From 1991 to 1993 Daniel Gómez-Ibáñez was the Executive Director of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, which he and others founded in Chicago in 1988. The 1993 centennial event in Chicago was probably the largest and most diverse gathering of world religious and spiritual leaders ever assembled. Dr. Gómez-Ibáñez worked with Dr. Hans Küng to produce the document Toward a Global Ethic; an Initial Declaration, signed by over 100 religious and spiritual leaders at the Parliament.
Afterwards he founded the Peace Council and served as its Executive Director until he retired in 2007. The Peace Council was a response to the many appeals at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions for effective, practical interfaith collaboration in areas of conflict.
During the fifteen years of its existence the Peace Council provided seed money for bread baking and weaving cooperatives in Mayan refugee camps, equipped indigenous health workers, helped establish a shelter for victims of child prostitution and rape in Thailand, walked with Buddhist monks through heavily-mined combat zones in Cambodia, provided medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in North Korea, worked with international organizations to advance women’s rights and opportunities, promoted the peaceful return of Muslim refugees to Kosovo, and worked with the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, sharing the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with many other NGOs. Other programs took the Coiuncilors to Palestine and Israel, Canada, South Korea, Northern Ireland, Mozambique, the Sudan, and even New York.