KAICIID – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Fellows Programme, KAICIID, Vienna, Austria. Deadline: varies by program (May or June 2021).

Exchange programmes across religious educational institutions only exist within a few countries around the world. In most countries, exchange does not exist due either to a lack of interest, a lack of resources, and/or a lack of diversity of religious institutions. KAICIID recognises the integral part of knowledge-sharing among religious education institutions that train future leaders. The Centre aims to connect these institutions and their select teachers to a network of an active transnational community of interreligious dialogue practitioners in order to advocate for peace. The KAICIID International Fellows Programm seeks to not only address these problems but also to network institutions that train religious leaders transnationally so that interreligious dialogue can become a common feature of any religious training, whatever the religion might be.

All documents for the 2021/2022 Latin American and the Caribbean Regional Fellows Programme must be submitted by 30 May 2021. All documents for the 2022 KAICIID International Fellows Programme must be submitted by 10 June 2021.

Consultancy for Research on Countering Hate Speech Initiatives in Europe, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue(KAICIID), Vienna, Austria. Deadline: May 4, 2021.

KAICIID’s Europe Region Programme started in 2021 a Social Cohesion Initiative, which includes a pillar on Countering Hate Speech (CHS). This CHS project acknowledges that hate speech is becoming an increasingly serious problem in Europe with serious consequences for well-being, intergroup trust, integration and democracy. It also focusses on the important role which religious leaders continue to play in creating and implementing the initiatives and frameworks which stop hate speech and promote respectful dialogue, outreach, trust and community resilience. The project’s aim will be to draw upon the existing expertise and resources available, as well as the needs and priorities of religious leaders, and create training materials which will empower religious leaders to counter hate speech even better.

A crucial part of this process is mapping and analysing the many existing initiatives to counter hate speech, with an emphasis on those which engage religious leaders, which are currently taking place in Europe at national to international level. The point is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of initiatives in this field from the perspective of the organizations and of the religious leaders who both implement some of them and observe the results, and to identify the most pressing calls and recommendations for future action. This research will inform KAICIID’s outreach to potential partners and ensure the relevance of its programmatic work.

The Consultant will carry out desk research in order to create an analytical report on the status of countering hate speech initiatives in Europe. It will map and discuss the most important initiatives and resources to counter hate speech of the last five years across four regions of Europe (Norther, Eastern, Western and Southern Europe) as well as the nature of their involvement of religion and religious actors. It will consider which initiatives have shaped public policy on this topic and how they have (or have not) managed to do so. It will analyze the initiatives’ successes from the perspectives of their organizations, including a number of religious institutions, and explore the strengths, weaknesses of these initiatives.