Lift Where You Stand: What a UN Scholar Wants Everyday Peacemakers to Know

What if the secret to world peace isn't locked inside a conference room at the United Nations — but is already sitting at your kitchen table, in your classroom, in your place of worship, in every small moment where one human being chooses to see another?

That's not a naive idea. It's the considered conclusion of one of the world's leading scholars on human rights, religious freedom, and the foundations of peaceful societies.

In a recent episode of the All Peacemakers Needed video series, host Nell Rose Hill sat down with Professor Brett G. Scharffs — Rex E. Lee Chair and Professor of Law at Brigham Young University, and director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies — for a conversation that moved from the halls of the United Nations to the living rooms and kitchens where peacemaking really begins.

Watch the full video interview below, then read on for the highlights.

What Does a "Cultures of Peace" Actually Mean?

In 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 55/17 — the Resolution on Human Rights and a Culture of Peace. Professor Scharffs was invited to speak before the Council about its implementation.

One of the first things he addressed was the language of the resolution itself. It spoke of a culture of peace — singular. Scharffs pushed back gently on that framing.

"Cultures vary from place to place," he explained. "What peaceful societies look like in one place might be a little bit different than what peaceful societies look like in another place."

That's not a relativist argument — it's a practical one. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself acknowledges that human rights, while universal, will be implemented gradually and in ways that may differ across contexts. Scharffs isn't abandoning universal values. He's arguing that those values take root more deeply when they're allowed to grow from local soil.

The basic components of peaceful societies, he believes, will look similar everywhere. But the pathways to get there will differ — and that diversity is something to embrace, not iron out.

Three Legs of a Stool: Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Cultures of Peace

Perhaps the most striking contribution Scharffs made in his UN presentation was identifying what was missing from the resolution: human dignity.

He describes human dignity, human rights, and cultures of peace as three legs of a stool — each dependent on the others. Remove one and the whole structure collapses.

"Without human dignity, it's difficult to get to human rights," he said. "And so I think that if you neglect human dignity, the entire human rights project is very vulnerable to collapse."

This isn't just an academic concern. Scharffs and his team at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies have spent the last eight years building a body of work specifically around human dignity — not the Western philosophical version alone, but perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Islamic world, Indigenous communities, and Pacific Islander traditions.

The Western understanding of dignity, he explains, traces largely to the philosopher Immanuel Kant and centers on the individual — on autonomy, reason, and personal rights. That's a powerful tradition. But it's incomplete.

"African perspectives on human dignity focused much more on community, on relationships, and on actual practical life," he said. "It was much more grounded in the earth. It was focused on the dignity of the dead, and it was focused on practical, everyday life."

This summer, his center will convene a conference at Oxford on Indigenous perspectives on human dignity. A book on Asian perspectives has just been published. Work on Islamic perspectives is underway.

The goal isn't to find a single, definitive answer to what human dignity means. It's to listen — and to let that listening change us.

"We can actually add to our own understanding of our own humanity by listening to what others have to say about human dignity," Scharffs said.

Why Human Dignity Is the Starting Point for Peacemaking

So how does all of this translate to everyday life? To the way we talk to our neighbors, show up in our communities, and navigate disagreement with people who see the world differently than we do?

For Scharffs, it starts with a shift in how we see each other.

"If we understand that each of us are human beings endowed — as Christians believe — by our creator with not just inalienable rights, but that we are literally created in the image of God, then we see each other differently."

And for those who don't hold religious beliefs, the same principle applies through a shared humanity: we are each equal in inherent worth and value, simply because we are human.

"Human dignity doesn't create an algorithm that will solve our problems," he said. "But it puts us in a frame of mind that will help us communicate with each other and begin talking with each other in a way that is generative — that puts us in a place where we have a chance to solve our problems together."

That starting point — the simple, stubborn insistence that the person across from you has dignity equal to your own — is both profound and easy to forget. Scharffs is honest about that. We lose it in stress, in ego, in the pace of daily life. The work of peacemaking is, in part, the work of remembering.

Why Religious Voices Are Essential — and Often Ignored

One of the most pointed observations Scharffs made at the UN was that the resolution on a culture of peace was almost entirely silent on the role of religious voices. He called it "tone deaf."

His argument for why that's a problem is simple and hard to refute: religious traditions have been thinking about peacemaking for thousands of years. The nation-state, by contrast, is a relatively recent invention. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is 75 years old. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism — these traditions will still be shaping human behavior long after today's political systems have evolved beyond recognition.

"These traditions all have wisdom traditions and peacemaking traditions that have been around a lot longer than the peacemaking traditions we're learning at Johns Hopkins or Oxford or Harvard," Scharffs said. "And they have really important ways of thinking about peacemaking that are in many cases far more successful than the contemporary models we have."

He's not naive about religion's complicated history — he acknowledges plainly that religion has been the cause of enormous conflict and bloodshed. But even then, he argues, it's usually religious voices that are part of the solution.

He pointed to the abolitionist movement — a religious movement. To the civil rights movement — rooted in Black church tradition. To Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and "I Have a Dream" speech, which he described plainly as religious documents. To Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, saturated with biblical language and imagery.

"For a lot of people, the person they trust is a trusted friend or a trusted religious leader," Scharffs said. "And so religious voices are of great importance."

He also made a point that resonated strongly with the spirit of All Peacemakers Needed: we need to hear not just from religious leaders, but from religious voices broadly — including women and children.

Lift Where You Stand

When asked how everyday people can promote peacemaking across communities — regardless of religious or political background — Scharffs turned to an image he returns to again and again, wherever he is in the world.

A congregation trying to move a grand piano. Nothing worked — until one elderly gentleman offered a simple suggestion: let's gather around the piano and lift where we stand.

"I think we should not be afraid of big stages," Scharffs said. "But we should also not imagine that small things are not significant."

Whether he's in a seminar room with six students or speaking before the ambassadors of the world, he said, he tries to bring the same thing: all of himself, fully present, fully committed to the people in front of him.

"Whether we're teaching a primary class of young children or on a big stage talking to ambassadors — I don't think it's that different. We bring our best self to the endeavor in front of us."

That's the invitation. Not to wait until you have a larger platform, a bigger audience, or a more impressive title. But to lift where you stand — right now, exactly where you are.

Get Involved

Learn more about the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University and the ongoing work on human dignity across African, Asian, Islamic, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander perspectives at iclrs.org.

Watch the full conversation between Nell and Professor Scharffs in the All Peacemakers Needed video series — and explore other episodes featuring everyday people and extraordinary guests talking about what it means to be a peacemaker in the world today.

Because peacemaking doesn't start at the United Nations. It starts where you are.

And All PEACEMAKERS ARE NEEDED!

The All Peacemakers Needed video series features conversations between everyday people exploring the practice of peacemaking. New episodes are released regularly.