Articles and Resources

A compilation of quotations from Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice on the subject of Universal Education.

A compilation of quotations from Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice on the subject of Consultation.

The equality of men and women was a theme often featured in the Writings and talks of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. These selections illustrate the importance of this important prerequisite for world peace.

The letter from which this extract is taken was originally written as a response to the Executive Committee of the Central Organization for a Durable Peace in The Hague. In it, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains how a number of teachings of Bahá’u’lláh relate to the attainment of universal peace.

In this letter, dated 11 March 1936, Shoghi Effendi explains how a new global civilization will emerge.

This statement from the Bahá’í International Community to the 56th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland, March 2000, explores the importance of the right to education.

From reductions in infant mortality, fertility, and the incidence of AIDS to improvements in the environment, it has been amply demonstrated that it is the mother's education that makes the difference and that the positive effects increase with every additional year a girl stays in school, says this statement by the Bahá’í International Community, submitted to the 39th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, New York, USA, 15 March - 4 April 1995.

This statement was presented by the Bahá’í International Community to the 55th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2011. It discusses how, in order for the global development enterprise to advance, women and men must both be empowered to shoulder the responsibility of participating in the generation, application and diffusion of knowledge.

Prioritizing the education of girls enables them to grow intellectually and morally, cultivating a sense of dignity as well as responsibility for the well-being of their family, their community and the world, says the Bahá’í International community in this statement, presented to the 51st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2008.

This statement, presented by the Bahá’í International Community to the 48th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2004, explores how the active support of men and boys is crucial for the achievement of equality.

This written statement from the Bahá’í International Community was distributed officially to all the participants of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995. Nothing short of religion’s compelling vision of peace, and commitment to the values on which it must be based, it claims, will have the power to motivate the revolutionary changes in individual behaviour, organizational structures, and interpersonal dynamics.

This pamphlet, published in 1975 for International Women's Year, explores the equality of the sexes as a spiritual and moral standard essential for the unification of the planet and the unfoldment of world order.

“Consultation is an approach to collective inquiry that is unifying rather than divisive,” writes the Bahá’í International Community, in this statement prepared in February 2010 as a contribution to the 48th Session of the Commission for Social Development on the priority theme of “social integration”

In this statement, the Bahá’í International Community observes that to generate the knowledge and commitment needed to overcome poverty, the full spectrum of human spiritual and intellectual potential will need to be summoned for the task. And as the fullness of our humanity is engaged, it will regenerate the fabric of civilization

In this statement, the Bahá’í International Community writes that a culture of consumerism has tended to reduce human beings to competitive, insatiable consumers of goods and to objects of manipulation by the market. A more profound look at human nature, the statement suggests, would reveal the ability of human beings to respond to a higher calling.

Horace Holley explains that, without a firm and enduring basis in moral unity, the institutions of society cannot alone produce peace, and will remain as centres of disunity and strife.

In this essay, first published in The Bahá’í World 2005-2006, Dr. Michael Karlberg argues that Western liberal democracy, or competitive democracy, has become anachronistic, unjust, and unsustainable in an age of increasing global interdependence.

This lecture was given by Dr. Farzam Arbab at a national symposium on “A New Framework for Moral Education” in Tirana, Albania, in November 1993. This was an open forum for a public debate on what needs to be done with moral education in a society that is in the process of rapid shift from an established socio-political system to a new system not yet fully defined and articulated.

Ann Boyles surveys the Bahá’í community's past and present efforts to understand and practice the principle of the equality between men and women in this article, which first appeared in the 1993-94 edition of The Bahá’í World.

In this essay by Horace Holley, first published in The Bahá’í World Volume IV, 1930-1932, the outline of a religious philosophy, which penetrates to the soul of history and explains the strange disorders tormenting the present age is explored.

A list of further reading on this subject is available here.