Faced with current global issues, promoting dialogue remains essential to reduce tensions and build bridges between cultures.
At the last General Assembly of the United Nations, the international community unanimously adopted the resolution to establish an international day of dialogue among civilizations. It states that all civilizations are the collective heritage of humanity. It advocates respect for diversity and the crucial role of dialogue in maintaining world peace and improving human well-being. While calling for an equal dialogue between different civilizations, member countries were asked to register the date of June 10 as the International Day of Dialogue Among Civilizations.
It was not the first time that the UN itself had made such a commitment to bring together civilizations and cultures in a world in complete disarray and suffering the ravages of wars and conflicts. The safeguarding of civilizational heritage is, in principle, the responsibility of the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, UNESCO, which is supposed to defend this aspect. Does not its constitutive act announce that its reason for being is to contribute to the maintenance of peace and security, and to strengthen, through education, science and culture, collaboration between nations?
Dealing with this issue at the level of the General Assembly meant giving the dialogue of civilizations the strategic importance it deserves. This was also the case when the initiative was adopted Alliance of Civilizations, launched in September 2004 by the UN General Assembly. This initiative aimed to improve understanding between civilizations by recommending member countries to join forces in the fight against terrorism. Clearly, the international community sought to mitigate the consequences of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the American wars against the regimes of the Taliban in Afghanistan and that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Koffi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN, then created a group of 19 well-known personalities, including the South African Desmond Tutu and the Frenchman Hubert Védrine, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, to look into this new approach in order to bring the civilizations between them and to find bridges to promote understanding and peace between nations. The Alliance of Civilizations subsequently adopted a motto which summed up its essence: several cultures, one humanity. It set itself the objective of promoting cultural diversity, religious pluralism and mutual respect between civilizations.
Beyond its humanitarian character, this alliance came at the right time as a act of resistance against American policy pursued indiscriminately towards the Muslim world. Washington did not seek to oppose the adoption of this initiative and followed the general momentum by adopting this resolution, which is non-binding. The Alliance of Civilizations was not turned against any country, and especially not America. Its aim was to break stereotypes and promote mutual and intercultural respect between different nations.
All countries therefore agreed to promote understanding, dialogue and cooperation between different civilizations. The fight against extremism, xenophobia and discrimination has enriched the range of recommendations of this initiative to achieve objectives which appeared flow from source. They had to go through dialogue, education, communication, cooperation and the promotion of cultural diversity, principles which are found in abundance throughout UN literature.
As was to be expected, the expected results of this alliance did not meet the assigned objectives. Certainly, its adoption resulted in the creation of a global network of intellectuals and experts, the organization of conferences, the development of educational programs and the creation of a fund to support cooperation projects. However, all his actions fell short of the hopes raised. The causes of these inadequacies are diverse: under-representation of certain regions, difficulties in achieving certain objectives and insufficient financial and human resources. But the most important blockage was the lack of political will among the great powers.
A response to global tensions
The international community was therefore right to speak of an Alliance of Civilizations, instead of the dialogue of civilizations which highlights the only intercultural aspect. Dialogue is an open and respectful exchange of views between individuals and groups belonging to different cultures. It allows each party to better understand the perception of the other party. In contrast, the alliance highlights the various unbreakable links that bind civilizations together and allow them to continually interact across all aspects of life, not only between states, but also through people and communities.
All these debates on dialogue or the alliance of civilizations appeared after the turmoil caused by Samuel Huntington’s book, The clash of civilizations, published in 1996 which made the Muslim world, and incidentally China, the potential enemies of the West in general, and the United States in particular. This book was prefaced by Zbigniew Brezinski, former National Security Advisor and major strategist and architect of American foreign policy under President Jimmy Carter. Brezinski himself was in favor of more firmness towards the Soviet Union at the time.
Huntington believed that our world is fundamentally multicivilizationaland therefore multipolar. For him, the fall of the Berlin Wall ushers in an era where the identity of a nation is less and less defined by its belonging to a single nation. He notes that the bipolar world is replaced by another multipolar one where ideological, economic and political oppositions give way to cultural oppositions. States that share the same cultural values will collaborate among themselves and against all othershe thought. For him, the awakening of identity is no longer affirmed through nations, as in the 19th century, but on the scale of civilizations due to globalization.
This conflicting vision between civilizations developed by Huntington found in the wars waged by the Americans against Muslim countries a concrete field of application to better support these concepts. But other thinkers and strategists came to invalidate the conclusions of the American who wanted to make the logic of confrontation between civilizations the engine of the evolution of relations between different civilizations. They gave as proof the atrocities in which the West was the scene, even though its members shared the same cultural era.
It is for overcome this logic of confrontation perpetual that the Alliance of Civilizations therefore saw the light of day within the United Nations. His program included several priorities based on international cooperation and the fight against economic and social inequalities. But faced with the domination of Western civilization, other groups are now emerging. The logic of countries like those of Brics or Aseanis to assert itself more to constitute competitive economic groups and homogeneous and independent civilizations in relation to the dominant West.
The establishment of the Alliance of Civilizations therefore starts from a good humanitarian principle of survival and preservation of what still unites all humans. But promoting this idea seems to lose its vigor, even if it continues to inspire dreams of all those who love justice, fairness and peace. The fact remains that it is only through permanent and sincere dialogue that civilizations can build bridges and complementarities between them.
However, the dialogue of civilizations will in no way change the balance of power between states. At best, it will be able to alleviate them and enable lucid understanding between nations. Encounters between civilizations have not always been happy in the past and will certainly not be so in the future. Colonization, the slave trade, the massacres of yesterday as well as those of today are dark pages of human history and civilizations that must be remembered from time to time. The arrival of Donald Trump at the head of the United States does not promise anything good for the dialogue of civilizations. He has already announced his expansionist intentions towards Canada, Mexico, Panama and Greenland. Just that.
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January 11, 2025 at 1:30 p.m.
Modified January 11, 2025 at 1:18 p.m.
