The Bahá'í Global Vision

The Bahá'í faith made a formal presentation to the Rio de Janeiro summit in 1992; this developed into the internationally published policy statement on global development issues, published in 1995, entitledThe Prosperity of Humankind. This article explores aspects of Bahá'í teaching on global development and conflict resolution highlighted both in this document, in the earlier The Promise of World Peace (1985), and in other writings. It examines key concepts such as consultation, justice, trusteeship, the unity in diversity of humankind, equality and equity, and planetisation. It explores the relevance of the Bahá'í vision to contemporary society, politics, business and religion, finding parallels in contemporary secular writings; and it questions whether dogmatic belief helps or hinders the process of global consultative development, that is whether future developments will be BaháY initiatives.