BIC explores justice as a shared capacity at UN Commission

BIC NEW YORK — When justice is reduced to a matter of legal access alone, something essential is lost. The 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), whose priority theme centered on access to justice for all women and girls offered the Bahá’í International Community (BIC) an opportunity to bring to those discussions a perspective that acknowledges the indispensable role of legal frameworks and formal systems while reaching well beyond them.

“At this year’s CSW, we sought to offer a reconceptualization of justice—one that aims at healing and the strengthening of social ties—and what that might look like when embraced by individuals, communities, and institutions,” said Liliane Nkunzimana, representative of the BIC, in a conversation with the News Service.

The BIC’s statement to the Commission, titled “Reconceptualizing Justice: Laying Foundations for a Gender-Equal World,” observed that while legal progress remains indispensable, experience has shown that laws and structures are only as durable as the personal commitment of those affected by them.

“It is one thing to acknowledge justice as a principle,” said Ms. Nkunzimana, “it is quite another to embrace it wholeheartedly in one’s conduct, and more challenging still to refashion social norms and institutions so that they give collective expression to it.”

“The daily lives of women and girls are shaped by both formal systems and cultural assumptions,” she continued, “and lasting change requires attending to both.”

Each year, the Commission marks a moment of reflection and renewed commitment in ongoing efforts toward equality and the advancement of women and girls. The BIC approaches the Commission as a space for consultation, finding points of mutual interest with other participants and contributing to a shared search for understanding rather than simply presenting positions.

This year, a delegation comprising 21 individuals from the BIC Offices in Addis Ababa, Geneva, Jakarta, and New York were joined by representatives from Bahá’í Offices of External Affairs spanning five continents. They hosted and co-hosted some 12 events. In each of those forums, the delegation sought to illuminate “the interplay between personal commitment to justice, the cultivation of just norms within communities, and the capacity of institutions to give expression to both,” said Ms. Nkunzimana.

One thread that ran across the BIC’s contribution was the concept of the family as the first arena in which hearts and minds are nurtured. At a BIC event co-sponsored by the Australian Government, May Sabet, a resident of Melbourne, described the experience of families in her neighborhood where more than one hundred households have been drawn together through Bahá’í educational programs. These programs aim to foster young people’s capacity for service to their community. Ms. Sabet quoted the reflections of one mother: “I used to think it was just about my child, making sure that she was okay and safe. Then I started to realize that her safety is ensured by the whole street. Now when I drive home, I’m conscious of all of the children.”

This gradual widening of one’s sense of responsibility—from the individual household to the broader community—is the kind of shift the BIC sought to highlight as a dimension of justice often overlooked in policy conversations.

These conversations were not confined to the forums of the Commission. In the months leading up to CSW, Bahá’í Offices of External Affairs in some countries around the world had held their own roundtable discussions with social actors, civil society participants, and government officials to think through what justice, in its fuller dimensions, might ask of individuals, communities, and institutions.

One such gathering took place in Kiribati, where Ruth Cross Kwansing, Minister of Women, Youth, Sport, and Social Affairs, found the discussions thought-provoking, offering a space to reflect further alongside others on the moral and spiritual dimensions of the principle of justice. Ms. Kwansing later joined the BIC at a parallel event during the Commission itself, where she offered a vivid articulation of justice as a capacity: “A capacity is not merely a law, a policy, or a program. It is something cultivated in people, in our relationships, and in our institutions over time. Like the health of a reef, it can be built up.”

Ms. Nkunzimana described the BIC’s hope that the Commission itself might create more forums that draw together a wide range of stakeholders in ways that minimize competition, foster a shared commitment to moral principle, and build unity of vision as the foundation for collaborative action.

In closing a BIC event at its New York office during the Commission’s second week, Rachel Bayani, Principal Representative of the BIC to the UN, offered a reflection that gathered the threads running through two weeks of engagement: “The foundation of justice for any society is an understanding of the oneness of humanity and the equality of women and men. Because only if we believe that we are one human family can we have conviction that every single individual and community has an irreplaceable contribution to make.”