Themes for 2013

December 31, 2012 - The spiritual head of Orthodox Christians worldwide has designated 2013 as the year of Year of Global Solidarity. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople dedicated the new year that is dawning, in a Christmas message, in which he decried a growing economic competition as a moral crisis, where an ephemeral profit is pursued as a principal target. He condemned the overconcentration of wealth in the hands of the few, while vast human masses are ignored and left in financial desolation. Patriarch Bartholomew hopes that through solidarity the world will be able to “sensitize sufficient hearts among humankind regarding the immense and extensive problem of poverty and the need to assume the necessary measures to comfort the hungry and unfortunate.”
The United Nations instead has declared 2013 as the International Year of Water Cooperation. And the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has declared 2013 as the International Year of Quinoa, a natural food in the Andean region, high in nutritional value. Meanwhile the European Union has designated 2013 as the European Year of Citizens, to highlight the rights that come with EU citizenship. Over the year, the EU will encourage dialogue between all levels of government, civil society and business at events and conferences around the continent to discuss those EU rights and build a vision of how the EU should be in 2020.