History and Achievements

At the international level, the achievements of Religions for Peace have been:

  • to have helped broker a peace treaty in Sierra Leone since the late 1990s
  • to have worked for peace in the Balkans since 1998
  • to have sponsored an international network of religious women’s organisations
  • to have established a program to help millions of Africa’s children affected by AIDS in the initiative of the Hope for African Children
  • to bring together every five years several thousand religious and interfaith leaders to discuss global issues, the last being the World Assembly in Kyoto in August 2006
  • to have formed interreligious councils
  • to have built a new climate of reconciliation in Iraq since 2003

In Australia, since 2000, Religions for Peace Australia has:

  • organised with the Victorian Council of Churches the interfaith ceremony celebrating 100 years of the Federation of Australia as a federated, sovereign nation
  • organised with the Victorian Council of Churches the commemorative service for S11 at the Melbourne Tennis Centre attended by 10,000 people
  • sponsored in association with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs the research study, Religion, Cultural Diversity and Safeguarding Australia, and two companion volumes in Islam in Australia and Constructing a Local Multifaith Network.
  • Held twice-yearly meetings of Heads of Faith Communities at the NSW Parliament House in Sydney
  • Sponsored interfaith discussions at Shalom College at the University of New South Wales
  • Supported the creation of a Women’s Interfaith Network in Sydney and across Australia