Field Projects
INDONESIA
Launched in 2014, Focuses on activities for youth through the use of innovative tools, Educates youth on the importance of protecting holy sites
BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA
Launched in 2010, Focuses on joint statements by religious leaders and data compilation, Contributes to building trust and raising awareness
HOLY LAND
Launched in 2013, Advances interreligious cooperation among religious leaders and across communities, Educates about mutual respect for holy sites with a focus on youth, Compiles and monitors data of attacks on holy sites
SRI LANKA
Launched in 2015, Focuses on creating mechanisms to protect holy sites in areas affected by religious conflict, Makes efforts to stop attacks on holy sites through interfaith dialogue
INDIA
Launched in 2015, Focuses on environmental needs, Cleaned up a village, including its holy sites
NIGERIA
Launched in 2016, Focused on building agreement among key religious leaders that holy sites should be safeguarded as sites for peace and not targets for destruction, Resulted in a consensus statement on the need to protect holy sites
Indonesia is home to the world’s major religions and traditions. Despite the abundance of holy sites across the country, there is a lack of knowledge and respect for these sacred places. Holy sites keep being targets of violence, desecration and controversy. These circumstances point to the broader trend of religious intolerance in Indonesia and highlight the need to build mutual understanding in order to strengthen social cohesion and solidarity.
In 2014, Search for Common Ground Indonesia, in coalition with Religions for Peace and the Indonesian Inter-Religious Council, launched a field project aimed at empowering interfaith collaboration and raising awareness on attacks against holy sites.
The research that Search Indonesia conducted in four areas of the country revealed that Indonesians think of holy sites not only as places of worship, but also as places of pilgrimage that define cultural as well as religious identity. SFCG and its partners identified best practices to improve religious dialogue in Indonesia and are mapping out holy sites across the country, as a complete survey of them is still lacking.
The project is being conducted in five regions in the country (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi) and is using new media to reach a wide, young audience. Young artists and filmmakers have developed comic books, documentaries and social media campaigns to spread messages of religious tolerance. These materials are being used in outreach activities and workshops to facilitate discussions about holy sites.
Search Indonesia is also partnering with the Institute for Interfaith Dialogue, the WAHID Institute and the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace to conduct activities that promote the project’s aims. They organized three days of training on diversity and tolerance for youth organizations. There, youth of diverse religious backgrounds discussed the controversies around holy sites and learned important conflict resolution and transformation skills. They also developed an action plan to prevent attacks against places of worship.
The project has successfully created spaces where the people of different faiths can meet, break down stereotypes and eventually cooperate.
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Even though the civil war in former Yugoslavia ended in the 1990s, Bosnia Herzegovina is still ethnically and religiously divided among Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats. Ethnic and religious identities in Bosnia Herzegovina are inextricably linked, so interethnic intolerance is usually bound up in interreligious tensions. Attacks on religious and ethnic minorities and their holy places are still occurring across Bosnia Herzegovina, as all three groups are a minority in specific regions of the country. Our research found that places of worship are prime targets for attacks against any given community’s minority. Such attacks range from acts of vandalism to arson, burglaries, harassment, desecration of burial sites, obstruction with regard to the rebuilding of destroyed religious shrines, and in some cases even killings.
In November 2010, the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights and the Interreligious Council in Bosnia-Herzegovina (IRC) in Sarajevo launched the first field project based on the Universal Code in Bosnia Herzegovina. The overall goal of this project is to build trust and improve relations across religious and ethnic communities, focusing on the protection of religious artifacts and holy sites. Its key elements are the systematic reporting of attacks, which are recorded in a database and subject to mechanisms to verify the information; joint visits of religious leaders to holy sites; multi-religious public condemnations of any act of violence; and the active engagement of stakeholders such as the police, media, and local political leaders.
The increase in cooperation between religious leaders and their joint condemnations of attacks on holy sites are among the project’s biggest achievements. On many occasions, the leaders visited the sites of an incident, met with the local government officials or religious leaders, and issued joint statements to the media and the public. Not only have these condemnations inspired tolerance among local populations, they have also built trust between the representatives of various religious communities and led to increased awareness around the gravity of hate crimes.
An independent evaluation has shown that the project stimulated communication between religious and ethnic communities. Several indicators suggested improvements in the protection of holy sites as well. These include increased police patrolling of the religious sites of minorities and a more balanced reporting on hate crimes on behalf of the media.
An example of good practice took place in a small village outside Sarajevo, where two drunk youth had desecrated a church with graffiti and offensive slogans. Local religious representatives issued a joint condemnation and the municipal administration paid for cleaning the walls of the church. The two boys and one of their parents visited the place of the attack and publicly apologized. As a peace gesture, the priest invited them for Rakija, since it was due to this drink that they had ended up getting intoxicated in the first place and had damaged the church. The priest also invited them to come back and help paint the fences of the church. Thus, this incident was dealt with in a conciliatory manner by all – the priest and the religious community, the police, the local administration, and the culprits themselves.
The results achieved in Bosnia Herzegovina:
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Religious leaders and local administrations openly support the project;
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Religious leaders participate in joint condemnations of attacks on sacred places;
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Police patrols around vulnerable sacred places have increased;
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Media reporting is more balanced.
In the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the enduring violence around holy sites, the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land (CRIHL) and Search for Common Ground’s Jerusalem office started a field project in the Holy Land in 2013. The project seeks to promote interreligious dialogue and cooperation around Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites through research, monitoring, and education.
This initiative specifically focuses on youth. It includes visits of high-school students and pre-army groups to Mount Zion in Jerusalem, where tensions have flared due to the significance the place holds for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Questionnaires completed by participants after the visits showed that 80 % of the students thought it was important to learn about other religions in Israel. 82 % of pre-army group responders are confident that the project is stimulating dialogue and indicated that more activities on religious tolerance should be included in pre-army programming.
Mount Zion is indeed a focal point of the project. In 2014, the implementing organizations developed an iPad application, which provides balanced information on the mountain’s holy sites to tourists. Furthermore, in the context of an initiative called Window on Mount Zion, led by Search for Common Ground and its partner, the Jerusalem Intercultural Center, the at times tense atmosphere on the mount is improved by promoting dialogue among the various stakeholders, including the police and both Jewish and Christian religious representatives. Volunteers are recruited to monitor Mount Zion and expand pluralistic activities there. Meetings between tenants of Mt. Zion are being held to promote collaboration and dialogue. To date, Window on Mount Zion has had big successes in improving relations between the different stakeholders. As one of the tenants put it:
“Congratulations for your success in gathering all the residents of Mount Zion in one room. It’s nice to get to know the neighbors. We’ve been located here for years and we didn’t know who lived around us.”
A registry of attacks has also been created. It keeps track of episodes of violence on holy sites in the Holy Land, and is maintained in collaboration with the local NGO Tag Meir. It also includes information provided by Israeli Police records.
We have also organized and hosted three annual conferences in Jerusalem to discuss current controversies around religious sites in the Holy Land and to offer constructive solutions.
In Sri Lanka, we identified the districts of Kalutara, Galle, Ampara and Trincomalee as conflict hotspots where the varied religious backgrounds of the population can generate tensions. It is in these areas that we launched a field project based on the Universal Code. We held eight intra-faith dialogue sessions to establish a baseline assessment and evaluate the risk of attacks. We are also conducting workshops with religious leaders, state actors and community members to facilitate interreligious cooperation and to develop an Attack Response Plan for each district. The Plan will identify conflict triggers and strategies to respond quickly and nonviolently.
Kunao, a village near Rishikesh in the Indian Himalayas, is home to both Muslim and Hindu communities. It houses a Hindu temple and lies on the banks of the holy Mother Ganga River. Conflicts between the two religious groups arise over land ownership as well as wandering cows, which are holy to the Hindus but disturb Muslims on their properties. Additionally, pollution and the lack of sanitary facilities generate precarious hygienic conditions, which put further strain on the social life of the village. In order to increase harmony, protect the Hindu temple, and preserve the natural habitat, we started a cleanliness and environmental protection program in Kunao.
This field project was initiated by H.H. Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, President of Parmarth Niketan, Rishikesh and co-founder/co-chair of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (GIWA), which is committed to cleaning the village and protecting its beauty. The project is engaging the Muslim and Hindu communities, including young students, in joint actions to improve access to safe water and clean the area near the Hindu temple. As part of the project, the two groups planted fruit-bearing trees, which offer the added benefit of providing food for local children; they placed large trash bins in the village and cleaned an open drain from which cattle and livestock used to drink polluted water; they transported stray cows to a shelter in order to take them off the roads and prevent intrusion into properties; and they built toilets in every home of the village, solving the problem of illnesses caused by open defecation.
In order to keep these efforts going, a local person is being selected to maintain cleanliness in the village. We are also holding classes to teach students about the importance of proper hygiene and building a computer center for them. GIWA is encouraging local schools to add the project to their curricula, so that Muslim and Hindu students can continue working together on issues that are vital to the community.
The Universal Code’s field project in Kunao addresses both environmental problems and interreligious tensions through cooperation over common concerns. By responding to local needs, the project facilitates cooperation in a sustainable way.
In Nigeria, holy sites have been in the crossfire of conflict. In the northern regions of the country, holy site have suffered damage during clashes between farmers and herders. Though this conflict is rooted in competition over natural resources, some have used religious narratives to mobilize support for their side. In the North East, worship centers have been destroyed as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency as well.
In 2016, Search for Common Ground Nigeria launched Building Consensus on the Protection of Holy Sites in Northern Nigeria, a program aimed at creating dialogue between key religious leaders to work on a common agenda to protect the holy sites of all religions.
As part of this program, Search held three zonal strategy conferences that brought together faith leaders who might not have otherwise engaged in dialogue. At the conferences, they addressed the factors causing religious violence and tailored their responses to specific regional drivers.
Search also hosted a national feedback and consensus building conference. This resulted in a consensus statement with 64 religious leaders agreeing to support the protection of holy sites. As part of this statement, leaders committed to spreading the idea of holy site protection through media and agreed to reach less accessible populations who are crucial in protecting holy sites. Additionally, they committed to strengthening their networks across religious lines, organizing town hall meetings, and creating school engagement programs, all with the focus on protecting holy sites.
The Universal Code of Conduct on Holy Sites guided all program activities and was referenced in the final agreement. By the program’s end, all participants were knowledgeable about the Universal Code.
We believe that field projects are the best way to test the viability of the Universal Code.
They can be based on all or parts of it, and adapted as needed to local contexts. They can include educational activities, monitoring, research, joint visits, involvement of local leaders, media outreach, and liaising with the police and the judiciary system to ensure the enforcement of laws.
Field projects are being carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Holy Land, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.
A project has just started in Nigeria, with a primary focus on education as well as protecting and reconstructing the holy sites in the Plateau and Kaduna States. Our local partners have established working groups to move the process forward, with the support of Cardinal John Onaiyekan and the Sultan of Sukoto.
A new field project is also starting in Tunisia to facilitate cooperation and consensus building on safeguarding holy sites among key religious leaders at the national and governorate levels. This consensus is a necessary first step to facilitate collaboration and joint actions by Muslim leaders from across the ideological spectrum, as well as Jewish and Christian religious minorities, to create a system by which these sites are protected and made sanctuaries in Tunisia. The resulting collaboration will be highlighted to the Tunisian public through national and local media.