SOCIETY: Cyprus peace advocate wins US award for religious freedom

Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud, executive director of the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process, is one of five International Religious Freedom Award winners announced by the US State Department.

She was invited to attend the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, in Washington D.C. this week hosted by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.

According to the State Department, the Ministerial aims to reaffirm international commitments to promote religious freedom for all and focus on concrete outcomes that produce durable, positive change.

“A broad range of stakeholders will convene to discuss challenges, identify concrete ways to combat religious persecution and discrimination, and ensure greater respect for freedom of religion or belief.”

Since 2012, Cyprus-born Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud, a grandchild of Armenian refugees, has served as executive director of the RTCYPP which operates under the auspices of the Embassy of Sweden. Throughout her life, Salpy has fully committed herself to working with religious leaders, faith-based organisations and religious communities on issues related to freedom of religion, interfaith dialogue and human rights, disarmament, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding locally, regionally, and globally. 

As a student in the 1980s she worked on bicommunal civil society and women’s peace initiatives in Cyprus and was the first young female programme executive working on religious freedom, human rights, and peace issues at the Middle East Council of Churches and at the Commission of Churches on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches.

She has led international ecumenical delegations to countries throughout the Middle East promoting human rights and peace.

The other IRF award winners are Sudanese human rights activist Mohamed Yosaif Abdalrahan, Nigerian faith leader Imam Abubakar Abdullahi, Ivanir dos Santos of the Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance in Brazil, and William and Pascale Warda of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation in Iraq which the couple set up in 2013.