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Towards a civilisation alliance

Vitaly Naumkin

Every government must do more to outlaw violent xenophobia at home.

THE ALLIANCE of Civilisations, a Kofi Annan project announced last summer, has every chance of becoming a global effort in a world threatened by a cultural divide.

It is a challenge not only for international but — in the case of some countries in Europe and elsewhere — for intranational relations. It involves many interwoven cultural and religious interests. The most prominent issue, however, is the divide between the Islamic and Western worlds.

Despite globalisation, the cultural gap is becoming increasingly difficult to bridge as people become trapped by prejudices, misconceptions, and besieged fortress mindsets. The huge problem is that the gap in the living standards grows even faster.

The impending collision is to a large extent fuelled by two trouble spots, Iraq and Palestine. The Western G-SAVE policy — Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism — is being pursued for a reason, but from the Islamic perspective it often looks less like a defensive strategy and more like a war one civilisation is waging against another.The global freedom and democracy promotion effort is, accordingly, also seen as a convenient way to promote the West's own agenda while speaking about a need to address poverty and environmental degradation.

This is where the Alliance of Civilisations comes in with the task of creating a new relationship between governments and societies. We have embarked on a very long and painful road, which requires a concerted effort against poverty, illiteracy, WMD proliferation, inhuman ideologies, and other sources of terror, and apt management of conflicts to prevent them from evolving into open hostilities.

This will require extensive education development programmes, a stepped-up religious dialogue, more open societies, cultural networking, etc. The Alliance is aware that much more needs to be done to persuade nations and communities to try to understand and tolerate one another and avoid violent means of conflict resolution.

The recipe for success I think lies in fusing together. Every government and every civil institution must do more to outlaw violent xenophobia at home.

The world could make more use of all available resources to encourage tolerant, respectful, and non-antagonistic concepts and ideas. — RIA Novosti

(The writer is Member of the high level group named by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to guide the Alliance of Civilisations)

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