The World Conference on Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue will be postponed from May 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matvienko said on Thursday at a meeting of the Council of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly.
"Since the conference was supposed to be global, with the participation of heads of state, the pandemic would not allow heads of state to participate, we would lower the status, the level of this conference, and most importantly - the substantive level of dialogue. That is why we have been in consultations for a long time and finally came to the conclusion that it would be better to postpone it and to make it as it was planned.
She added that this is a consolidated point of view, "because no one predicts for COVID to be over by May".
The Speaker of the Federation Council noted that there is already experience in holding important events via video-conferencing, but it is "not for such a topic." "We really need a direct dialogue here. As soon as the sanitary and epidemiological situation allows, we will clarify the dates of the event, but preparations continue," Matvienko said.
Federation Council Vice-Speaker Konstantin Kosachev said Russia, as the organizer and host, had sent a proposal to the co-organizers, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the United Nations, to postpone the conference. "As we moved forward [in preparation for the conference], we realized more and more clear that we were facing increasing risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic. We are only six months away from next May. There is no question that to hold this kind of massive, powerful, unique event in a hybrid, much less absentee, the online format would be completely wrong, unfair. Since we are talking about intercultural, interreligious dialogue, dialogue is, of course, eye-to-eye, as they say," he said.
The senator added that the co-organizers expressed great regret that the conference could not be held within the previously agreed upon time frame, at the same time understanding the reasons, as well as confidence that the work of preparing the conference will continue. "It will be held as soon as known circumstances permit," Kosachev said.
The World Conference on Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue, with the participation of state leaders, parliamentarians and representatives of the world's leading religions, was to be held in St. Petersburg in May 2022. The initiative to hold it was put forward by Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matvienko at the 137th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in St. Petersburg in 2017 and was supported by the organization. In May 2018 it was supported by the UN.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Federation Council
Based on materials from TASS