"Sudanese-Canadians and the Future of Sudan": A Foreign Policy Conference with the Sudanese-Canadian Diaspora:
The Sudan Task Force at Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) invited the Mosaic Institute to convene a national foreign policy conference involving the core leadership of the various Sudanese communities represented in Canada, including northerners, southerners, and Darfuris. This conference, entitled "Sudanese-Canadians and the Future of Sudan", was held at the University of Winnipeg on September 2, 2010.
The conference, which employed the “Chatham House Rule”, was designed to tap into the expertise of Canadians of Sudanese background and to review Canada’s policies towards Sudan, where the Government of Canada has spent almost $700-million on various initiatives since 2006. About 40 people took part in the conference, many travelling to Winnipeg from other cities and provinces across the country. Senior DFAIT and CIDA officials with responsibility for Canada’s relations with Sudan also participated.
Panels were convened on such topics as Canada’s development strategy in Sudan; Canada’s response to the ongoing human rights challenges in Sudan; and the implications for Canada of the January 2011 referendum on the possible secession of Southern Sudan. Each panel included both government participants from CIDA and DFAIT and “citizen experts” from the Sudanese community.
Feedback from conference participants has been uniformly positive. 92% of community representatives responding to a conference survey strongly agreed that such meetings are “valuable opportunities for the two-way sharing of information and the expansion of networks.” Many have requested that the Mosaic Institute convene additional opportunities for intra-community networking and assist community members in creating or identifying more “hands on” opportunities to help Canada respond to the ongoing challenges in Sudan.
In addition to DFAIT’s funding for the Winnipeg conference, funding from the Aurea Foundation enabled the Mosaic Institute to provide travel scholarships to select members of the Sudanese diaspora, and to draft, publish and disseminate a conference report for interested parties and organizations across government, the Sudanese diaspora, and the rest of civil society.
World Religions Summit 2010:
The Mosaic Institute was the only non-faith-based organization on the Steering Committee of the World Religions Summit that was held in Winnipeg in June 2010. The World Religions Summit was timed to coincide with Canada’s hosting of the G8 and G20 political summits. Mosaic helped to develop a public engagement strategy to encourage individuals from all major faith traditions in Canada to make personal commitments to raising awareness about and advancing the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (“MDGs”), including those related to peacebuilding and poverty reduction.
The interfaith partnership organizing the summit issued a draft statement in October 2009 calling upon the governments and citizens of the G8 to redouble their commitment to achieving the MDGs by 2015. The Mosaic Institute represented the World Religions Summit at meetings of the “Civil G8” – an assembly of leading civil society organizations from around the world – that was convened in April 2010 by the organizers of the G8 political meetings, and chaired by Canada’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, who was Canada’s designated "Sherpa".
The Deputy Minister expressed a genuine interest in ensuring congruence between the agendas for the official meetings of the G8 political leaders in Muskoka, and the content of the World Religions Summit in Winnipeg. The G8 Summit Office at DFAIT was kept fully abreast of the agenda for the World Religions Summit as it was developed.
The Summit in June was cordial and without controversy. Every major faith community and every continent or region of the world was represented at the table, and on the final day of the conference they issued a Summit Statement that emphasized their shared concerns and recommendations with respect to three pillars of the MDG agenda: peacemaking; poverty reduction; and climate change. At the end of the two-day meeting, the Hon. Steven Fletcher, PC, MP, Canada’s Minister of State for Democratic Reform, received the official Summit Statement on behalf of the Government of Canada.
Since then, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has funded the World Religions Summit Partnership to enable it to continue its public engagement strategy that seeks to increase the grassroots involvement of people from all faith communities in advancing the MDG agenda. The Mosaic Institute continues to advise informally on the development and implementation of this strategy.
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