NUR-SULTAN – Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi participated in the Nov. 16-17 third Ministerial Conference to Advance Religious Freedom, the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign affairs press service reported. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau and US State Secretary Mike Pompeo co-chaired the videoconference.
Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi (C). Photo credit: the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tileuberdi stressed Kazakhstan’s efforts in ensuring religious freedom of citizens, as well as interethnic and interfaith tolerance.
“Peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, and tolerance are part of our culture,” he said addressing the participants of the videoconference.
The Kazakh foreign minister also stressed the role of the Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. The congress has been gathering representatives of the world’s cultures and civilizations to establish an interfaith and inter-civilizational dialogue every three years in Nur-Sultan since 2003. The latest congress in 2018 had 82 delegations from 46 countries.
Kazakhstan built a safe and comfortable environment where more than 3,800 religious associations representing 18 confessions and more than 100 ethnic groups can coexist.
The first ministerial conference was in 2018 at the initiative of the United States to empower civil society institutions and ensure freedom of religion.
The third conference organizers invited 127 countries and international organizations. Initially, Poland planned to organize the ministerial conference on 14-16 July 2020 in Warsaw.
