Religious faith and spirituality can be powerful forces in helping people to transcend ego, greed, pain, hatred and other drivers of conflict. ICRD works with a wide diversity of faith actors and communities to identify and access those values within their own tradition that support forgiveness, empathy, and respect for the other.

ICRD facilitates difficult discussions between divided or adversarial communities by grounding its engagement in commonly-held values. This shared foundation in transcendent values can enable individuals to confront and overcome otherwise insurmountable barriers to reconciliation, such as historical grievances, mutual fear, or resource shortages.

This approach is not solely intended for conflicts across religions. ICRD’s model of reconciliation allows conflict-affected communities to address deeply-held hostilities that are wholly unrelated to religious identity. To ensure that this model can extend beyond the immediate beneficiaries, ICRD equips local peacebuilders with the skills and knowledge necessary to bring reconciliation efforts to scale.