A "well" of solidarity” “

“Famine and poverty – The solutions offered by religions” was the theme of a symposium held in Istanbul in recent days. The meeting, promoted by the Platform of Intercultural Dialogue, was attended by numerous representatives of secular humanitarian and aid organizations present in the country and also of charities linked to religious communities. The meeting was a follow up to the one held last year on “From terrorism to universal ethics: religions and peace”. “In the world – said the South African economist Francis Wilson in his introductory address – there are millions of people who don’t have access to enough food to live. There were some 700 million of them in 1994. Ten years ago there were 180 million children who, before going to school, lost their sight due to lack of vitamin A. We also know that the world produces enough food for everyone, but access to it is governed by income”. THE STRENGTH OF FAITH. Reviewing the situation in his country, South Africa, Francis Wilson then enlarged his gaze to a more global reality: “poverty and famine – he said – have many facets: those of uncertainty, depression, lack of drinking water, lack of work and of housing. The root cause of poverty and famine, however, is the lack of peace: war. And also the lack of a market: what you produce you are unable to sell, also due to European protectionism”. To tackle this situation Wilson suggested various strategies, first of all the “mapping of the needs that arise from famine and poverty. At the international level there are very active institutions such as Unicef. There’s a lot to be done to bring home to the world the situations of poverty and famine. But the first lesson to be learned is that there’s a paramount need for peace and order in countries”. In the world, he concluded, “there are wonderful ideas that can be used to tackle these challenges, but information and communication are needed. There’s a particular energy that comes from people’s faith and that motivates them to do good, and this energy needs to be tapped, because even the poorest person can say ‘I am a human being, I can transform my life’. The religious organizations must grow in strength and number because they can do a lot, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, the Jewish and Christian organizations. They can exert pressure on governments to ensure that trade, and especially the market, is fair and sustainable and emigration regulated by more flexible laws… The world is divided into rich and poor and we can and must do a lot to change it for the better”. Of the same view is also the theologian Ali Erbas of the Turkish Sakarya University, according to whom “the cause of poverty consists in the lack of distribution of resources and benefits. There’s a need for clear political good will to prevent the rich from becoming richer and the poor poorer”. THE CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS. “We are responsible for the whole of humanity. We must never forget that”, the representative of the Turkish Jewish community, Rabbi Yeuda Adoni, warned the symposium. “Discrimination practised on the basis of colour of skin is wrong. Each member of the human family is able to operate on the basis of his ethical values, knowledge and culture to improve his own life and that of those in need”. Charity to the poor was displayed in the caves of Hasankeyf, where rooms designated for assistance to the poor were placed at the side of people’s homes. This instance of organized charity dating back 1000-1500 before Christ was described by Kerim Güzelis of the Syriac Orthodox community: “these rooms were as deep as a well and no one could see who was inside them. Anyone who wanted to practice charity placed food in a basket and lowered it down into the well, where it was taken. In this way the person who gave and the person who received never met and no bond of obligation or gratitude existed”. The need for aid to be given without any kind of ethnic or religious discrimination was also underlined by Sleiman Saikali, of Caritas Turkey: “There must be no distinction of religion, colour of skin or language in helping those in need. Our hope is that peace may be born from cooperation and solidarity, first in people’s hearts and then in the world”. “Each person has the right to live in a dignified way”, said KIRKOR DAMATYAN, representative of the Turkish Armenian Patriarchate. “Even if we practice various faiths, we must think and act united for a better world”. Lastly, the representative of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul, Dositheos Anagnostopulos, pointed his finger against “consumerist and extravagant lifestyles”. “We cannot – he said – sleep easy if our neighbour is dying for lack of food, as is happening in Ethiopia or in Afghanistan. We must not worship material things but prepare ourselves for the judgement of God”.