Table de matières

‮Address by Jorge Sampaio

‮UN High Representative

for the Alliance of Civilizations

‮Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Firstly, I would like to convey my warmest thanks to the organizers of this important Conference for having invited me to be here today.

Allow me also to express my deep appreciation to the Tunisian authorities for the most friendly hospitality extended to me since my arrival in Tunis.

I feel very happy and privileged to have the opportunity to share with you some thoughts on the hot issues this distinguished audience will address during these three-day Conference. Unfortunately, I will have to leave before the closing session but I am sure that you will be kind enough to forward to me the main outcomes of your discussions.

Excellencies,

Looking at the comprehensive programme of this Conference, I must say that I find it quite embarrassing that I should want to bring new ideas to fuel your discussions …

Furthermore, I am sure that all participants are already acquainted with the UN Alliance of Civilizations initiative. This is why I will pass over the ABC of the Alliance in silence.

Let me therefore mainly focus my speech on three hot issues, which, I guess, are likely of greater interest.

- Why the Alliance of Civilizations' initiative can contribute to adapting the UN system to the new security challenges of the 21st century?

- How the Alliance matters to a counter-terrorism strategy?

- How the Alliance become a sustainable initiative for a global partnership for peace?

1. Why the Alliance can contribute to adapting the UN system to the new security challenges of the 21st century?

Let me start by reminding you of some empirical data on conflicts and wars.

In the early 1990s, probably due to the end of the Cold War, the number of armed conflicts around the world began to drop, a decline that has continued to this day.

This is good news, indeed - though largely unnoticed by the media and the public alike - particularly for developing countries where most armed conflicts now take place.

Now the bad news is twofold.

On the one hand, since the end of the Cold War, armed conflicts have increasingly taken place within, and not among, states. Violent conflicts within states now make up more than 95% of armed conflicts. This means that secure states do not automatically mean secure peoples and therefore protecting citizens and individuals now becomes a major concern.

On the other hand, international terrorism is at the heart of all concerns as it is the only form of political violent that appears to be getting worse, although available data are contested.

Anyway, both trends have brought big changes to the global security climate, as well as to the nature of challenges to be addressed in order to create sustainable conditions for a more secure world.

Refusing both complacency and pessimism, one most however recognize that, after 11 September 2001, global security problems have become even more complex, thus prompting the United Nations to meet emerging and new demands in terms of maintaining international peace and security.

Therefore, to fulfill its major purpose and obligation of managing and resolving conflicts, the UN has to adapt and to adjust to address effectively all the current problems related to human insecurity in its wider sense.

To deal with international peace and security, as proclaimed in the Charter, the UN employs different measure as its primary instruments, namely the so-called "collective security", preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping or peace-building actions.

Let's focus here only on preventive diplomacy and particularly on peace building because they both matter to the Alliance and vice-versa.

On the one hand, preventive diplomacy, like any action intended to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur, has, indeed, obvious connections with the Alliance.

On the other hand, peace building architecture is an expanding instrument, covering post-conflict peacemaking and peace maintenance, and the Alliance can but be closely linked.

But before explaining these links a little more in detail, which in my view are the true raison d'être of the Alliance, let me raise the question of how the Alliance matters to enhancing human security from counter-terrorism strategy viewpoint.

2. How the Alliance matters to a counter-terrorism strategy?

As you all know, we live in an increasingly complex world, where polarized perceptions, fuelled by injustice and inequality, often lead to violence and conflict, threatening international stability and peace.

Over the past few years, acts of terror, wars and occupation have exacerbated mutual suspicion and fear within and among societies.

Some political leaders and sectors of the media, as well as radical groups, have exploited this environment, painting mirror images of a world made up of mutually exclusive cultures, religions or civilizations, historically distinct and doomed to confrontation.

And even if this claim is underpinned by fallacious assumption, as in the case of Huntington's well-know prediction of the clash of civilizations, the point is that now, thanks also to globalization, the most common and widespread of the world's views and perceptions are fuelled by cultural and religious divides.

In my view, this is the critical issue, regardless of the intellectual and scholarly disputes about the nature of these divides or on the mistaken and inaccurate concepts underpinning that theory.

Indeed, these academic debates are enlightening and useful to avoid misunderstanding and misconceptions. But action can not be held hostage to controversies over concepts, and the important point is to try to solve real problems that affect everyday life of people.

Instead, I would like to underscore that the main question today is: "How can we live together in a globalizing world, where clashes taking part in any corner of the world can have an impact everywhere on the planet and where cultural and religious fault lines divide our societies?".

In this context, the need to build bridges between societies and communities, to promote dialogue and understanding and to forge the collective political will to address the world's imbalances has never been greater.

This is the global challenges that the Alliance has to face and address in concrete terms, using a results-oriented approach and focusing on deliverables. After all, this is its main and urgent task.

Launched by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2005 with the co-sponsorship of the Prime Ministers of Spain and Turkey, the Alliance of Civilizations affirms a broad consensus across nations, cultures and religions that all societies are bound together in their humanity and interdependent in their quest for security, stability, prosperity and peaceful co-existence.

Indeed, this UN initiative can but be developed in close coordination with all its partners, both within and outside the UN system.

The Alliance is not intended to compete with, let alone to replace, other ongoing initiatives and programs related to its goals. And it would be wrong to aim at acting on an isolated or unilateral basis.

To my mind, the Alliance has to contribute to strengthening the UN's capacity to deliver in line with the recommendations of the Report of the High Level Panel on System-wide Coherence.

In order to achieve this goal, it is clear crystal that the Alliance has to evolve as much as possible as an additional horizontal UN instrument both of preventive diplomacy and of peace building in a broad sense.

Now regarding the field of counter-terrorism in particular, let me remind you that the Resolution adopted by Member States in September 2006 on the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, explicitly refers to the Alliance as an initiative aimed at helping address the conditions conductive to the spread of terrorism.

Likewise, in this Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the European Union recognizes the need to develop a broad prevention policy including a wide range of actions such as addressing incitement and recruitment in particular key environments; developing a non-emotive lexicon for discussing divisive issues; targeting inequalities and discrimination where they exist, promoting inter-cultural dialogue and long-term integration where appropriate, within and outside the Union.

Let me stress, in this regard, how important the topical issue of the future of the relations between the European Union with its Mediterranean neighbours is for the Alliance.

As you may know, the Alliance, though having a global scope underpinned by a universal perspective, places priority on addressing relations between Western and predominantly Muslim societies.

This is why the prospect of the reinforcement of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership process is good news for us.

This renewed Euro-Mediterranean Community should aim at promoting the basic principle of inclusion within diversity, thus countering the idea of an inevitable divide opposing Northern and Southern countries and peoples leading to a crash of civilizations.

Furthermore, let me clearly tell you that, in my view, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership is a particularly suitable framework for implementing the Alliance and therefore we are ready to give a contribution to developing a more results-oriented vision of a successful Partnership, better adapted to the present world challenges.

Excellencies,

Let me emphasize how important and pivotal the Euro-Mediterranean area is in changing the widespread misperception of the so-called West-Islam divide.

Indeed, one thing is the Arab world, another the Islam, even if, as my good friend Vartan Gregorian puts it, when using "Islam" or "West", we are not referring to a monolith but to a mosaic of communities.

We can not ignore that the Mediterranean Sea remains the crossroads of many divides, tensions and conflicts as well as the core of major political disputes and challenges of our times.

To my mind, a more secure world is not possible without placing the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership at its centre.

Indeed, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership is a long-term, open-ended process, in which success depends upon ongoing reform efforts and on political will to overcome the current shortcomings of the Barcelona Process.

In my view, it is clear that the Barcelona Process has not fully met expectations and needs. It has also experienced some difficulties in achieving its goals of peace, stability, prosperity and human development for all.

To build pluralistic and inclusive societies, where equality of opportunities for all and the rights of individuals and of minorities are protected, additional urgent action is required to bridge the existing fault lines that divide our communities.

The accelerating pace of globalization brings individuals and societies closer together than ever before, interconnecting lives and identities in inextricable ways. But fear of homogenization and of loosing identity also creates regressions and tends to bring new tribalism.

I am convinced that appropriate and timely policies can prevent social anxieties as well as fears from mounting, which lead to anger, and breed violence.

The greatest single antidote to violence is dialogue, conversation and debate - speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, sharing vulnerabilities, building room for constructive dissent and deepening mutual understanding and trust.

We are all faced with the same challenges and we are all looking for achieving similar goals, ie to build a more secure world for all and create sustainable conditions for peace and development.

Armed conflicts and extremism, as well as terrorism, undermine any prospect of stability and sustainable development. We cannot afford not to work together since for global challenges there are only global strategies, even if the answers are indeed local or rather global. By "global", I mean that deliverables have to extensively underpinned by a global approach, but have to be implemented at local level.

In my view, the Alliance has a promising role to play as a catalyst of joint initiatives in the fields of education, youth, media and migrations - these are its four main fields of action - and as a convener for building partnership across nations and/or regions as well as between different international and regional organizations and for expending existing activities.

The Alliance aims at countering the increasing polarization of perceptions and collective attitudes as well as the rise of extremism. To achieve this goal we need shared policies creating strong solidarity ties between all partners and we need to engage in coordinated action in order to build more inclusive and pluralistic societies, besides building bridges of respect and understanding between peoples and communities.

3. How can the Alliance become a sustainable initiative?

I must say that I am most surprised with the high expectations the Alliance has been creating as well as the strong leverage its Group of Friend seems to offer to it.

But I have no doubt that the Alliance covers a field of action that is dramatically lacking in political attention and appropriate policies.

To address the challenge of creating sustainable conditions for living together in our globalizing world, we need a global, concerted framework for action.

But action will always be local within the globalization process - of threats, challenges, opportunities, problems, fears, extremism, violence, conflicts and wars. It follows that action within a global framework works better. This makes commitment to multilateralism the key to successful action.

I have no doubt that Alliance as an innovative initiative will be closely scrutinized by its stakeholders. But, for me, this is good news because transparency and accountability are crucial to assessing pilot initiatives like the Alliance.

Now the question is - how can the Alliance develop from a goodwill plan to a sustainable initiative?

In my view, three conditions have to be fulfilled to make the Alliance a successful initiative contributing to the consolidation of peace worldwide.

Firstly, States have to show strong commitment towards achieving the Alliance's goals, first and foremost at internal level, within their own societies and communities; this is why I have suggested to the Alliance members of the Group of Friends the development of "National Strategies for cross-cultural dialogue" in their own countries, focusing on four main areas of action - media, youth, education and migrations.

Secondly, the Alliance has to play a leading role in addressing growing polarization between cultures and societies, mainly by promoting a network of Charters for partnering with international organization and bodies in order to ensure unity of purpose and a cumulative impact of coordinated action.

Thirdly, non State actors - as NGOs and the private sector, voluntary and civic organizations, local communities, churches and other confessional organizations - have to be closely associated because they play a decisive role in building the conditions for peace at the grassroots level.

If these three conditions are fulfilled, we have great hopes that with appropriate and timely plans of action in the four main fields of action of the Alliance - education, youth, media and migrations-, this initiative will contribute to building peace sustainable conditions worldwide.

When I met with the Group of Friends of the Alliance in New York in September, I urged its members to make these commitments in order to turn our global challenge into "global" deliverables.

I do hope that I can also count on your support to voice these same concerns and that you will join us in our efforts to contribute to a more secure and better world for all, free of fault-lines opposing people against people.

Many thanks

Publications de l'Organisation Islamique pour l'Éducation, les Sciences et la Culture

-‬ISESCO‭- ‬1429H/2008