Written by
Leila Dahmouh '27
Feb. 26, 2024

          On January 29, the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue (SFPD), a smaller subset of the Community of Sant’Egidio–a Catholic lay organization that has serviced the needy and worked towards global peacebuilding since the 1960s–visited the Office of Religious Life for an interreligious dialogue on the ongoing crisis in Burkina Faso. Put on by the Religious Life Committee, the Burkina Faso Diaspora Project Director Wendpoulemde André Dakoala, Advisor to the Foundation Namketa Edith Savadogo, and SFPD President Andrea Bartoli explained that Burkina Faso’s crisis began with the trickle-down spread of religious extremism that began in the Maghreb and spread down to the Sahel of Africa. This crisis, foreign to Burkina Faso’s history of religious tolerance, has left a tenth of Burkinabé displaced–80% of whom are women–and the closure of a quarter of the nation’s schools. Despite the undeniable suffering of people in Burkina Faso and the militant regimes which threaten to radicalize impressionable young Burkinabé, the situation remains the most neglected modern world crisis.

            While the crisis is dire, speakers Dakoala and Savagodo described a need for universal peace; peace as something that is "freely given, freely shared, and freely received for the good of all," a leading sentiment for the organization. The project aims to build peace through the various religious backgrounds of the Burkinabé diaspora, who are mainly Muslim, Christian, and animist. In order to halt violence and hate speech, the peace project takes advantage of American freedoms to promote peace and interreligious inclusion through the American diaspora, with the intention these messages will disseminate back to Burkina Faso. Through public peace gatherings, religious leaders who address the crisis, and youth engagement (including soccer and faith-based music events), interreligious communities in the diaspora would facilitate communication and friendship, dispelling suspicions fueled by a systemic crisis previously unknown to Burkina Faso.

            In 2022, these interreligious peace-building events brought together 119 Burkinabé in New York, and in 2023, the numbers grew to 241. This form of community engagement and social media attention prevents young and marginalized people from radicalization, an effort that reaches Burkina Faso and helps facilitate dialogue through the organization’s growth. According to the speakers, Burkina Faso illustrates the risk that division and outgrouping poses to the entire world: Burkina Faso has never had a civil war, and maintained a history of religious tolerance. Despite the lack of attention to the crisis, it questions what will continue to happen throughout the world.

            Sant’Egidio promotes a peace that is not blind. The systemic issues in Burkina Faso do not exist in a vacuum, but as a result of Africa’s colonization and the lasting impacts left over. “The world is still being made,” claims Andrea, “We can try for a new fate [of peace].” Through its partnership with Sant’Egidio, the Office of Religious Life seeks to facilitate similar kinds of interreligious dialogue and peace-building throughout the Princeton community. With faith-based internships and addressing the widely ignored issues in Burkina Faso, the ORL seeks to inform its community members of the wider world outside of Princeton, and to call to action peace, a “gift freely given, freely shared, and freely received.”