About WCRP

The World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) is a forum dedicated to promoting co-operation for peace and justice among members of the world’s religions.

A world wide movement based on respect for religious diversity, WCRP began in 1970 as a result of a strong multi-religious desire to oppose the Vietnam war. The movement has spread around the world, with now individual members in over sixty countries and institutional members that affect millions of believers throughout the world.

As a United Nations Non-Governmental Organisation, WCRP has consultative status, Category I, with the UN Economic and Social Council; full consultative status with UNESCO and UNICEF.

WCRP engages in vigorous peace promoting initiatives throughout the world on a multi-religious basis. Leaders and active members of the following religious communities regularly participate in WCRP:

• Baha’i
• Buddhist
• Christian
• Confucian
• Hindu
• Muslim
• Jain
• Jewish
• Shinto
• Sikh
• Tao
• Zoroastrian

• Africa
• the America’s
• Australia
• Oceana

Many conflicts today remind us that religious differences have often been misused in promoting injustice, hatred and discrimination.

The world’s religious communities, however, have unique capacities to function as powerful agents of change in the pursuit of peace with justice.

In our interdependent world, multi-religious co-operation for peace can often be more effective than the efforts of a single religious group. Moreover, co-operation among religious groups can provide a powerful symbol to promote tolerance in circumstances where religious people, tragically, contribute to conflict and violence.

WCRP functions as a potent multi-religious force on local, national, regional and global levels for a variety of peace related activities. The primary areas of concern include children and youth (in co-operation with UNICEF); conflict resolution; disarmament; environmental protection; human rights; peace education (in co-operation with UNESCO); refugees and displaced persons (in co-operation with UNHCR) and sustainable development.

WCRP Youth

In 1974, WCRP Japan founded a Youth Board. Under its stimulus, ten years later, WCRP International launched a Youth committee in order to train a new generation in the ways of multi-religious co-operation and to benefit from young people’s unique perspectives and strengths in the conception and implementation of WCRP activities. Youth committees can now be found in about one third of WCRP’s various structural levels, from local to global. WCRP Youth now count close to one thousand active young members on five continents.

The international work of WCRP Youth structure is co-ordinated by its International Youth Committee.

The members of the present International Youth Committee are:

Patricia Cespedes Aguire (Peru), Vinu Aram (India), Nataha Barolin-Pilsel (Croatia), Ursula Hippolyta Coreira (Sri Lanka), Eitan Eliram (Israel), Abu Bakar Francis (Namibia), Luis Manuel Giron (USA/Puerto Rico), Thierry Jeanne (France), Jessica Margaret Longwe (South Africa), Mitchito Miyake (Japan), Ziad Moussa (Lebanon), Harbaksh Singh Nanda (India), Nersey Rastan (United Kingdom), Holger Wielsch (Germany), Nick White (Australia).

The International Youth Coordinator is Vinu Aram (India).

For more information you can contact the WCRP International Secretariat:

Phone: (1) 212 687 2163
Fax: (1) 212 983 0566

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