The Symposium is jointly organized by the World Council of Churches, the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, ACT Alliance, and the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist, in partnership with the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, and the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect on behalf of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Engagement with Faith-based Organizations.

This year's thematic Focus: "Perspectives on Migration: Displacement and Marginalization, Inclusion and Justice"

The Symposium will address cooperation among faith-based organizations, UN system entities, and other engaged regional and international non-governmental entities, and will focus on the intersections of these themes with human mobility, migration and displacement. To that end, the Symposium will focus on legal and policy contexts defining UN engagement, religious NGOs and religious actors’ roles, specific UN-FBO partnership initiatives and concrete recommendations for scaling up the global responses through UN-FBO partnerships. It will discuss political perspectives, as well as development, humanitarian, and human rights frameworks in their moral and ethical dimensions. Gathered migrants, refugees, practitioners, policy makers and government/multilateral officials will discern and identify issues that intersect with religious, cultural, economic, and political realms and explore ways to protect the human rights of all refugees and migrants and promote their full, equal, and meaningful participation in finding sustainable solutions.

When: 22 January 2018, from 9am to 7pm