The 11th Sarajevo UN World Interfaith Harmony Week

Human Dignity, Social Justice, and the Revival of Communities.

International Forum Bosnia will be holding a programme of events to mark the 11^th Sarajevo UN World Interfaith Harmony Week this year in response to the appeal by the UN General Assembly session held on October 20, 2010, to member-states. While International Forum Bosnia will, as usual, be organising and coordinating the activities, a number of other national and international organisations and societies will also be participating and contributing.

The key themes of this year's programme are summed up in the title:

Human Dignity, Social Justice, and the Revival of Communities.

The programme will take place on Wednesday,1 February, and Thursday, 2 February. It will comprise two academic panels. The panels will take the form of hybrid meetings, with some participants present in person and others through Zoom. Participants will be from public and academic life in Bosnia, including participants via Zoom from the Bosnian diaspora around the world. The panels will be on the following topics:

Ø First Panel on Individual Dignity and Social Plurality

The rising role of ideology and collective modes of thought in the contemporary world requires constant renewal of our shared focus on the nature and rights of the individual and how individuals coalesce to form plural social systems in which all can pursue their personal, familial, and communal development under conditions of mutual respect. The fundamental value of the individual lies at the heart of all religious and social systems and plurality is our inescapable condition. Any honest academic, philosophical, or policy-related research into or investigation of social and political conditions or action to promote social justice must start from and ultimately return to the perspective of the individual.

Ø Second Panel on Financial Policy and Social Justice

Justice is to speak and realise truth in society. What contemporary humanity lacks most is surely a focus on Justice, in so far as one third of humanity lives under conditions of need and distress. All religious and social value systems place an emphasis on the creation of social justice as the precondition for enabling environments within which individuals and families can pursue their human development. This requires an adequate understanding of the role of money, financial flows, and financial policy as instruments of both inequality and human and social betterment. Under the gathering social storm and the global cost of living crisis, there can be no more urgent topic that how to integrate money and its uses in positive ways into the development of more just societies.

Both panels will include a number of invited speakers, who will give a talk of approximately 15 minutes each. The sessions will be open to the public/members of International Forum Bosnia.

February 1, 2023

5:00 – 5:30 pm Start

Rusmir Mahmutćehajić, Religious foundations of Freedom, Justice and Solidarity

5:30 – 7:00 pm Panel on Individual Dignity and Social Plurality

Moderator: Asim Zubčević

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87509064776?pwd=RTE4aXo0bWdDVFJncC9HSTZhOGp5dz09

Meeting ID: 875 0906 4776; Passcode: 052260

Sonja Biserko, Human Rights: Ongoing Challenges

Midhat Izmirlija, Equality and Equal Treatment

Ivo Marković, Individual Dignity and the Subversion of Religion