________________________________________________________________ ______________

Round Table: Dialogue among Civilizations United Nations, New York, 5 September 2000 Provisional verbatim transcription

Address by Hans van Ginkel (Netherlands)

Mr. Van Ginkel: At this stage I should like to confine myself to some remarks and a concrete proposal. First, a remark: I think that often there is too much talk about globalization in this context because globalization is nothing new. It has been made new. When we think about the major migrations of people from Central Asia to and towards the south of Spain, major explorations and so on, influence from a great distance is something that was already there early in the history of mankind. That is one element. The other is that over time we have learned to live with increased means of mobility, of transport. As a consequence distances have been shrinking and there has been an increase in the frequency and volume of contacts and exchange. That has been a gradual process. So globalization is now only bringing the process up to the level of the whole of the world, but the major changes in Europe at the time of the unification of Italy or of Germany cannot be underestimated. Probably the differences between peoples at that time were seen to be equally important as they are now seen between the different parts of the world. So we are not really into something completely new. We also know how people can learn to live with each other, often retaining quite important differences in orientation and in civilization.

Secondly, I think that as an aim for 2001 it would be enough to say that we would really like to increase the capacity for sincere dialogue of people. The question was asked whether it is institutions or people. After all, institutions are made up of people and they have to respond to people. So where one does not start to change people there will be no dialogue at the end of the day. First we must make it clear that in order to increase this capacity for dialogue we have to get rid of the model of the debate.

Many of us are more used to debate, to win the argument, to convince the other, instead of learning to understand the background of thinking of those with whom we are communicating. In that sense the capacity for dialogue among people has to be increased. One major element is that there is no basis for dialogue unless there is already a basic understanding of the other side. Probably here we must look at the basic conditions for good dialogue. We have talked about democracy, and so on, but what I was missing was that there is no basis for dialogue unless there is the beginning of understanding based on education X and I will come back to that topic.

It is an understanding that is also based on respect for the other party, so there can be no hate or contempt, or whatever. Hate and contempt generally exist in relation to lack of knowledge. Respect is a basic condition for dialogue because one must accept the other as an equal. Therefore when President Khatami speaks about world culture in terms of one river but a river with many tributaries and where warm and cold streams are coming together, there will be a lot of diversity. It will be after all a world culture of diversity. I then come to the question of what should be the focus of the discussion. At the end of the day we come down to the question, what kind of world do we want to live in. Are we steered by market forces we do not want to influence, not understanding that the economy is a man-made system? Any man-made system can be changed when the preconditions and the variables in the system are changed. What kind of world do we want to live in, one with cultural diversity? We talk about biodiversity and then say that there should also be cultural diversity. But in the end all our actions are directed at homogeneity, so what are the preconditions for maintaining cultural diversity around the world? That is a topic to think about.

What kind of world do we want to live in? More and more the reactions of common people are to say that at the end they want something on a human scale. They want not only the very big things and very large processes over which they have no control but they want to have some control. As a reaction many people talk about rootedness, identity, a sense of belonging and that is also part of the world in which we would like to live. Contrary to the tendency towards ecodestruction, about which many have already spoken, the world we would like to live in should be an ecologically sound one. In many places one will find initiatives. In Tokyo there was a major conference, in which many cities participated, on the ecosociety and how can it be done in practice at the city level.

I come now to the proposal. When we think about all these topics it becomes more and more clear that only when one has a sense of the background from which other people are coming is a real dialogue possible. Not only must science contribute to make things clearer but education must contribute. We live in a world where generally we are looking at monodimensional solutions so we talk about information technology or doing something against infectious diseases, or this and that, and forget about the total complexity of development. The same is true in education. We hear that there should be more time for information technology, for mathematics, and for learning a language, but what about history, geography, social science, or whatever, to help children learn about the rest of the world in which they will be living. Unless we are successful in primary and secondary schools in educating young children that there is something beyond the borders of their own country or province and what is going on there, there will not be the basic condition for dialogue among people. I should like to rephrase "dialogue among civilizations" as being a dialogue among people from very different backgrounds in order to understand each other.

A second element there is that as far as there is education in this field, often the textbooks are quite biased. In Europe a major contribution was made by the Council of Europe the moment that teachers from different countries started to screen the textbooks of other countries on their own country to see what kind of biases were present in textbooks. I know that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is already carrying out very many activities in the field, but the screening of textbooks should be systematic in order to find out what we are saying about each other and so that we will thus create that basic understanding.

Certainly the United Nations University is prepared to work with UNESCO on this topic and we will deal more in detail with this element of education, science, ethics, and of mass media and communications in relation to dialogue among civilizations.

Mr. Picco: A very controversial question was raised during this discussion X it is not really a debate X and, correct me if I am wrong, but I think it was Dr. Inayatullah who said, although I think many others probably shared your interpretation, that communication through the Internet is not dialogue. I believe that is something many in this room may share. Allow me to, for three minutes, ask a gentlemen who is not only an expert on the Internet but who has been producing information technology for 20 years, to make a comment about the Internet. Kamran Elatlian is one of those very new entrepreneurs who at some point in his life decided what should one do with one's money and knowledge if not to help people. He discovered, in his words, that the world-wide web could become an instrument for peace. Why do we not challenge him and ask us in three minutes to explain to us if you are wrong and he is right.

________________________________________________________________ ______________

© UNESCO 2000 | www.unesco.org/dialogue2001