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By Dr Andrestinos N. Papadopoulos, Ambassador a.h.
It all started quietly in 2009, at the Residence of the Swedish Ambassador to Cyprus.
Ever since, the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process (RTCYPP) evolved into an active peacebuilding effort based on four pillars: to get to know and build trust among the religious leaders and respective faith communities; to promote confidence-building measures; to advocate for the right to free access and worship at churches, mosques and monasteries; to ensure the protection of all religious monuments in Cyprus.
In order to encourage, facilitate and serve the religious leaders’ dialogue and efforts for religious freedom and peace in Cyprus and to contribute positively to the Cyprus peace talks, the Office of RTCYPP was established in 2011.
The RTCYPP brought about important breakthroughs for religious freedom and human rights in Cyprus fostering interreligious, cross-community communication and cooperation.
Among others, the RTCYPP has contributed to the opening, repair and cleaning of a number of neglected and closed religious monuments to be used for worship and has facilitated special pilgrimages to the Hala Sultan Tekke since 2014.
Within this framework, Archbishop Chrysostomos II and Mufti Talip Atalay are the first religious leaders in over five decades who established a successful working relationship with each other with the help of Swedish facilitation.
In 2012, the Greek Orthodox primate and the Muslim Mufti invited the heads of the Maronite, Armenian Orthodox and Latin Catholic Churches to join them in their efforts to advocate for religious freedom, human rights and peace in Cyprus.
The results of this interreligious communication are spectacular.
The religious leaders have adopted joint statements and appeals covering, inter alia, the inter-communal peace talks and the missing persons in Cyprus.
In October 2013, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop welcomed the Mufti in his first-ever visit to all mosques in Nicosia, during which the mosque of Tahtakale was opened for prayer for the first time since 1963.
In March 2014, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop, on the invitation of the Mufti, officially, crossed to the north for the first time ever to participate in a joint interreligious press conference hosted by the Office of the RTCYPP.
In October 2014, he hosted the Mufti in Paphos for a two-day visit, during which Turkish Cypriots came to pray at the Mosque of Ayia Sophia, open for the first time since 1974.
An unprecedented joint initiative was taken by the religious leaders to provide Greek- and Turkish-language classes in the buffer zone for members of the clerical orders, nuns and laypersons working in different religious institutions.
Finally, mention should be made of the fact that the five religious leaders of Cyprus are having regular meetings, during which important decisions are taken on all those issues referred to above.
Recognition of the work done by the RTCYPP under the auspices of the embassy of Sweden is witnessed by the many references to it contained in U.N. Security Council Resolutions, Reports of the U.N. Secretary General, Reports of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Reports of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
The active involvement of the Swedish embassy in this initiative which quietly started in 2009 at its residence, and the fact that this year the RTCYPP celebrates the tenth anniversary of its peacebuilding effort have prompted me to have a thorough discussion with the Ambassador of Sweden, Anna Olsson Vrang, on the matter and ask her to give us an account of the role her embassy plays in this field. Hereinafter are her comments:
“The Embassy of Sweden serves as the auspices for the Office of the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process (RTCYPP), and the Swedish MFA is the sole funding source for the RCTYPP.
We are honoured to have served in this capacity since the beginning of the dialogue among Cyprus’ religious leaders in 2009. The dialogue is an effective initiative, aiming to contribute to sustainable and comprehensive peacebuilding in Cyprus.
The role of the Embassy is to support RTCYPP's work on an overarching level. A key task is to host high-level meetings of the religious leaders, another is to assist with official and diplomatic communications. However, it is important to highlight that the agenda and substance is owned by the religious leaders.”
Concluding, my wishes are for a resounding success of the efforts deployed by the RTCYPP to achieve a durable peace in Cyprus, and in this respect, I join my prayers to those of a great son of Sweden, the late U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, “not for victory, but for peace” in Cyprus.
