ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, February 24 (IPS) – As wars drag on and the worldwide order grows more and more unstable, Abu Dhabi has been providing a distinct sort of narrative. It sought to acknowledge early efforts at reconciliation, deliver spiritual leaders into the identical house, and place former adversaries below the identical highlight. On the coronary heart of the February 4, 2026 Zayed Award for Human Fraternity ceremony was an try to make seen, in a public setting, the selection of shifting within the course of easing battle.
Timed to coincide with the United Nations–designated Worldwide Day of Human Fraternity, the ceremony drew heads of state, spiritual leaders and civil-society representatives. The award traces its origins to the 2019 Doc on Human Fraternity, signed in Abu Dhabi by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayeb. The doc is broadly thought to be a historic declaration that set out a world name for interreligious dialogue and peaceable coexistence.
Seven years on, the worldwide panorama has change into much more fragmented. Even so, the organizers have framed the ceremony not merely as an awards occasion, however as a symbolic platform supposed to encourage a minimal measure of restraint when politics turns turbulent.
Shoring Up a Fragile Peace
The second that drew probably the most consideration this yr was the popularity of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for his or her peace settlement. After a long time of confrontation, the award functioned as a type of worldwide endorsement for a still-fragile peace course of within the South Caucasus.
Peace agreements are sometimes most susceptible instantly after they’re reached. Home political backlash and deep-seated distrust can simply undermine implementation. In that sense, bringing the 2 leaders onto the identical stage was not a declaration that the journey was full; it was an try to “reinforce” diplomatic progress. By recognizing leaders who selected dialogue at an early stage, the award seems geared toward widening the political house for compromise—and at making it tougher for opponents to overturn the settlement.
The award, nonetheless, prolonged past state management. The 2026 laureates additionally included Afghan ladies’ schooling advocate Zarqa Yaftali and the Palestinian nonprofit Taawon, honoring efforts to proceed humanitarian and improvement work below circumstances of battle and political instability. It additionally underscores the award’s intention to bridge “top-down politics,” resembling peace agreements, with “bottom-up peacebuilding” that helps communities on the bottom. The underlying message is evident: even with treaties and agreements in place, peace can’t take root if the faculties, healthcare, and native assist techniques wanted to maintain society stay fragile.
A Dialogue Circuit Linking Rome and Astana
Abu Dhabi’s ceremony isn’t an remoted occasion. In October 2025, Rome hosted the annual discussion board “Religions and Cultures in Dialogue for Peace,” organized by the Neighborhood of Sant’Egidio. Inheriting the spirit of the 1986 Assisi gathering, the discussion board serves as a unbroken platform that brings collectively spiritual leaders, political figures, and representatives of civil society. The Holy See (the Vatican) is a central participant, exercising its ethical authority to attach moral appeals with debates in worldwide politics.
Additional east, Kazakhstan has institutionalized interfaith engagement by means of the Congress of Leaders of World and Conventional Religions in Astana. Each the Holy See and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar have persistently participated, serving to to maintain the congress as a venue for structured interreligious dialogue.
Seen on this gentle, Rome, Astana, and Abu Dhabi aren’t merely separate occasions; they emerge as nodal factors in a broader house of dialogue that hyperlinks faith and diplomacy. Put in a different way, they operate like a daily service designed to maintain the traces of communication open—guaranteeing that the flexibility to fulfill and discuss doesn’t fall silent.
Non secular Actors Throughout Borders
Not solely states maintain this community. Just like the Holy See and non secular leaders from world wide, Hirotsugu Terasaki, Director-Normal for Peace Affairs of Soka Gakkai Worldwide (SGI) — a company with some 13 million members worldwide — has taken half in dialogue venues in Abu Dhabi, Rome and Astana.
Forward of the Abu Dhabi ceremony, Terasaki met with Decide Mohamed Abdelsalam, Secretary-Normal of the award, and delivered a letter from Minoru Harada, President of Soka Gakkai, addressed to Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb. The 2 exchanged views on the necessity to additional strengthen “heart-to-heart dialogue” that transcends spiritual variations.
The phases created by the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan—each of which place emphasis on “religious diplomacy”—are greater than mere occasions. What provides these settings ethical authority and lends them moral weight as arenas for peacebuilding is a sustained structure of dialogue, underpinned by relationships that spiritual and civil-society leaders have cultivated over a few years. Put in a different way, it’s a system for assembly usually and guaranteeing that traces of communication don’t fall silent. Even when interstate relations develop tense, spiritual and civil-society networks can hold channels of dialogue open, serving as a buffer towards rupture.
The truth that Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev engaged with this yr’s award ceremony by means of a video deal with, and that Director-Normal Terasaki has moved throughout dialogue venues resembling Abu Dhabi, Rome, and Astana, quietly suggests the presence of such networks the place faith and diplomacy intersect. Likewise, the Holy See has additionally been one of many actors repeatedly concerned in all three of those settings.
Shared Phrases, Totally different Realities
The vocabulary repeatedly invoked in these boards is strikingly constant: fraternity, coexistence, dialogue, and human dignity. At a time when multilateralism is faltering and conventional channels of mediation are weakening, this language additionally serves a political function—permitting states to sign, at residence and overseas, a choice for dialogue over drive and to challenge the picture that they don’t seem to be stoking confrontation, however offering a venue by which tensions may be managed.
But the space between ceremony and actuality doesn’t disappear. Celebrating a peace settlement doesn’t essentially assure its implementation. Honoring efforts in ladies’ schooling doesn’t robotically reopen school rooms. Proclaiming coexistence doesn’t cease violence in a single day. Awards can encourage compromise and bless dialogue, however they don’t seem to be mechanisms that may compel outcomes.
Even so, governments and non secular and civil-society networks proceed to have interaction in these venues—by means of attendance, public statements, and sustained involvement—as a result of they continue to be among the many few public settings the place opposing events can seem aspect by aspect. There aren’t many areas the place actors in tense relationships can stand in the identical room, the place restraint is overtly affirmed, and the place interfaith ties can operate as casual diplomatic channels.
A Place to “Rehearse” Peace
The Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, the peace commemorations in Rome, and the interfaith congress in Astana—taken collectively—reveal the rising attain of a diplomatic method that advances not by means of drive or strain, however by means of convening, dialogue, and the regular upkeep of relationships. It’s a framework that may be symbolic at occasions, but able to exerting a quiet affect.
Additionally they level towards the emergence of a brand new diplomatic area the place faith, civil society and state pursuits converge.
In at this time’s worldwide setting, it’s exactly these small factors of contact that may carry actual significance. Earlier than peace is institutionalized as coverage, there are solely restricted areas the place its form may be publicly “rehearsed.”
The Abu Dhabi ceremony is a kind of uncommon phases. It didn’t resolve a battle, nor did it erase suspicion. Even so, selecting dialogue—and persevering with to make that alternative seen within the open—constitutes an act in itself: a transparent sign, in an age of polarization, of a dedication to restraint over enmity.
This text is delivered to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai Worldwide, in consultative standing with the UN’s Financial and Social Council (ECOSOC).
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