Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum and Religions for Peace Sign Memorandum of Understanding

Religions for Peace signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum (ICYF), an international institution affiliated to Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). ICYF is the leading umbrella for youth organisations from the Member-States of the OIC and international youth organisations, operating in the OIC region, and youth organisations representing significant Muslim minorities worldwide, headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey.

ICYF pursues and coordinates youth activities in the OIC countries in five major fields: advocacy of youth interests, supporting sustainable development, promoting formal and non-formal education, strengthening moral values of young generation and engaging in the dialogue among cultures and civilisations.

The organisations share similar missions and agree to cooperate in areas of mutual concern to further enhance the effectiveness of their development efforts.

ICYF and Religions for Peace agreed to work together on a new Long-Term Faith Plans Programme on joint initiatives under the Inspired by Faith: Youth for Action proposal:

The programme has the following objectives:

• Address the main issues and problems of youth living up their faith and support their open engagement in faith network building.
• Highlight the centrality of faith in youth driven contributions to sustainable development, peace and faith global action.

Through this work, ICYF and Religions for Peace will develop the following areas of cooperation:

• Jointly reaching out reputable universities, and other religious institutions in OIC countries to engage with their respective youth bodies and invite them to join the Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum-Religions for Peace Interfaith Youth Network;
• Co-hosting 1 or 2 regional events around the “Document on Human Fraternity” with the ICYF and Religions for Peace;
• Convening a technical workshop with youth faith organisations to propose principles ensuring the rights and needs of youth of faith and their meaningful and respectful participation. This workshop should have as its outcome, a draft of a youth-led strategic plan for meaningful participation with the support and facilitation of ICY, MOIC, and Religions for Peace youth clubs;
• Developing a one-week interactive online course with religious leaders and youth;
• Strengthening intercultural and interreligious women and youth leaders through joint hosting of a fellows’ strategic learning exchange;
• Developing and disseminating a toolkit for multi-faith youth to raise awareness among youth at international level, that includes youth-friendly and youth-led training modules on working in multi-religious working environment, in full compliance with the Agenda 2030/SDGs: peacebuilding, environmental sustainability, gender equality along with OIC Youth Strategy;
• Designing a media campaign informing youth about multi-religious collaboration in times of humanitarian crisis – how to get engaged to serve all, faithfully; and,
• Developing a database/directory of youth-led multi-faith programmes and research – an online resource base of different research on youth and religion/religious engagement (to be translated into multiple languages).

Religions for Peace welcomes this new partnership and looks forward to co-implementing these commitments to action with Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum.