English

Introduction. The Bahá'í­ International Community, with over five million members, approximately 17,000 local communities and 182 national and regional communities worldwide is committed to peace and engaged in a wide range of activities. These activities include, but are not limited to, fostering grassroots participation in sustainable development initiatives, advancing the status of women, educating children, and promoting and protecting human rights. Its affiliates support the goals of the UN Charter and celebrate UN decades, years and days.

Racism originates not in the skin but in the human mind. Remedies to racial prejudice, xenophobia and intolerance must accordingly address first and foremost those mental illusions that have for so many thousands of years given rise to false concepts of superiority and inferiority among human populations.

As humanity emerges from a century of upheaval and startling change its need for moral and spiritual renewal becomes ever more apparent. That the twentieth century was a century of both darkness and light-revealing the capacity for human depravity as well as human achievement-underlies the confusion that pervades our times. A deepening moral disorientation threatens social institutions and the fundamental bonds that define human relations.

The coming together of the peoples of the world in a harmonious and creative relationship is the crucial need of the present hour. In the wake of advances in human knowledge which have deepened bonds of interdependence and contracted the planet, the central task now before all its inhabitants is laying the foundations of a global society that can reflect the oneness of human nature. Creating such a universal culture of collaboration and conciliation will require a return to spiritual awareness and responsibility.