NEW YORK — “In the mid-1990s, when I joined the Bahá’í International Community (BIC), its statements were largely addressing issues at the level of principle,” says Bani Dugal. “Over time, the BIC has developed the capacity to also draw on a growing body of experience from communities around the world that are putting those principles into action.”
She adds: “This is just one of the many changes that have occurred over the past three decades.”
The conclusion of Ms. Dugal’s service at the New York Office of the BIC offers an occasion to reflect on the evolution of that Office’s engagement with international discourses.
Since 1948, the BIC has sought to contribute to the discourses on the international stage as a participant in humanity’s collective movement toward a more just and peaceful world. In its early decades, the space for civil society to engage meaningfully in international forums was limited. Yet from the outset, the BIC’s orientation was toward fostering cooperation, bringing diverse perspectives into conversation, and articulating insights rooted in the conviction that humanity is one family and that its affairs must ultimately be ordered to reflect that reality. This conviction carried a practical implication, reflects Ms. Dugal: “The challenges facing the world—be it the extremes of wealth and poverty, inequality, conflict—cannot be addressed in isolation from one another, nor apart from the moral and spiritual capacities of the peoples and communities affected by them.”
It was into this pattern of engagement that Ms. Dugal stepped when she joined the New York Office in 1994. Over three decades—serving first as Alternate Representative, then as Director of the Office for the Advancement of Women, and from 2003 as Principal Representative—the BIC’s engagement at United Nations (UN) spaces and other international forums deepened considerably, both in substance and in the manner of its contribution.
This evolution has been evident across a range of issues. At the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, for example, the BIC worked alongside other organizations and a number of governments, particularly from Africa, to draw attention to the importance of including the girl child on the conference agenda. “There was a feeling among certain member states that the girl child was already being addressed by bodies like UNICEF,” Ms. Dugal recalls. “But together with others we were able to help bring this issue into focus.”
The effort contributed to the adoption of Section L, on the girl child, as the twelfth critical area of concern at the 1995 Conference. Years later, the BIC co-led the Gender Equality Architecture Reform initiative, a coalition of more than 275 organizations in 50 countries whose efforts contributed to the creation of UN Women in 2010.
Much of the BIC’s sustained engagement on the advancement of women has unfolded through the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), where Ms. Dugal also served as Chair of the NGO Committee. When she began attending its sessions in the mid-1990s, the Commission was a relatively contained intergovernmental forum. Over the following decades, it grew into one of the largest annual convenings at the United Nations, drawing thousands of civil society participants and hundreds of parallel events each year.
“I watched CSW evolve from a more intimate setting where delegates worked closely on policy questions into something much larger,” Ms. Dugal reflects. “That growth spoke to a widening recognition that the equality of women and men is central to every dimension of human progress.”
In 2025, marking 30 years since the Beijing Conference, the BIC published “In Full Partnership: Thirty Years of Women’s Advancement at the United Nations and Beyond,” a compilation of three decades of statements and perspectives shared through its participation in the Commission.
“The advancement of women has been close to my heart throughout my years at the BIC,” says Ms. Dugal, who spoke at the book’s launch in New York. “It is gratifying to see how consistently the BIC has addressed these questions, year after year.”
Questions of global governance have been another central thread stretching across Ms. Dugal’s entire tenure. In her first year, the BIC released “The Turning Point for All Nations” at the UN’s 50th anniversary. At the turn of the millennium, the BIC co-chaired the Millennium Forum—a gathering of more than 1,350 civil society organizations at the United Nations—and its representative was the only civil society voice to address the more than 150 world leaders assembled at the Millennium Summit.
“After the big UN conferences of the ‘90s, civil society really became engaged in what felt like a new era,” Ms. Dugal recalls. Three decades after “The Turning Point for All Nations,” on the eve of the Summit of the Future in 2024, the BIC released “Embracing Interdependence;” and in 2025, its representatives helped facilitate the Civil Society Forum at the Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha, 30 years after the first Social Summit in Copenhagen.
“The question we kept returning to,” says Ms. Dugal, “was whether the structures of international cooperation can move beyond the balancing of competing interests toward arrangements that genuinely reflect humanity’s interdependence.”
“The scale and complexity of global challenges are rapidly outpacing the evolution of the systems designed to respond to them.” For the BIC, the starting point has been a question of identity. “If we truly see ourselves as one human family,” says Ms. Dugal, “then the systems we build must reflect that reality. This understanding of who we are has shaped everything the BIC has brought to these conversations.”
Over the years, the BIC has also contributed to international discourses on peace and security, the well-being of children, human rights, freedom of religion or belief, the role of religion in society, sustainable development, humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and youth, among other issues. It has drawn attention to the persecution of Baháʼís, particularly in Iran, through reports, statements, and sustained engagement that have brought this situation before the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.
Across those areas of engagement, the BIC has increasingly brought to these conversations not only policy considerations, but more fundamental questions: What underlying relationships, capacities, and cultural patterns make justice and equality achievable in the first place?
A distinctive aspect of the BIC’s approach, Ms. Dugal reflects, has been its attention not only to the substance of these conversations but also to their character. “One of the ways we contributed was at the level of process—how initiatives should be structured, what assumptions they rest upon, how people listen to and treat one another—because we saw that the quality of these elements shapes what a conversation is ultimately able to achieve,” she says.
Over the years, the BIC Office in New York became a space where diplomats of member states of the UN, civil society leaders, and UN officials could engage with difficult questions in an atmosphere of genuine respect, and care. “More than once,” Ms. Dugal says, “our partners in civil society or government spoke of their own efforts to bring similar approaches to their events.” For many participants, these gatherings became spaces where a more hopeful and constructive kind of collaboration felt possible.
This orientation shaped the format of broader events as well. “For years, the model around major UN commissions had been the same: featured speakers on a panel, with limited space for wider exchange,” Ms. Dugal says. “We tried to offer a different way.” BIC representatives helped introduce participatory approaches, such as round-table consultations in which every participant could contribute. “We learned that something as simple as the shape of a conversation—who speaks, who listens, how people are seated—can begin to change the quality of the relationships within it.”
This attention to process has been accompanied by a deepening engagement with the lived experience of Baháʼí communities worldwide. “Baháʼí communities have been contributing to the betterment of society for as long as the community has existed,” says Ms. Dugal. “What has evolved,” she continues, “is our ability to draw on these experiences and relate them to the conversations taking place at the international level.”
In conversations about development, she observes, there is often an emphasis on large-scale funding, “but sometimes it is the smaller endeavors that unite communities to find solutions for themselves.” She recalls the response of a Baháʼí community in Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis: rather than seeking a large infusion of aid—which, community members observed, risked creating disunity—they asked for seeds, “so that we can replant and grow back and build back together.” On the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, youth who had developed organizational capacity through educational programs were among the first to assess community needs after a devastating cyclone, informing the response of arriving authorities.
“In each of the countless stories such as these from around the world,” Ms. Dugal reflects, “the people themselves are the central actors in their own development. And meaningful change emerges not from the efforts of any single protagonist but from the coherent action of individuals, communities, and institutions working together.”
Perhaps one of the most significant shifts Ms. Dugal has witnessed over her three decades at the UN is in receptivity to moral and spiritual dimensions of collective life at the international level. “In the early years of my engagement at the UN, spirituality and moral development were not concepts that were acceptable in our conversations since many did not see them as relevant to the discourse,” she recalls. “And we saw this shift happen gradually over these decades.”
Today, she observes, “it’s much more commonplace to have member states and UN entities talking about the importance of the ethical, moral, social, and spiritual foundations on which to foster social betterment.”
Rachel Bayani, appointed as the BIC’s new Principal Representative to the United Nations in December 2025 following Ms. Dugal’s retirement, remarks, “The relationships and trust that have been strengthened over these decades form a wonderful basis on which ongoing learning can unfold.”
Ms. Bayani adds: “The global Baháʼí community is continuously developing a richer understanding of the principles, relationships, and patterns of action that foster collective well-being. By drawing on this growing body of insight, the BIC aims to continue to strengthen its capacity to contribute meaningfully to the pressing questions facing the world today.”
