On 9-10 December 2025, RSC Senior Fellow Shireen Mashaqba was among the guests of the event organized in Lisbon on the occasion of the 10 years of the KAICIID International Fellows Programme. The initiative, titled “Celebrating a Decade of Dialogue: Transformation, Impact, and the Way Forward”, gathered religious leaders, policy-makers, and civil society practitioners from different continents and countries to reflect on the Programme’s impact in the field of interreligious dialogue over the past decade, and to discuss future pathways for advancing interreligious engagement in peace-building.
The proceedings featured RSC Senior Fellow Mashaqba as a speaker in the session “Dialogue for Post-ISIS Recovery in Nineveh, Iraq”, where she presented the outcomes and the goals of the Nināwā Forum, a dialogue-based project implemented by the Religion & Security Council in collaboration with the University of Mosul, with the support of KAICIID.
Drawing on the Nināwā Forum experience, her remarks focused on the role of interreligious dialogue in post-conflict recovery, reconciliation, and the rebuilding of social cohesion in communities affected by violence and displacement.
RSC Senior Fellow Mashaqba highlighted the importance of inclusive, locally grounded dialogue initiatives in addressing the legacies of warfare, crises, and instability, in keeping with the Nineveh Declaration for Peace, Dialogue, and Coexistence, endorsed by the Nināwā Forum.
She emphasized that sustained engagement among all relevant stakeholders in local communities is essential for rebuilding trust, fostering coexistence, and supporting long-term peace and resilience. She further noted that dialogue-based approaches are most effective when embedded within local contexts and, at the same time, aligned with broader peace-building frameworks.
The 10 years of the KAICIID International Fellows Programme reaffirmed the central role of interreligious dialogue in addressing contemporary challenges to peace and security, and in advancing peaceful, inclusive, and resilient societies.
