Lea’s Story

In 2015, Lebanese youth from two sides of a decades-old conflict came together to stage a play. Love and War on the Rooftops – A Tripolitan Tale is a comedy inspired by their lives in the northern city of Tripoli. At first, the youth came to rehearsals armed. They had to leave their knives and guns in a garbage bag at the door. After months of rehearsals, they went from enemies to friends and performed to sold-out audiences across Lebanon. At the final performance, one of the actors takes a selfie with the cast. Behind them, a diverse audience gives a standing ovation. In the centre is Lea Baroudi. 

Lea Baroudi is a peace mediator and the co-founder and director of MARCH, a non-profit organization that uses art, culture and social enterprise to foster reconciliation and dialogue between opposing groups in Lebanon. 

In Tripoli, the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh and the Alawite-majority Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood are separated by a single street. Once a symbol of the city’s prosperity, Syria Street became a demarcation line in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) and has served as the front line in a generations-old conflict between these two communities. Between 2008 and 2014, violence erupted repeatedly, leaving hundreds dead, thousands displaced, and the city’s infrastructure destroyed. When war broke out in neighbouring Syria in 2011, hostilities intensified and Tripoli’s neighbourhoods became the site of proxy battles. The gun battles abated in 2014, but an economic crisis and deep-seated sectarian divides remain.  

While working with youth in the play, Baroudi saw that the sectarian conflict was primarily caused by extreme poverty and marginalization. Youth had no community spaces or means to earn an income apart from fighting. In response, she opened a cultural café on the former frontlines of the conflict. More than a café, Kahwetna is the first space for members of both neighbourhoods to collaborate on creative projects and access economic opportunities. MARCH also created two social enterprises: Kanyamakan Designs, which teaches furniture-making, embroidery and wood painting; and the BEDCO Construction Initiative, which involves youth in restoring homes and businesses damaged by conflict.  

For her courage and commitment to building trust between warring communities, Lea Baroudi has received numerous awards, including being recognized by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire. For Baroudi, however, the most powerful reward comes from witnessing the personal transformations: seeing gun-wielders become actors, artists and carpenters, or high-school dropouts become leaders of reconciliation. 

India Love Project’s Story

In a few hundred words, Aamir Fahim tells a sweeping love story. He describes the heady days of getting to know his now-wife, Arsheen Kaur, in a university classroom: “Our friendship became so interesting that the sun would set faster every day. Every night seemed like a week.” He writes about the difficulties they faced as an interfaith couple from Sikh and Muslim families: “In the eyes of the world, loving each other was a crime.” He says they spent months convincing family and friends to support their relationship. In 2017, they were married under the Special Marriage Act, a secular framework that allows people from different backgrounds to marry. 

The story of Aamir and Arsheen is one of hundreds on the Instagram account of the India Love Project. Launched in 2020 by three journalists, India Love Project is a response to the growing conservatism, religious polarization and intolerance towards inter-caste, interfaith and LGBTQ+ unions. The organization challenges exclusion by sharing positive stories of love and marriage outside of the traditional boundaries of faith, caste, ethnicity and gender. 

Non-traditional relationships are often strongly opposed in India, where over 90% of marriages are arranged, only about 5% are inter-caste and around 2% are interfaith. Same-sex relationships were only decriminalized in 2018, and marriage for same-sex partners remains illegal. While inter-caste marriages are on the rise, they are still frowned upon. In recent years, interfaith marriages have been criminalized in several states through “anti-conversion” laws based on Hindu nationalist accusations that Muslim men are marrying Hindu women only to convert them. This conspiracy is part of the rising intolerant rhetoric in India.  

India Love Project harnesses the power of social media to promote acceptance and dialogue. Their Instagram account shares real-life love stories to counter the narratives demonizing non-traditional unions. The initiative has received an outpouring of support. Online, and increasingly offline, the India Love Project is building safe spaces for couples to celebrate their love and find community. To support them further, the organization has begun connecting couples with pro bono lawyers and counsellors, since interfaith couples often face resistance in local courts.  

In a climate of growing intolerance and hateful rhetoric, India Love Project responds with love. One story at a time, the organization is affirming that love takes many forms and all loving relationships deserve to be celebrated. As Arsheen writes in response to her husband’s post, loving can be the most basic yet most courageous act. “To all those in love,” she writes, “keep loving!” 

GIN-SSOGIE’s Story

Somewhere in Southern Africa, LGBTIQ+ people of faith form two concentric circles, with participants facing each other. A facilitator asks, “What messages did you receive from others about being a boy or girl when you were growing up?” Once participants have shared their experiences, the inner circle shifts so participants are facing someone new. The facilitator asks: “What early messages did you receive about your spirituality and your sexual orientation?” The circle shifts again. “What messages did you receive about being a ‘good Christian’?” These participants are on a five-day retreat organized by the Global Interfaith Network for People of All Sexes, Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Expressions (GIN-SSOGIE). Part of the retreat is spent discussing strategies for transforming views about gender and sexuality in their faith communities. GIN-SSOGIE will support participants to eventually engage in dialogue with religious leaders with confidence and compassion. GIN-SSOGIE is helping to ensure that the views, values and rights of people of all sexes, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions are respected. 

LGBTIQ+ people face tremendous discrimination, violence, persecution, marginalization and criminalization. In many countries, homosexuality (or being transgender) is illegal—sometimes punishable by death—and grave human rights abuses are perpetrated in the name of religion and tradition. In some contexts, religious authorities are fueling hostility by speaking out against LGBTIQ+ people and interpreting religious doctrines to exclude and promote violence against homosexuality and gender nonconformity. Among the harmful narratives is that there is an inherent conflict between being a religious person and LGBTIQ+. 

Based in South Africa, GIN-SSOGIE is a network of 480 individuals and organizations from 92 countries addressing the violence and persecution facing sexual and gender minorities. GIN-SSOGIE’s advocacy programs amplify the voices of LGBTIQ+ people of multiple faiths from the Global South and East in high-level political spaces that have been dominated by Western perspectives. In addition to preparing LGBTIQ+ people of faith to engage religious leaders in dialogue, GIN-SSOGIE’s programs guide religious leaders as they explore new understandings of religious stories and build more inclusive faith communities. The organization also develops media, policy and theological resources to counter discriminatory religious narratives and promote allyship.  

Thanks to GIN-SSOGIE, more LGBTIQ+ people are confidently claiming their faith and using it to strengthen their advocacy. GIN-SSOGIE has shown that religion can be a powerful lever for inclusion – a place to celebrate all human beings and to ensure that everyone feels safe, respected and free to develop a spiritual self. 

Build Up’s Story

Imagine a peacebuilding organization in Jordan wants to understand how polarization around religion and tradition is playing out on social media in their country. Are religious and traditional norms affecting how people express themselves? What terms are being used and by whom? For answers, the organization turns to Phoenix, an open-source social media analysis tool created by the non-profit organization, Build Up. 

Phoenix collects data from a hundred Facebook pages and Twitter handles. It organizes the data, anonymizes it, and classifies and labels it in a number of ways. For example, who made the post? A religious leader? A social media influencer? A governmental organization? Next, Phoenix arranges the data into graphs by engagement, sentiment and network. This helps identify patterns. Thanks to Phoenix, the Jordanian peacebuilding organization now has a deeper understanding of social media conversations about religion and tradition and, crucially, where there are opportunities to intervene.  

Phoenix is one of many tools created by Build Up, a global network of peace innovators who are using technology to build peace. 

Polarization is one of the most pressing issues around the world, and the digital space is a key contributor. Social media can fuel intense animosity between political groups. The algorithms promote divisive content that stirs up emotions and drives engagement. When this is combined with misinformation and micro-targeting—i.e. data-driven personalization—different online realities are created depending on who we are. This makes it much harder for different groups to find common ground. 

Build Up focuses on peacebuilding interventions that address hate speech and polarization by harnessing technologies to foster inclusive dialogue and social cohesion. It partners with organizations around the world to design and implement innovative technology-based solutions to conflict. Build Up’s work is extensive, ranging from helping an electoral commission in the Somali region create a WhatsApp bot to deliver voter education to remote communities, to supporting grassroots peacebuilding organizations to amplify the voices of youth and marginalized ethnic and religious groups. Other examples include online games that challenge stereotypes amongst Syrian youth, a chatbot that fights online misinformation in Myanmar, or digital consultations with women in Yemen to understand the gender dimensions of war. 

While digital technologies can be a threat to pluralism, Build Up has shown that innovative use of these same technologies can create countless opportunities for connection, collaboration and inclusion around the world. 

Deeyah’s Story

In a small motel room, filmmaker Deeyah Khan sits across from Jeff Schoep, her camera rolling. He is the leader of America’s largest neo-Nazi organization. She is a Muslim woman who has faced racism and misogyny throughout her life, and yet she has initiated this meeting. He has agreed to speak to her, for one hour only. Khan and Schoep end up talking for five hours. At one point, she shows him a picture of herself as a six-year-old at an anti-extremist rally with her father in Norway. “People who represent what you represent made a six-year-old child feel hated,” she says. “How does that make you feel?” For a moment, Schoep does not speak. Finally, he says, “Uncomfortable.” Two years later, he left the movement, crediting Khan with changing his life and worldview. 

This scene, from Khan’s 2017 film White Right: Meeting the Enemy, is one of many uncomfortable conversations Khan has sought out in her search for solutions to hate and extremism. For over a decade, she has been making documentary films that challenge stereotypes and foster understanding across some of the most extreme ideological, religious and racial divides. She has received numerous awards, including two Emmys and a BAFTA. 

With the rise of misinformation and online conspiracy theories, many societies are experiencing polarization, fragmentation and rising populism that get reinforced by online echo chambers. Finding ways to reach across these divides and respectfully disagree while still being able to work together to resolve problems is critical. When this effort fails, pluralism breaks down in very violent ways. 

Through seven documentary films and Fuuse, a production company she founded in 2010, Khan has examined many troubling threats to pluralism. She has facilitated dialogue with jihadists, members of armed militia groups, American domestic terrorists, white supremacists, anti-abortion activists, and perpetrators of intimate partner violence and even murderers. Along with her profound courage, her approach relies on listening with unflinching curiosity and empathy to locate the humanity behind the hateful rhetoric and to find common ground.  

Against the backdrop of extremism and radicalization, Khan offers innovative solutions for living peacefully together. Her films have transformed countless people, from individuals like Jeff Schoep, to tens of millions of viewers around the world. By making an effort to hear and understand every voice, including those she disagrees with, Khan has shown the power of compassion and respectful dialogue in overcoming prejudice.