Bangkok Jan 21-23, 2026
It has been a month since Bachelor of Ministry student, Emelia Haskey, and Academic Dean Dr Rosemary Dewerse, both from Uniting College for Leadership and Theology in Adelaide returned from attending the United Nations 5th Global Peace Summit. But the impact of the experience – engaging with 450 young people, as well as advisors, from 60 different countries, and listening to remarkable stories of resilience and hope – continues.
Key speakers at the event included: Manal Omar, a Palestinian-American peace activist with years of experience negotiating at high levels internationally, poet Emi Mahmoud, a survivor of the ongoing genocide in South Sudan, top criminal prosecutor Alfred Orono Orono whose early life in Uganda was cruelly disrupted when he was forced to be a child soldier, Bosnian actor Mirsad Solakovic who experienced torture as a child during the 1990s war in Yugoslavia and continues to struggle with the aftermath, Lejla Damon, a child born as the result of the rape of her mother during that same war, Ruben Mawick, a German humanitarian aid worker (aged 23) serving on the frontline of the war in Ukraine, and Chen Alon, an Israeli ex-soldier and Suleiman Katif, a Palestinian activist jailed as a teenager who have co-founded with others Combatants for Peace.
Emelia: “What was so moving to me was not just their stories of survival, but their honesty and bold criticism of the failures of humanitarian organisations, and what it means to work for peace when international law has finally been exposed as a façade for the powerful. Being the only student in attendance studying theology, I thought I would be somewhat isolated. But instead, I had so many long conversations around the nuances of faith and how it can shape our resilience that I lost count. There is something awe-inspiring about being in a room that represents the young people of much of the world. I feel I have come away profoundly changed forever.”
Rosemary: “Listening to the speakers was a very sobering and inspiring experience. Their passion and their ongoing pain was viscerally expressed. I was left conscious that the weight of their stories is a responsibility I now carry to reflect upon and honour in some way in my own words and actions. I was also left amazed by the remarkable resilience that is possible in a human life and the profound courage and perseverance each showed to choose compassion and peacebuilding in the face of unimaginable horrors and challenge. Since returning I have been trying not to fill my life with tasks too quickly so that I honour what I have heard. I am also finding ways to speak up and to connect more deeply with others, one-by-one, in order to take up the challenge to listen as an act of love.”
Dr Rosemary Dewerse is a practical theologian from Aotearoa New Zealand who is currently Academic Dean and Research Coordinator at the Uniting College for Leadership and Theology (UCLT) in Adelaide.
The Common Goood Project
Catholic Theological College
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