UNESCO Webinar: Healing Through Transforming Narratives & Public Spaces 15 JUNE 2023 @16.00 UTC / 17.00 BST / 18.00 CEST

The UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project and the Global Humanity for Peace Institute, University of Wales Trinity St David (UWTSD), are jointly hosting an exciting international webinar series entitled: New Perspectives on Collective Healing, Social Justice and Well-Being. These webinars are supported by AfroSpectives, and Spirit of Humanity Forum.

Dr Ali Moussa Iye is a writer and researcher. He holds a PhD in political Science from the Institute of Political Science (Grenoble, France). He was a journalist, Editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper and Director of Press and Audio-visual in his country (Djibouti) before joining UNESCO. Within UNESCO, through various posts, he actively contributed to the elaboration of the UNESCO Strategy against Racism and Discrimination and the creation of the International Coalition of Cities against Racism. From 2004 and 2019, Dr Moussa Iye was the Head of the History and Memory for Dialogue Department and directed two important UNESCO Programmes: the Routes of Dialogue (Slave Route Project and Silk Roads Project) and the General and Regional Histories (History of Humanity, General History of Africa, General History of Latin America; General History of the Caribbean, History of Civilisations of Central Asia; Different Aspects of Islamic Culture). He has initiated and coordinated the pedagogical use of the General History of Africa and the drafting of the last three volumes of this prestigious collection to update it and address the new challenges faced by Africa and its diasporas.

Dr Moussa Iye is currently pursuing research in the field of political anthropology and is working in particular on the revalorisation of African endogenous knowledge. He is the founder and Chair of the Think-Tank “AFROSPECTIVES, a Global Africa initiative” to re-imagine Africa’s presence and contribution to the World. Among his publications are “The Verdict of the Tree: An Essay of an African Endogenous Democracy” (2014) and “Slavery, Resistance and Abolitions: A Pluralist Perspective” (2019).

Esther A. Armah is an author, playwright, international public speaker, and former journalist. She is CEO of The Armah Institute of Emotional Justice (The AIEJ), a global institute creating racial healing resources and tools working across Accra, New York, and London. She is author of “EMOTIONAL JUSTICE: a roadmap for racial healing“, a #1 New Release on Amazon in the category General Sociology of Race Relations for six straight weeks. Emotional Justice is a racial healing roadmap Esther created over a 15-year period through assignment, research and community engagement in Accra, Philadelphia, South Africa and New York. As a journalist she has worked in London, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

Esther was the Spring 2022 Distinguished Activist in Residence at New York University’s Center for Black Visual Culture. Her Emotional Justice essays are featured in the New York Times best-selling book “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America“; the award-winning Love with Accountability, Charleston Syllabus, and Women & Migrations (II). She has written five Emotional Justice plays that have been produced and performed in New York, Chicago and Ghana. For her Emotional Justice work, she won the ‘Community Healer Award’ at the 2016 Valuing Black Lives Global Emotional Emancipation Summit in Washington DC. Esther was named ‘Most Valuable NY Radio Host’ in The Nation’s Progressive Honors List for her work on Wake-Up Call on Pacifica’s, WBAI.

Webinar: Impact of COVID-19 on Religious and Faith Communities

International Webinar: The impact of COVID-19 on religious and faith communities

On 27 May at 4pm CET, the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute partnered with the GHFP Research Institute, the Spirit of Humanity Forum, the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) and the United Religions Initiative, and held a webinar examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious and faith communities around the world.

Questions discussed during the webinar were:

  • What are the pandemic’s major impact on religious and faith communities? How might religious leaders and their followers help embrace the challenges brought by the pandemic?
  • How might we reduce social tension stemming from religious factors at this unique time? How can we do to foster solidarity within and between different religious and faith communities and improve mental and physical well-being during the pandemic?
  • What religious, faith and spiritual practices could become part of the new normal in a post-COVID-19 world? What could be the part of religion, faith and spirituality in future of our society?

The event featured the following speakers:

Katherine Marshall, Senior Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University / Executive Director, World Faiths Development Dialogue

Victor Kazanjian, Executive Director, United Religions Initiative

Patrice Brodeur, Professor, Institute of Religious Studies, University of Montreal & Senior Adviser, KAICIID

The Webinar was facilitated by Scherto Gill, Senior Research Fellow and Executive Secretary, GHFP Research Institute.

To view the event:

On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCXMYNkGKho

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DOCResearchInstitute/videos/832214357304217/UzpfSTEwNTA2NTU0NTgzNTIyNjY6MzAyMzMyMTA1MTA4NTY4Nw/