Dear Friends,
Greetings of peace and blessing from URI Africa.
I am happy to report that URI Africa has expressed its support for the Africa Faith Leaders’ Summit on Sustainable Development and the United Nations (UN)'s Post-2015 Development Agenda, which took place at Commonwealth Resort Munyonyo in Kampala, Uganda from July 1st to 3nd under the theme “Enhancing faith communities.”
The Post-2015 Development Agenda will replace the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), set to expire in 2015. The MDGs include: eradicating poverty, achieving Universal Primary Education, promoting gender equality and empowering of women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.
The UN’s goals have, overall, been remarkably successful in focusing attention and mobilizing resources to address the major gaps in social development. However, of the eight goals, it is believed that only three will met completely by 2015, thus a successive agenda to build on the achievements registered since 2000 is crucial.
URI Africa also acknowledges that heavy expenditures in military infrastructure are incompatible with the aspirations of the UN's Post-2015 Development Agenda. As such, URI Africa calls for a stronger partnership between African governments and faith leaders to bring peace, sustainable development, and to counter violent extremism in Africa. It is the hope of URI Africa that the disproportionate investments in military interventions can be diverted to social development.
It is on the heels of these global and regional processes that African faith leaders, under the auspices of the African Interfaith Initiative on Post-2015 Development Agenda, a coalition of faith communities and their leaders across Africa with technical support from the United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC), organized an African Faith Leaders’ Summit on Sustainable Development and the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
The objectives of the summit are:
- To escalate the engagement of faith communities and leaders in shaping the Post-2015 Development Agenda
- To provide a common platform to ensure that their experiences, needs and aspirations are reflected in the new framework
- To harness the faith communities and leaders’ resourcefulness in engaging and influencing the conversation on the Post-2015 Development Agenda and its outcomes
- To enhance the leadership and capacity of African faith leaders in order to engage and contribute effectively to the prevailing discourses on development and the architecture of sustainable development after 2015
- To generate coordinated and programmatic actions that enable African Faith Communities to bring their voice and organization to bear on the formulation and implementation of public policy and programs in connection to the new charter on development
African faith leaders who have been meeting in Kampala have agreed to involve their various constituencies in setting up a post-2015 collective mechanism to ensure the full implementation of the goals.
The summit that was opened by the President of Uganda H.E. Mr. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni brought together over 200 religious leaders from across Africa. During the meeting, the faith leaders committed to, among other things, do more to promote peace and reconciliation in countries and communities currently facing violence; promote interfaith dialogue and cooperation as a means of eradicating radicalization of religion by elements in the faith communities; advocate for creation of mechanisms that ensure women, children, youth, people with disabilities and people living with HIV/AIDS are part and parcel of efforts meant to find solutions to Africa’s development challenges; and promote the resourcefulness of Africa as opposed to its poverty and misery.
On behalf of its 137 member organizations (Cooperation Circles) in over 28 African countries, URI Africa expresses its commitment to work closely with African Interfaith Initiative on Post-2015 Development Agenda, a coalition of faith communities and their leaders across Africa to move forward the development agenda.
May Peace Prevail in Africa. May Peace Prevail on Earth.
