Flagship Activities

The institute will uniquely conduct a range of flagship activities across any standard year, in order to create knowledge, narratives, consensus and actions on faith-based peace building through professionally structured debate and dialogue.  The following are the key flagship activities, with the differentiation that some of these activities occurring as perioral events while others as on-going efforts:

 

 

  1. An international, Annual Peace Building Conference, which will invite participants both nationally and internationally to gather, discuss key issues and recommend key solutions and insights, and undertake consensus-building and calls-to-action. The key features this annual conference will be that it will host both faith-based and cross-sector leadership and experts, it will organise its annual focus thematically, and its entire effort will be framed within and to foster multilateral and international frameworks for peace-building (especially of the United Nations).
  2. A key outcome of developing this network of faith-based and cross-sector actors will be the creation of a flagship international forum that taps into their synergies to address the forces of globalisation, inequality, extremism, and a turbulent media landscape in its on-going push for sustainable peace. The forum will build a national as well as international sense of collective identity and ownership and provide a key space for debate, inspiration, and strategic development for peace and harmony. ​
  3. A research initiative, that will seek to generate data-backed critical knowledge and evidence on systematic solutions to religious extremism in Pakistan as well as new ways to mobilise religious knowledge and experience to build community resilience, foster inter-faith harmony, reconstitute peace narratives in a diversity of religions. A key emphasis of these research activities will be the development of partnerships with national and international institutions (such as multilateral agencies, universities and think tanks).
  4. An advocacy platform, which will periodically convene to host both faith-based and cross-sector participants that will come together to recommend policy action based on its new knowledge and petition national and provincial legislatures and relevant government bodies on the uptake of these policy recommendations and their effective implementation.
  5. A meaningful youth engagement platform, which will recognise the youth as not only the largest generational population group in Pakistan but also as the group most vulnerable to religious extremism. This meaningful youth engagement will pursue actions that are youth-led or youth-driven, as per the UN’s Hart’s Ladder approach and guided by the recently launched 2018 UN Youth Strategy. It will ensure that youth are not only engaged to build their own resilience to religious extremist narratives, but also act as leaders, decision-makers and activists for build reliance and peace in the entire country for the rest of the population.
  6. A multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary academic programme to educate and train young peace leaders in an age of rapid change with sound understanding of the Islam and social, political, technological and economic forces, impacting the societies and the world, through critical thought, team work, social awareness and activism.
  7. A media advocacy platform, which will mobilise and build the capacity of local and national journalists (and other media practitioners) on news making and media best practices using new technologies that can help report extremism more responsibly and also build alternative narratives to extremism that foster resilience to extremist narratives, peaceful inter- and intra- faith coexistence, and a powerful sense of national solidarity for peaceful, development-driven goals. A key focus of this platform will be to reduce the gap between journalists and citizens, so as to produce more authentic and transparent narratives around extremism and positive responses to it.
  8. An on-going memorial exhibition, focusing on building diverse and empathetic narratives on the experiences of religious extremism and resilience against it in Pakistan and also globally. The memorial exhibition, the first dedicated private site of its kind in Pakistan, will focus on: people and communities affected by the extremism and terrorism, their loss, their personal stories and their perseverance; the response of Pakistan’s military, police and other security institutions to this non-state violence in the country, and how the nation has made sacrifices to fight extremism but also made massive gains against extremism; the impact of on-going extremism on Pakistan’s culture, economy and politics, and how it has built and is in the process of building resilience, including through its youth; and the powerful narratives on peace, non-violence and co-existence of key religions in Pakistan and beyond – including Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism and Christianity – and how these objectively represent the real story and meaning for any Pakistani citizen as well as the struggle of Pakistani nation as a whole.