Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs is in Washington DC to attend the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, hosted by the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In his speech during the ministerial, Minister Bushati praised the U.S. State Department for organizing such a conference and expressed the readiness of our country to hold a similar conference in our region, in close cooperation with the U.S.

The head of Albanian diplomacy focused on the challenges that the society faces and the need to address them with neighbours at regional and sub-regional levels. For Bushati, “Nowadays, religion has gained special importance specifically in the context of extremist groups who try to distort the fundamental rules of true religious doctrine by instrumentalizing the differences between different faiths.”

Referring to our country, he announced the measures undertaken by Albania since 2015, which has invested a lot of time, energy and resources in creating a regional network of coordinators and institutions focused on countering violent terrorism. He underlined that it is necessary to reduce the differences and improve understanding based on education and in this context, Albania, in cooperation with the UN, has started a program for developing curricula on the history of religious and universal values enshrined in every religion. “Being a multi-confessional country, we know how fragile tolerance and coexistence can be, particularly in complex times like these. Therefore, teaching and learning of what unites rather than what divides different religions, for us is a matter of ethical as well as pragmatic nature”, underlined Minister Bushati.

To conclude his speech, Minister Bushati brought to the attention of the participants the excellent tradition of strong inter-religious harmony in Albania, which urged Pope Francis to make his first European visit to Albania in 2014.