________________________________________________________________ ______________

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

Address by Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria)

President Obasanjo: We are on the eve of the Millennium Summit, to which so many of us have looked forward with anticipation for breakthroughs in the reform of the United Nations, or some initiatives that could be of advantage for developing countries in a world that is increasingly inequitable. While these hopes may not be fulfilled, we have today a real opportunity to reflect on the foundations, indeed the underpinnings, of multilateral engagement.

The dialogue of civilizations is not an ancient abstract notion, it is very much a fresh and badly needed approach to help us to understand each other better, to capture and respect complexities and diversity in a globalizing world and to help build a more effective framework for cooperation. Dialogue is the very essence of the United Nations, as we have heard from the Secretary-General himself, and so I welcome the General Assembly's decision last year to declare the year 2001 as the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations, a decision which owes so much to the initiative of President Mohammad Khatami of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I also salute the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and its Director-General for organizing this novel event. We are convinced that UNESCO is well placed to play a leading role in promoting this dialogue and we are confident that we will be able to engage in many more fruitful events over the next 15 months.

Indeed, throughout its history humankind has experienced the conflict of civilizations, prompted by the hegemony of civilizations and sustained by the arrogance of civilizations. These tendencies have been the cause of deep anguish for the world community. Behind the masks of ethnic, religious and economic causes of disharmony among peoples and nations, there was always the inability of peoples to give due regard to the heritage and identities of others. Sometimes this disregard and lack of respect for the worth of others has been manifested so blatantly and with such brutality that it affronted the collective conscience of humankind. But most often it is expressed in subtle and unspoken ways which nevertheless precipitate disruptions and instability in human relations. The world has long registered the consequences of this human disability, consequences such as hatred, wars, mutual contempt, suspicion among nations and lack of peace.

The United Nations was founded on the belief that the scourge of war could be minimized while the virtues of peace could be perennially promoted. In the past 55 years we have pursued those goals vigorously and with varying degrees of commitment and success. Now I truly believe that we are making a great leap forward in the realization that peace is bound up inextricably with a clear understanding and respect for the mutuality of the diversities of human heritage and identity.

Surely with the assignment of peace we face the challenge of human diversity. The foremost challenge lies in our ability to recognize these diversities, to admit that their existence is a positive thing and not a pointer to mindless hegemony, and to respect them as we aspire to greater success in our assignment.

The second challenge will lie in our capability and capacity to appreciate the richness of the diversity in cultures, religion and ethnic values, the morals and traditions of other cultures and their levels of creativity. The variety of these experiences together provide an abundant storehouse of knowledge for the uplifting of humankind.

The global village will not owe its existence solely to scientific, technological and economic advances. It will survive only when its development process incorporates the educational with the cultural, the social with spiritual and the religious and ethnic with the traditional. These are the true indices of the intellectual content of the emerging new world. Prejudice towards other cultures and civilizations is a major impediment to true globalization.

While dialogue at the international level is ostensibly the focus of our meeting here today, dialogue, as we have heard from previous speakers, begins at home. A democratic dispensation and a spirit of good governance affords us the opportunity for dialogue, debate and deliberation together for peaceful solutions rather than bitterness, confrontation and violence. Each nation must embark on the urgent task of reconciliation and confidence-building which is vital to the building and continuous review of relations among communities. In many developing countries reconciliation and harmony among communities and various interest groups is indispensable for economic and social development. Reconciliation is also at the heart of enjoying the fundamental rights enshrined in our constitutions which comprise the freedoms of worship and speech, and the freedom from all forms of discrimination and fear guaranteed to every citizen. We must cherish and uphold these fundamental freedoms.

Within many countries, industrialized and developing alike, we must hold in check the temptation to resort to violence for settling differences between groups, whether religious, ethnic or political. We must rid ourselves of the mentality and propensity to resort to violence that stems from fear and suspicion of the other person. We must rediscover the value of dialogue. In our communities, in our nations, and indeed in the global community, we must begin to return to the fundamental faith that life, all life, is sacred. There is nothing in any of our cultures that even remotely justifies the cynicism with which many today respond to acts of lawlessness, corruption and wickedness. We must demonstrate our good-neighbourliness and willingness to be keepers of our brothers and sisters and to preserve a sense of outrage and moral sensitivity. We must care to share.

In looking at the disturbances my country experienced earlier this year, I noted in a speech to the Nigerian nation that Islam and Christianity are based on peace. Both religions make love cardinal in their creeds. An adherent of either religion would thus be failing in his or her faith if he or she were to resort to violence, or destruction of life and property. It is irrational, to say the least, to assert our faith in a manner that engenders conflict and violence. Instead, we must enthrone tolerance, constitutionality, decency and good-neighbourliness. Extremism in religion, nationalism or in any other belief is self-destructive, in addition to possibly destroying its victim.

What seems to have happened in Nigeria is that after many years of tyranny, misrule and mindless violence, encouraged and practised by the State itself, a general atmosphere of moral apathy set in and the population grew indifferent to the moral, even religious, duties that we all owe one to another. Today, as we are no longer hostages of an evil and lawless Government, we are striving to ensure that our conduct, our relationships ? whether religious, ethnic or political ? are governed by the laws of the land. We are once more dealing with each other in transparent comradeship. We now seek to settle our differences peacefully, decently and humanely. Above all, in matters of religion and conscience, rational and just behaviour guide our actions in our institutions and at all levels of government, and all because we place the highest premium on peace and harmony in society.

Peace is not a means. Peace is an end in itself. Peace is indivisible. A life without peace is not worth contemplating. The greatest and the most enduring legacy is peace. Peace is the foundation of all development and progress. It is either there or not there. We need peace everywhere ? at home, at work, in our family, in our community, in our locality, in our country, in our continent and indeed in our world. There is no substitute for peace and any sacrifice is worth making for peace. This message is the very essence of the International Year for the Culture of Peace for which the year 2000 was designated by the United Nations General Assembly and which will now be followed by the Decade of the Culture of Peace.

Dialogue is an imperative at both international and national levels. There is no hierarchy in culture nor is there superiority in the manifestations of human civilization; rather they are cumulative and progressive. It is thus noteworthy that earlier this year political leaders of Africa and Europe sat down in a dialogue to promote cooperation for the mutual benefit of Africans and Europeans. A little more than a century ago the continent of Africa was partitioned in Berlin among European Powers who proceeded to impose a regime of colonial administration on the continent, the negative consequences of which are still with us today. Africa's modern history has, since the 1884 Berlin Conference, been essentially the story of the European impact on Africa. It is a story of how autonomous African people were forcefully divided and separated by a stroke of the pen; it is a story of how they were merged into different political units without rational justification; it is a story of how, for most of last century, that arbitrary partition led to constant war and conflict among African countries. It is also a story of many bloody revolts against colonial oppression and racism, a story of the emergence of modern African States and a story of how African countries in the contemporary period have embarked on the search for a more equitable form of partnership with European and other industrialized countries of the world.

The dismemberment of Africa by Europe did not, of course, begin with the partition of 1884-1885. For four previous centuries European countries had rivalled one another in competition to seize and transport the largest number of Africa's youth to the Americas. The slave trade, which this macabre project was cynically called, is the epitome of man's inhumanity to man, and an act of criminality against our continent. It depopulated the continent, it deprived it of its most able-bodied and productive inhabitants, and it destroyed its economy and traditional political structures. Africa became so brutally delinked from world history that African peoples and societies were rendered helpless to cope with and manage the technological revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Between 1884 and 1960 African affairs were generally regarded by many in Europe as simply an extension of political and economic conflicts in Europe. African colonies had no say in the determination of their own fate. They had no control over their own resources. They were obliged to live with whatever their political masters in Europe imposed. When there was war in Europe they were drafted to fight, quite often without knowing exactly what it was they were fighting or dying for. And when, in the decade of the sixties, most African countries began gradually to achieve their independence, they inherited severely depleted natural resources and economies that were contrived almost entirely for the benefit of the former colonial masters, to the exclusion of the interests of the citizens of the new, independent countries in Africa.

Colonialism made its exit just before the end of last century, but that process is still at work. Who can deny the imprint of that process when we still carry tags of Lusophone, Anglophone and Francophone Africa? Today millions of Africans speak European languages, with the inherent cultural implications of the transformation of their original African cultural values. Yet there is all too often a tendency in the industrialized world to indulge in the comfortable myth that the so-called backwardness of Africa is divinely ordained. It most certainly is not. It is, instead, the direct consequence of a deliberate policy, adopted and practised by virtually all European countries over half a millennium, to degrade, depopulate and denude the continent for the benefit of Europe. This might seem hard, but it has to be said. The relationship between the rest of the world ? particularly the Western world ? and the people of Africa is laden with pointers for re-defining human values for the new millennium.

There are good reasons for the feeling among many Africans that the continent has disproportionately suffered at the hands of foreigners. Many even reckon that the suffering is unparalleled. Critically, the treatment of African peoples has uniquely exhibited racialist implications and designs. Indeed, other groups around the world have at one time or another suffered discrimination because of their faith, religion, or culture. However, Africans seem to have been the only people to have been subjected to the worst form of indignity simply on account of their race for which they are indelibly marked by physical features.

With all the advances in human genetics there may be the temptation to regard the issue of race as academic. But not for us Africans. Scars of historic and individual experiences are too deep and too fresh for us to engage in dialogue among civilizations without due recognition of the negative force of racism, even when it exists subliminally. For some time to come into this new century, a degree of soul-searching is an imperative for all dialogue between Africa and the world until the ghost of racism is finally laid to rest.

I have recently been calling for a new Berlin conference that would see the beginning of a series of dialogues which will restore the parity between Africa and the rest of the world culturally, politically and economically. Primarily, the dialogue would be between Africa and Europe, two continents which God in His infinite wisdom have put next to each other to share a common destiny. The hope is that Africans will get the chance to participate in the agenda set in motion by the formulations of the Berlin Conference of 1884. No time can be better than now, the beginning of a new century, with all the opportunities offered for incorporating our mutual hopes, wishes and aspirations into a new agenda. Our common destinies should be peace, security, harmony, prosperity and cooperation in a stable and sustainable environment. Our partnership must be based on common concern for equity, justice, mutual respect and primary regard for the uplifting of underprivileged people everywhere ? but particularly for African peoples ? from their present economic and social predicament. That is the true meaning of dialogue today.

Let us begin to get the future right on the occasion of this unique Millennium Summit. We will not have many more such historic, solemn and defining moments in the history of humankind. Our generation has a particular responsibility not to fritter away this unique opportunity.

Mr. Matsuura: I now have the honour to give the floor to Her Excellency, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, President of the Republic of Latvia.

________________________________________________________________ ______________

© UNESCO 2000 | www.unesco.org/dialogue2001