KARACHI, Aug 4: The participants of a workshop on “Harmonizing Religious and Ethical Issues through Social Dialogue for Democratic Governance in South Asia” emphasized the role of women in promoting religious tolerance and understanding.

They also called for finding root causes of growing religious extremism among the young generation besides forming dialogue teams of youths, women and religious persons on the country level for reconciliation and understanding.

The two-day workshop held at a local hotel in Karachi on August 2-3 was organized by the German foundation, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung – Pakistan office, working on social and development issues.

Journalists and representatives of NGOs from Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan attended the workshop.

The participants also suggested developing better understanding between religious seminaries and NGOs, holding awareness programmes for democratizing norms and values, dialogues on freedom of expression versus hate speech, and founding and supporting of a liberal interpretation for religions.

They proposed holding of meetings with female groups and religious leaders at community levels for promoting religious harmony, peace and development, besides promoting women participation for political awareness in South Asia.

Recommendations were made for eradicating gender-based violence through education, promoting labour rights in South Asia through campaigns.

They stressed exploring economic issues from peoples’ perspective involving research and identification, etc, besides exploring reasons why women were still economically and socially backward in South Asian countries.

Research on women labour forces, child labour in Pakistan and other South Asian countries was also stressed.

Participants also assessed the action-ability of issues according to which religious tolerance and the role of women in promoting religious tolerance and understanding were rated important, urgent and feasible.—PPI