LITHUANIA TO HOST INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS
Paris, April 19 (No.2001-59) -
An International Conference on Dialogue Among Civilizations, organized by
Lithuania in collaboration with UNESCO as part of the United Nations Year for
the Dialogue Among
Civilizations, will take place in Vilnius from April 24 to 26
and be co-sponsored by the presidents of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, and Poland,
Alexander Kwasniewski, and UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.
The Conference will be opened
by Mr Matsuura, who will be on a three-day official visit to Lithuania, and by
the presidents of Lithuania and Poland. It aims to bring together political
leaders, decision-makers, scholars and artists for an exchange of views and
experiences to help find better ways of building mutual understanding among all
peoples based on common concepts of tolerance, solidarity and co-operation. The
Conference, organized in six workshops, is scheduled to issue a Declaration.
The first workshop, “Reciprocal
knowledge and interaction”, will notably investigate what we know about other
civilizations and ask how we can acquire a verifiable and referential knowledge
of the intellectual and moral sensibilities of other civilizations. “Globalization
and cultural plurality” will examine the relationship between globalization
and cultural plurality, seeking to see globalization as the point of
intersection of world civilizations, rather than a process of uniformization.
The 3rd workshop, “Plural
identities and common values”, will weigh the pros and cons of the melting pot
phenomenon, a concept often used to describe today’s world. It will examine
the common values that people can arrive at while sustaining their primary
identities or loyalties. “Trade, science and cultural exchange” will look at
the role of trade as a vehicle for the discovery of other cultures and
civilizations, for cultural and scientific exchange. The discovery of the world,
including self-discovery, will feature among the subjects to be discussed in
this workshop.
“Otherness” is the subject
of the 5th workshop. It will consider how representations and misrepresentations
of otherness originate and how or why other cultures and civilizations are
demonized. Issues to be discussed will range from the miracle of human dialogue
to forms of hatred such as racism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories and
xenophobia. “Concepts of civilization for the 21st century” will focus on
contemporary concepts of civilization and perspectives for their future
comparative study, seeking to define aspects of analysis that could be useful
for an inclusive concept of civilization that brings the common characteristics
of all civilizations to the fore. This workshop is designed to serve as a
scholarly comparison of Western and non-Western concepts of civilization and
also as an effort at inter-civilizational dialogue of scholars in practice.
Participants attending the
International Conference will include Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General
of the International Organisation of the Francophonie; Leonid Kuchma, President
of Ukraine; Giandomenico Picco representing the Secretary-General of the United
Nations; Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Permanent Secretary of the French
Academy, representing Jacques Chirac, the President of France; Sayyed Attaolah
Mohajerani, representing the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and
Brunson McKinley, Director-General of the International Organization for
Migration.
The event will also include an
extensive cultural programme with musical performances from various parts of the
world.
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For more information: www.unesco.org/dialogue2001/vilnius
www.voxpopuli.lt/vilnius_dialogue
