This report was written and edited by: Dr. Abraham Karickam (URI Asia executive secretary), Biswadeb Chakraborty (URI national coordinator), Subhi Dhupar (head of Reporting Committee CC, liaison officer, North Zone, India, Asia), P.K. Ramachandra (CC member, South Zone), and Savita Malpani (CC member North Zone).

Secular and religious perspectives on gender roles and the meaning of women’s rights vary in different societies and can be a focus of considerable tension. Development practitioners often argue that women’s equal rights, including girls’ access to education, employment, and health care, are so fundamental that they amount to a litmus test of serious commitment to social progress. But lingering doubts are often framed in religious arguments.

Recent major media stories about religion in India have focused mostly on tensions between Hindus and both Christians and Muslims over issues of conversion and diet. Flying under the media horizon are 180 United Religion Initiative (URI) Cooperation Circles in India, referred to as CCs, self-governing groups which support URI’s commitment to daily interfaith cooperation, ending religiously motivated violence, and promoting peace, justice, and healing. CCs in India have four coordinators working in the nation’s north, south, east and western regions. They are particularly active in youth projects, women in interfaith, cross-cultural dialogue, and environmental issues.

The 6th International Interfaith Conference on Holy Books was held the first week of February at the Sarvodaya Institute of Higher Learning in Sri Lanka. About 125 delegates from different parts of the world attended the four-day program, held in celebration of this year’s U.N. Interfaith Harmony Week.

More than 200 religious leaders, representatives of interreligious councils and peace scholars from the Association of South Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states convened in Bangkok and Pattani, Thailand on 17-19 September 2012, to address the role of religion and interreligious cooperation in resolving conflicts and building peace in the ASEAN region.