June 24-28, 2019
Les Pensières Centre for Global Health, Annecy, France

2019’s gathering began with a welcome to the Forum from the President and Founder of the AHIMSA Fund, Jean-François de Lavison. He thanked sponsors and participants from 46 countries, with a near perfect 51/49% gender balance, and outlined the forum’s philosophy in six points: openness of discussion; compassion; listening; respect; participation; and dialogue. As ever at Ahimsa, efforts had been made to ensure that at least a quarter of those present were members of younger generations.
The future must be built on our strengths—we spend too much time on our differences—and the common objective of achieving health access for the most vulnerable gives everyone an opportunity to contribute. Breaking silos down in favour of bridges is possible with two things: political will and leadership.
The forum would have three main parts: addressing the ongoing task of engaging faith-inspired communities and faith-based organisations with civil society and governments in the joint task of achieving universal health coverage (UHC); an innovation track focused on making the benefits of technology and progress accessible to the world’s poorest; and an important, cross cutting theme examining how to balance our busy professional existences with our personal lives, giving appropriate importance—and time—to the associations between physical and mental health, culture and art.