“I have come to serve, not to be served”: the World Evangelical Alliance’s permanent representative at the UN puts focus on serving others

Gaetan Roy goes to the United Nations building in Geneva with an unusual question: “How can I serve you?”

Roy is not a waiter or a salesperson but the new representative from the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) to the UN. Ever since he first got involved in politics, this is the question he’s led with. Back in 2015, when he went to the German parliament to lobby on behalf of evangelical organizations, he couldn’t get the words of Mark 10:45 out of his mind: I have come to serve, not to be served.

So Roy asked the first politician he met on his first day, “How can I serve you?” He’s continued asking it ever since.

“I thought this was really simple, but I felt God was unrelenting in this regard,” Roy told CT. “If Jesus came to serve and not to be served, then I will do the same by asking diplomats and politicians we engage with how we can serve them.”

With this question, Roy has become one of the primary evangelical voices at the world’s largest intergovernmental organization, speaking on behalf of 600 million believers in more than 120 countries. He takes over from Michael Mutzner, who helped establish the WEA’s office at the UN in 2012, and joins Wissam al-Saliby, director of the WEA’s Geneva office. Al-Saliby focuses on public statements about human rights violations while Roy works behind the scenes, brokering deals and developing official proposals for the UN representatives to consider.

Whether he’s promoting peace in Nigeria or working with the Coalition for Minority Rights in India, Roy said he hopes service will lead the way as he represents evangelical concerns and advances the cause of religious freedom for all.

If Roy’s approach to high-level negotiations and political diplomacy seems unorthodox, so was his pathway to such a high-profile position.

Religion at the UN: From Gender Justice to Protecting the Environment, Faith Communities are Creating Sustainable Change

When Prof. Azza Karam was trying to create the Interagency Task Force on Religion and Sustainable Development (IATF) during her time at the UN, she often ran into a challenge that seemed embedded in the organization’s DNA.

“The UN is supposed to be the quintessential universal culture, you’re supposed to step through the doors and have no country, no religion, and serve all,” she said.

Respecting this altruism and admiring the broad human rights principles that make the UN what it is, Karam still felt something was missing — the heart. She wondered, “how can you serve all if you don’t understand what touches people’s hearts, their faith?”

Driven by a desire to see faith-based actors more involved with the UN, she worked with like-minded individuals to create the UN IATF in 2010. Today, it includes more than 20 UN agencies and works toward shared objectives with key partners in the faith-based world.

In 2018, the UN IATF established the MFAC to advise on key areas of the UN’s mandate, such as gender justice, environmental protection, and peacebuilding. KAICIID serves as the only intergovernmental organization that holds membership in the MFAC and co-chaired the council from 2018-2019.

Rabbi Burton Visotzky, Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, was already involved with the UN Under-Secretary General for Genocide Prevention and was often consulted along with other faith leaders by the IATF, so much so that he thought of himself as “the UN’s ‘go-to Jew.’”

Along with other “religious friends of the UN” he came to serve on the MFAC when it was founded.

Although still in its infancy, Visotzky said the MFAC has already made an impact around the UN. “Having discovered religion, the UN has acted on that knowledge and is keen to partner with us in a variety of ways.”