverty, feed the world, combat climate change, advance human rights—things that we’re looking to do on a global scale,” he said. “And this uncertainty has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and evident divisions in the multilateral system that has made a globally coordinated response so difficult.”

In response to a question about nationalism, Dr. Lupel said, “If nationalism means isolationism and go-it-alone, it is a problem from an international perspective because it won’t lead to a safer, more secure and more prosperous nation. It will actually lead to an impoverished and more insecure nation, because there are a host of problems that can only be addressed through both cooperation and the pursuit of national interests.”

Dr. Lupel noted that the multilateral system is not just about the UN Security Council but also relates to real technical cooperation—civil aviation, the Universal Postal Union, telecommunications—”all these things have multilateral mechanisms that ease the way for us to do things that are very common, but actually would be very difficult if we didn’t cooperate internationally,” he said.

He recalled that the conversation in the lead up to the UN’s 75th anniversary “is more future-oriented. It is about recognizing global transformations and the uncertainty regarding where the international system is heading.

“Many people are beginning to speak about this moment as one of two things for the international system. It is either a moment in which long-term trends are simply being accelerated: geopolitical division, inequality, rising nationalism. Or it is a fork in the road, where we can make real change, and change direction.”

Dr. Lupel said it is likely a bit of both, “but what is clear is that the decisions being made today will have profound consequences.”

He added, “So to the extent that ‘Multilateralism is under Fire,’ organizations like the UNA-USA and IPI have a great task ahead of them to work against those trends that threaten multilateral approaches and work to improve efforts at international cooperation.”

Zusammenfassung:

Der Anfang Juli 2020 vom Bundestag beschlossene Kohleausstieg könnte eine größere Rolle für Erdgas im deutschen Energiesystem bedeuten. Doch tatsächlich ist Erdgas nicht klimafreundlicher als Kohle. Vor allem aber droht Europa bei den Erdgasimporten zum Spielfeld des Konflikts zwischen Russland und den USA zu werden. Eine Spirale aus Sanktionen und Gegensanktionen hat sich rund um den Bau der Ostseepipeline Nordstream 2 in Gang gesetzt. Die USA machen mit Flüssiggas den russischen Erdgaslieferungen in Europa Konkurrenz. Während die deutsche und die europäische Politik nunmehr angemessene Reaktionen auf die sich zuspitzende US-Sanktionspolitik diskutieren, stellt sich die Frage, welche Rolle US-Flüssiggas überhaupt im europäischen Erdgasmarkt spielen kann. Modellrechnungen des DIW Berlin liefern darauf erste Antworten. Darüber hinaus muss die Debatte um die kurzfristige Versorgung mit Erdgasimporten in den langfristigen Zusammenhang der Energiewende eingebettet werden, die mit einem Ausstieg aus fossilem Erdgas in den nächsten Jahrzehnten wird einhergehen müssen.

Obwohl sich die Erneuerbaren Energien am Markt behaupten, wird ihnen auf politischer Ebene das Leben schwer gemacht. Deshalb braucht es dringend eine EEG-Version 4.0.

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Despite advancement in some areas, countries around the world are still not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The transformation needed to achieve these goals depends on innovation and initiatives that build on existing capacities and fit the needs of local contexts, yet the 2030 Agenda remains largely unknown at the local level. Therefore, a key avenue for progress is to move the focus below the national level to the subnational level, including cities and communities.

Toward this end, together with partners including the UN Trust Fund for Human Security and the Government of The Gambia, the International Peace Institute hosted a forum in Banjul on “Localizing the 2030 Agenda: Building on What Works” in October 2019. This forum provided a platform for learning and sharing among a diverse group of stakeholders, including government officials from both the national and municipal levels, UN resident coordinators, and civil society representatives.

Drawing on the discussions at the forum, this report highlights the path some West African countries have taken toward developing locally-led strategies for implementing the 2030 Agenda. It focuses in particular on four key factors for these strategies: ownership across all levels of society; decentralization; coordination, integration, and alignment; and mobilization of resources to support implementation at the local level.

For more information related to IPI’s work during the 2020 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, see here.

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Participants from top left to right: IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji, IPI MENA Policy Analyst Dalya Al Alawi, Chairman of the Krishna Temple in Bahrain Sushil Muljimal, Representative of the Baha’i Religion Shahnaz Jaberi, Pastor of the National Evangelical Church Reverend Hani Aziz, Member of Bahrain’s Jewish Community Michael Yadgar, Pastor Job Nelson of the Bethel Church of Nations in Bahrain, Imam of the Grand Mosque in Bahrain Shaikh Salah Al Jowder, Representative of the Bohra Faith Mustafa Zakivi, IPI MENA Intern Amine Mohammed, and Dr. Shaikh Majeed Al Asfoor, Member of the Board of Trustees of the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence

Interfaith leaders joined IPI MENA in calling for greater unity, cooperation, and solidarity across the multilateral system in tackling the challenges from the coronavirus pandemic as part of a virtual conference titled “Interfaith Solidarity in Covid-19” hosted by IPI MENA on July 8th.

Addressing imams, reverends, priests, pastors, religious and faith representatives across Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Baha’I and Bohra faiths, IPI MENA Director Nejib Friji opened the conference by stressing the need to bolster multilateral tools to tackle the ramifications of this transnational pandemic that has affected all parts of society—and vulnerable groups in particular, including women, youth, and the elderly.

“Religion leaders are crucial civil society actors in the field of cultural diplomacy,” Mr. Friji stated, underlining the emphasis religions place on peace and security. “You are all invaluable sources of fostering understanding, reconciliation, tolerance, and reciprocal respect among religious communities which can provide a foundation for peacebuilding efforts.”

Highlighting IPI’s mandate of building resilient societies and managing risk, he noted that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations calls for a ceasefire and permanent end to hostilities and conflict are crucial, and should be included in interfaith alliance’s support.

Mr. Friji concluded with a call for further solidarity and cooperation between all parties, at the local, regional, and international levels towards a proactive global response.

Shahnaz Jaberi, Trustee Member of the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence and representative of the Baha’i Religion, noted the importance the Baha’i community places on exploring the role of religion in enhancing unity, coexistence, and brotherhood among fellow citizens to overcome the social and economic consequences of the pandemic.

She called on all people, irrespective of religious affiliation, background, or gender, to serve humanity and unite in action, from the international stage to the grassroots, to combat the pandemic.

Her message was reinforced by Shaikh Salah Al Jowder, Imam of the Grand Mosque in Muharraq, who reminded participants that key stakeholders not only come from state-related institutions and governments, but from international organizations, private sector, and individuals as the pandemic impacts all indiscriminately.

Pastor Job Nelson of the Bethel Church of Nations in Bahrain focused on the silver lining of the pandemic—uniting people across religious faiths, ethnicity, race, and social status, and countering the divisions the pandemic has created through border closures and xenophobia.

Michael Yadgar, a member of Bahrain’s Jewish community, noted that the pandemic has presented an opportunity to scrutinize the availability of effective healthcare unilaterally. He also highlighted the importance of learning from the lessons the pandemic, notably that the environment has been spared pollution due to reduced transport, and that greater attention is being given to reconnect with humanity at a personal level.

Representative to His Holiness Dr. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, Religious leader of the World Wide Dawoodi Bohra Community, Mustafa Zakavi referenced religious scripture in reinforcing the common duty of protecting each other by following healthcare guidelines. He pointed to the important role women are playing in his community through their sewing skills to create face masks for medical staff and frontline heroes fighting the pandemic.

Reverend Hani Aziz, Pastor of the National Evangelical Church of Bahrain highlighted the importance of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and organizations such as IPI in providing a platform for unity during these trying times. He stressed the importance of governments in treating nationals and expatriates with the same care, and the need for solidarity across faiths following the closure of religious facilities to curb the spread of the virus.

Dr. Shaikh Majeed Al Asfoor, member of the Board of Trustees of the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence, stressed that peace is the essential driver in uniting faiths. In highlighting the need for solidarity in following health-care guidelines to protect fellow citizens, he referenced a Quranic verse: “Whoever killed a person, it shall be as if he killed all mankind. Whoever healed a person, it shall be as if he healed all mankind.”

Chairman of the Krishna Temple in Bahrain Sushil Muljimal pointed to the important role governments can place in alleviating the burden on citizens. He applauded Bahrain’s treatment of citizens and non-citizens in this respect and called for greater gratitude towards hospitals, medics, and staffing units on the frontlines of the pandemic.