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2022 in Review

Europe is striving to answer unprecedented challenges. The Baha’i International Community believes these can be addressed only by recognising humanity's inherent oneness. Last year, as part of this work, our Brussels office joined discussions on social cohesion in Europe’s diverse communities, the European Union’s relationship with Africa, food systems and agriculture, achieving coherent policy design, appreciating the role religion plays in shaping society, and the ongoing human rights crisis affecting Baha’is in Iran, Qatar and Yemen. We hope our annual newsletter offers a sense of what we explored; this year, please join us as we continue to learn.

Social Cohesion

Diversity – a reality in many European cities and villages – is a great source of wealth for humanity. How can these diverse communities contribute together to bettering and transforming their societies? We hosted events and met with municipal authorities, civil society actors and European Union (EU) officials to explore this question. And when 100 cities pledged to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 with the EU’s ‘Cities Mission’ project, we explored the idea that only a cohesive community working together can reach sustainable goals. The past year was also the European Year of Youth – which gave us a chance to look at the unique role of young people in working towards social cohesion.

Africa and Europe

The engagement and relationship between Africa and Europe must become stronger, as many agree. To contribute to this growing discussion we, together with our colleagues at the Baha’i International Community in Addis Ababa, issued a joint statement in February, on the occasion of the 6th African Union (AU) and EU Summit. Our statement discussed initial steps that we believe are needed to strengthen the Africa Europe partnership. One such step is to acknowledge that at the heart of effective engagement between both continents must be ongoing, sincere, and consultative reflection about the development of their relationship.

Civil society actors, academics or researchers whom we worked with all agreed at meetings we hosted that it is important for the grassroots, and especially young people, to have opportunities to interact with national and regional institutions, ensuring that policy and strategy made at the intercontinental level meet the realities of local communities. We addressed this point in a letter to the AU-EU Commissions’ meeting, in November, in which we encouraged policymakers to create mechanisms connecting them to communities and people at the grassroots.

Food Systems

The world needs a food system that is sustainable, non-exploitative and that provides for all. Sufficient food production and distribution are essential short-term goals, of course, but around the world there is a rising appreciation of the need to address systemic failures of our food systems. We therefore contributed to the EU proposal for a legislative framework for a sustainable food system. And in September we addressed a statement titled “Towards a sustainable food system” to the informal meeting of European ministers of agriculture and fisheries in Prague.

Policy Design

Policies that meet the needs of an interconnected world need to be designed with an understanding of their effects beyond EU borders. We therefore met with representatives of EU institutions, civil society and think tanks, to discuss the Better Regulation Agenda. We also offered input to the European Parliament’s draft report on policy coherence for development while advancing similar thinking during a series of meetings on the need for coherence between rural sustainability, agriculture and migration policies.

Role of Religion

What kind of world – and neighbourhood – do we want to live in? Answering such questions, and imagining the next stage of humanity’s collective life, requires the insights of all parts of society including those offered by religious belief systems. We dove into these questions, exploring insights from all quarters, by co-hosting over the past year a number of meetings with other faith-based organisations and religious communities.

Human Rights of Baha’is

The human rights situation of Baha’is in Iran, Qatar and Yemen continued to be a source of concern for our office. In the midst of increasingly violent and repressive actions by the Iranian authorities against its citizens, a crackdown against Iranian Baha’is has taken place, with over 300 individual cases of persecution since the summer. The European Parliament (EP) reiterated in an October resolution “its strong condemnation of the steadily deteriorating human rights situation in Iran, including and especially for persons belonging to ethnic and religious minorities [...] including [the] Bahaʼi”. Earlier this year, the EP Intergroup on Freedom of Religion or Belief and Religious Tolerance (FoRB & RT) emphasized in its report that the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran “takes place through government policies”.

Member of the EP (MEP) Leopoldo López Gil, during a documentary screening he hosted on the Baha’is in Iran, remarked on “the resilience of the Baha’i community and their strength of spirit against these adversities”. And MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen when hosting with the EP Intergroup on FoRB & RT, called on Qatar, which has discriminated against Baha’is for decades, to uphold their rights.