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At the United Nations, a closer collaboration with religions: from the Alliance of Civilizations to resolutions passed by the General Assembly, the UN is forging new partnerships with religions and religious communities.

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UNITED NATIONS -- With words like "peace," "dialogue," and "cooperation" salted through its agenda, the program for a special hearing of the General Assembly last autumn might have been any of a thousand meetings here.

But what made the 4-5 October 2007 "High-Level Dialogue and Informal Interactive Hearing with Civil Society on Interreligious and Intercultural Understanding and Cooperation for Peace" different was the degree to which a new actor was spotlighted before the UN's most globally representative body.

That new actor was religion--or, rather, people who directly represent religious communities from around the world.

"What is new is that the president of the General Assembly was calling for this kind of a hearing on religion and intercultural cooperation for peace," said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha'i International Community to the UN. "You've never really had the General Assembly reach out to this sector of global civil society before."

The General Assembly, however, is not the only UN body that is reaching out to religious groups. Spurred in part by the threat of religion-inspired violence that was so starkly demonstrated in the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and also by an increasing recognition of the power of religious belief to inspire social action, the UN and its agencies have recently launched a number of initiatives that involve ever closer collaboration with world religious communities. Such initiatives include:

* The Alliance of Civilizations. Established in 2005 at the initiative of Spain and Turkey, under the auspices...

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