Nobel prize winners join calls for human fraternity
By Christopher Wells
“Every man is our brother, every women is our sister, always,” a group of some 30 Nobel Prize winners declared on Saturday. “We want all to live together, as brothers and sisters in the Garden that is the Earth. The Garden of fraternity is the condition for all life.”
The Nobel laureates were taking part in the World Day of Human Fraternity, inspired by Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship.
The world is on the wrong path
Bangladeshi social entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, who, along with Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to create economic and social development, highlighted the importance of the World Meeting, arguing that the world is going down the wrong path.
“So somebody has to raise the voice that we are going in the wrong way,” he told Vatican Radio on the sidelines of Saturday’s event. “We need to redesign and we have to shift our destination, to bring peace and create a new world rather than the world that we have built today.”
His call for people to raise their voices was echoed in the final Declaration: “We want to shout to the world in the name of fraternity: Never again war! It is peace, justice, equality that guide the fate of all mankind. No to fear, no to sexual and domestic violence! All armed conflicts must come to an end. We say no more nuclear weapons, no more land mines. No more forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, dictatorships, corruption and slavery. Let us stop the manipulation of technology and AI, let us put fraternity before technological development, so that it may permeate it.”
The role of religion
Asked how to find common ground in a world with so many competing interests, Yunus said the World Meeting was an opportunity to bring up issues for debate. He said it is necessary to ask ourselves “whether we want to pursue this path, this suicidal path that we are going, and in the process we become sort of dinosaurs that disappear from this planet – because that is the way we are going.”
He repeated, “Look, this is a wrong path. We have to redesign. We have to rethink and go in a different direction. So this is what the role Vatican can play very, very sharply.” He noted that “religions play a very important role in human life” and that all religions should be working to promote fraternity,” adding, “We look forward to the leadership role of Pope Francis in this direction.”
A duty to support and work for human fraternity
Also taking part in Saturdays events was journalist and activist Tawakkol Karman, who, in 2011, became the first Yemeni to win a Nobel Prize – a prize she shared with Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Shirleaf “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
She told Vatican News “It’s our duty to support and work for human fraternity, and this is why we are gathering here” for the World Day.
Karman said, “I like the slogan of fraternity, that we should give another meaning to peace, which means being with each other, working with each other, supporting each other.”
Speaking specifically to the role of journalists, she said there is a “responsibility for us as a people, as a human rights defenders, as a as a journalist, to be more strong voices for those people that under the suppression regimes, under authoritarian regimes.” This is also a responsibility for world leaders, including Pope Francis, and “for all those who put themselves in a stage, that they they they spread this meaning this values. That means that they shouldn't give any legitimacy to the tyrannies that divide their societies, that kill their societies. So this is this is our work.”
Supporting those who struggle for freedom and justice
The World Day for Human Fraternity, she continued, “is a very important gathering” to focus on the “very critical” issues that “are attacking the human family.” She insisted, “It is not just spreading messages,” but about “amplifying the messages.”
“And how can we do that,” she asked, in a world “that suffers from conflicts, from racism, from wars, from tyrannies?”
To truly confront these issues, she said, it is “very important” to support “those people who are sacrificing, struggling for freedom, for justice, for democracy, for peace, not the leaders who are attacking these values.”
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