The International Dialogue Centre hosted Heads of Mission of the Asian Group for the third in its series of regional ambassadorial roundtables, placing climate action, youth leadership and community-rooted dialogue at the centre of a renewed partnership with one of the world's most religiously and culturally diverse regions.
The International Dialogue Centre – KAICIID today hosted an Ambassadorial Roundtable with the Asian Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Portuguese Republic, opening a new chapter of structured engagement with one of the world's most religiously diverse and dynamic regions, with climate action and community engagement at the centre of the conversation.
The Roundtable brought together ten Heads of Mission and senior diplomats from across the region for a working exchange on the role of interreligious and intercultural dialogue in advancing peace, social cohesion, climate action and inclusive development in Asia. The session opened with remarks by KAICIID Acting Secretary-General, Ambassador António de Almeida Ribeiro, and H.E., Ambassador of the Philippines, Paul Raymund Cortes.
"Dialogue remains one of the most effective tools to build trust, strengthen mutual understanding and promote peaceful coexistence across cultures and religions. By bringing together members of the Asian diplomatic community in Lisbon, this roundtable reaffirmed KAICIID's commitment to fostering collaborative approaches to peace and social cohesion through sustained engagement and partnership," said Ambassador of the Philippines, Paul Raymund Cortes.
In his remarks, Ambassador Almeida Ribeiro situated the Roundtable within KAICIID's broader engagement strategy with diplomatic corps in Lisbon, which has previously convened the Arab Region Diplomatic Corps in April 2025 and the EU Diplomatic Corps in March 2026, and which extends to KAICIID's renewed Memorandum of Understanding with the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa in April 2026. Recalling the Centre's founding inspiration in the 2007 meeting between His Majesty King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia and Pope Benedict XVI, he reflected on KAICIID's evolution into an established intergovernmental platform with regional programmes spanning Africa, the Arab Region, Europe and Asia.
"The challenges before us cannot be addressed by diplomacy alone, nor by community engagement in isolation. They require bridges between policy and society, between institutions and lived realities, and between state actors and the moral voices that help shape communities," he said.
KAICIID's Head of Programmes, Ms. Vera Ferreira, and Senior Programme Manager for Asia, Ms. Mitra Modaressi, presented the Centre's mandate and its Asia Programme, which works through a two-track approach: integrating interreligious and intercultural dialogue (IRD/ICD) into national policy, education and community systems, while building a strengthened regional ecosystem of platforms and partnerships. With direct implementation in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, and a Fellows-centred approach that leverages locally embedded dialogue practitioners, the Programme positions dialogue as a practical tool to address polarisation, declining trust, widening generational divides and climate-related stress.
Particular attention was drawn to Dialogue in Action: Strengthening Youth Leadership for Climate Action in Southeast Asia, a flagship project launched in April 2026 that combines KAICIID's Transformative Dialogue methodology with youth storytelling, digital advocacy and community engagement to address climate challenges through interreligious and intercultural cooperation.
Programme results presented to the Roundtable included:
More than 75 ASEAN officials and diplomats trained between 2022 and 2025 to apply IRD/ICD as a tool for inclusive policymaking and regional cooperation, in partnership with the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (ASEAN-IPR);
45 youth leaders from seven ASEAN Member States equipped with skills in intercultural dialogue, storytelling and digital engagement in 2025, resulting in 12 grassroots initiatives that reached more than 300 community beneficiaries;
The Dialogue Cities Network, connecting five pilot cities across Southeast Asia as a platform for academics, journalists, policymakers, religious leaders, women and youth, with a third Dialogue Cities Southeast Asia Conference planned for Kuala Lumpur in 2026;
A regional toolkit for youth influencers and religious leaders to promote inclusive engagement and counter hate speech in online spaces;
More than 20 KAICIID Fellows alumni supported to scale Fellows-led IRD/ICD initiatives across the region, including the Ruang Riung arts-based dialogue initiative in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, which engaged over 100 religious leaders and reached more than 2,600 in-person participants and a digital audience of over 750,000.
KAICIID also reaffirmed its sustained engagement with the G20 Interfaith Forum and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, and announced that the 2026 cohort of its International Fellows Programme will continue to expand the Centre's global network of dialogue practitioners.
Discussions during the interactive segment focused on shared priorities including the role of religious literacy in foreign policy, the prevention of hate speech and disinformation in increasingly polarised digital spaces, the protection of religious sites and religious minorities, the contribution of dialogue to inclusive urban governance as Asia continues to urbanise rapidly, and community-rooted approaches to climate action.
The Roundtable is the third in a series of regional ambassadorial engagements through which KAICIID is building durable partnerships with diplomatic corps based in Lisbon, Arab, European and now Asian, to translate its mandate into concrete cooperation with Member States, civil society and religious communities. KAICIID's Asia Programme works in partnership with regional bodies including ASEAN-IPR and UNDP Philippines, and with faith-based and civil society partners including the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers, Religions for Peace, the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (PaRD), the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, Arigatou International, the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and Al Qalam Institute.
Convened in alignment with the United Nations International Year of Peace and Trust, the Roundtable reaffirmed the relevance of multi-stakeholder dialogue in addressing today's complex challenges. "We see these Roundtables as the beginning of sustained partnerships grounded in trust, mutual learning and shared responsibility," Ambassador Almeida Ribeiro told participants.