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Achievement brief – Rev Miyamoto

As a Buddhist leader from the Far East, Rev. Keishi Miyamoto has been a unique pioneer in promoting interfaith cooperation, a field traditionally led by monotheistic religions, building bridges of trust and human fraternity across the world’s major faith traditions.

As a global leader in this area for more than 30 years, he has initiating global-scale movements of interfaith cooperation for the well-being of children to address the specific contemporary challenges faced by children including violations of their rights, violence, poverty, inadequate access to quality education and climate change.

To promote interfaith cooperation of children, Rev. Keishi Miyamoto has convened since the year 2000 the Global Network of Religions for Children, the sole global network dedicated specifically to bringing together diverse faith organizations and other stakeholders to work together for the rights and well-being of children.

Rev. Keishi Miyamoto is president of the global non-governmental organization, Arigatou International, where he has developed close partnerships with UNICEF and UNESCO across various concrete programs that improve children’s lives. Arigatou International on average each year promotes over 250 interfaith projects engaging more than 450,000 people. Under his leadership, Arigatou International has created innovative concrete interventions that directly promote the cause of human fraternity, such as Learning to Live Together: An Intercultural and Interfaith Programme of Ethics Education, which has been translated into 13 languages and is used around the world.

In 2017, to tackle extreme child poverty as the most extensive form of violence against children in the world, Rev. Miyamoto supported the publication of the “Interfaith Guide to End Child Poverty” with the commitment to inspire faith community to mobilize faith inspired resources to end child poverty.

In 2019, on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Rev. Miyamoto spearheaded a ground-breaking research project and in-depth report on the complementarities between the principles of the CRC and the values of seven major religions, entitled “Faith and Children’s Rights: A Multi-religious Study on the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

Rev. Miyamoto is an active partner in various other cooperative initiatives. Among other key roles, he currently serves as Board Member of the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children,
International Trustee of Religions for Peace (RfP), Auditor of the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention, Director of the Federation of New Religious Organizations of Japan (Shinshuren), Auditor of the Japanese Association of Religious Organizations (Nishuren), and Director of the Niwano Peace Foundation. Rev. Miyamoto also served as a Member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Role of Faith in 2012 and 2013.

In 2020, with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rev. Miyamoto launched the worldwide campaign, “Faith in Action for Children,” in partnership with other like-minded religious, secular, global, national and local organizations. The campaign continues to bring diverse stakeholders together to address the multi-dimensional impacts of the pandemic on children.

To support interfaith approaches to advocate for children’s rights and wellbeing to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and to keep children at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in 2020 Rev. Miyamoto supported the publication of the “Advocacy Guide on Advocating for Children’s Rights and Wellbeing”.