Azza Karam Quotes
Egypt
Azza Karam is an Egyptian professor and author, who is known for being the first woman executive director of Religions for Peace.
Random Azza Karam quote
67 quotes
What we need to do is identify new voices, convene and re-evaluate our partnerships and lastly, identify new ways of working together. Which may force us to reconsider how we do development as a United Nations system.
We are not meant to be the same, to live in our enclaves, to speak the same language, and to look alike. Coming together, and forming alliances through that diversity, can be challenging and it’s also an incredibly empowering thing.
We are living in the context of a generation of youth—which is over 60% of our populations—that has grown up as part of a global youth culture equipped with mass communication technologies and amid huge challenges to established powers.
Let us learn from one another. Let us learn to be humble servants to one another. Let us learn to stand in defense of our humanity, let us learn to stand in defense of our dignity, humanity, not only one community, not only one race, or not only one ethnicity.
We are living in a global context where freedoms, all freedoms, but especially the freedom of thought, religion and belief, are seriously under attack. If religious leaders are not part and parcel of protecting these freedoms for all people of all faiths all over the world, then who is or will be?
This is an organisation that was convened when religious leaders from each religious tradition from around the world came together for peace against nuclear armament and all forms of conflict and whose first World Assembly had three themes: human rights, development and disarmament. This is an organisation that has never been a platform for empty slogans.
Since 2015, the 193 UN member states have agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs or Agenda 2030), which elucidate 17 global goals meant to be realised by 2030. These SDGs are in many ways the practical translation of the three pillars of the UN system’s raison d’être.