We all know that religion is in the news more and more today. Reading even secular newspapers bears this out. To offer an image, let me share that I looked at the website of the New York Times just before coming here. I compared the number of stories on religions carried in 1988 and with those present last year. In the international section, the increase in the number of stories on religion is 47 per cent. In the “Week in Review,” a section that summarizes political events, there is an increase of 53 per cent. And when I calculated the OpEd statistics, I found that there was a 156 per cent increase in terms of the content of religion. And, all of this in a mainstream secular newspaper. Other major newspapers in other capitals would confirm the fact that religion is more and more in the news.

Most of those stories are negative. They focus on religion as “the problem,” a source of conflict, controversy and contradiction. The news goes after that kind of reality.

But there is an “untold story,” Mr. Secretary, to which you were alluding. It is the story of religious communities on the frontlines of transforming conflict, building peace and advancing sustainable development. Remarkably, it is the story of different religious communities cooperating together to address these challenges. These are stories of fidelity, creativity and courage. But, these stories do not make into newspapers or new shows.

If we would together go to West Africa, to Sierra Leone and Liberia, and if we would speak with both the Heads of Governments but also with the former rebels, they would tell us that is was the Muslim and Christian religious leaders working side-by-side who effectively built the bridges of dialogue between the conflicting sides. I know this from first hand experience, as I was privileged to work in partnership with these religious leaders.

There are other examples. We could also go to the areas most impacted by HIV/AIDS, where huge populations are in a life and death struggle with disease. In those places, it is the already built, locally staffed local congregation – be it a church, a mosque or a temple -- that is the frontline responder to the pandemic. These grassroots community structures are learning to make high impact, low cost, and scalable interventions that match community needs.

What is behind these and countless other “untold stories” of religious cooperation is revolution within the religious communities. This “revolution” has two important marks: First, religious communities are increasingly realizing that today’s problems – violent conflicts, the lack of peace and the absence of development – cut across all religious boundaries. Today’s problems are not Islamic problems; they are not Christian problems; Buddhist or Hindu problems; they are “our” problems. These common problems call for – and in fact require - common action.

The other great mark of the positive revolution taking place among the world’s religions lies in the fact they are increasingly becoming “bi-lingual.” The world’s religious communities are different, they prize their differences and are keeping their own religious identities, marked by their own “primary” religious languages. But at the same time, they are also learning how to express there moral concerns in a kind of public language. They are becoming bi-lingual in that they are keeping their own languages and they are also learning to speak in a public idiom. This is revolutionary in that it allows each religious community to both acknowledge and respect one another’s differences and at the same time learn how to discern “deeply held and widely shared” moral concerns that can be expressed in public language. Doctrinal difference remain, but the awareness of major areas of moral consensus grows.

This revolutionary because learning to speak a public moral language can open the door for partnerships among differing religious groups. And more! It can open the door for cooperation between religious groups and other stakeholders: intergovernmental, governmental, private and civil. That is the great promise of our time. For, if we need respect for religious freedom, the right for people to believe according to their consciences; we also need a principled way for the world’s diverse religious communities to discern shared moral concerns and to enter into partnerships for the commonweal.

And so it is in this area, Mr. Secretary, that there is the need for instruments, instruments that can serve cooperation. It is up to the religious communities to build for themselves their own instruments of collaboration, and they are moving forward on this front. Indeed, I am privileged to serve such an effort. But how shall the religious communities, the community of States and the intergovernmental agencies find a connecting point, a meeting point? It is in response to this particular need that the Tripartite Forum can make a valuable contribution.

With the fortunate development of the Tripartite Forum comes a related challenge: How will each of the three sectors organize themselves? How will the participating governments organize themselves; how will UN agencies do something similar and then indeed how will the religious communities who are being invited to participate find ways to forge important areas of consensus among themselves that represent the concerns of their respective communities? Answering these important questions can help all of us to identify the scope of work that can be usefully addressed by the Forum.

From the religious side, there is a great possibility. It is the possibility of honestly and respectfully harnessing the largest and longest enterprises of the human family which are represented by the religious communities. These communities are the deep reservoirs of human memory. They are seized by questions of ultimate meaning and value. They are the largest infrastructures the human family has ever built. They need to be in the mainstream of all our efforts to meet the challenges of our day. Let us hope that the Tripartite Forum can serve all of us as we together shoulder our common and pressing tasks.

Thank you.