Miguel Ángel Moratinos
UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC)
T
he French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said that every word has consequences, but that every silence has consequences too. The end of 2023 and so far in 2024 have been very complicated, marked by war, destruction and the systematic killing of innocent civilians. In recent months, there have been words of condemnation, but also shameful silences. The result is a grim geopolitical scenario. We live in global ‘disorder’.
The world has reached a dangerous and unacceptable level of polarisation. Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, hate speech, racism and intolerance are growing unparalleled, fuelled by hoaxes and fake news. Proof of this is the notable rise of the extreme right in the last European Parliament elections, with a clear xenophobic discourse.
If every word counts, so does every action. The working tool of the United Nations is diplomacy, exercised through words. It is true that, in times of war, dialogue seems a chimera, but it is not. It is the sine qua non for peace. It may not be easy to achieve, but it is the only alternative to violence, and it is worth remembering that the United Nations was created to achieve peace. We, from the Alliance of Civilisations, seek permanent dialogue between cultures, religions and societies, precisely as a conflict prevention measure.
The Alliance of Civilisations was an initiative that emerged at the end of 2004, following the jihadist attacks in Madrid on 11 March of that year. The then Prime Minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, proposed to the United Nations the creation of an ‘Alliance of Civilisations’ to combat extremism and confront intolerance. In a few months the Alliance will celebrate its twentieth anniversary, and its mandate is as relevant as ever.
To provide some context, it is useful to recall the theory developed in the early 1990s by the American professor Samuel P. Huntington, who argued that ‘in the future every new source of conflict will be cultural or religious’. It was what he called the ‘Clash of Civilisations’. This American professor could not resist the temptation to explore the areas where American-Western hegemony might be threatened. After the fall of the Soviet Union, and the ‘end of history’ proclaimed by the American professor Francis Fukuyama, there was only one field left where the West could be the object of rivalry or conflict: culture and/or religion.
This whole political-intellectual architecture of the American conservative world reached its apex after the Al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September 2001. The terrorist attack placed Islam and Muslim civilisation in a clear and open confrontation with the West. The so-called ‘Clash of Civilisations’ was thus automatically justified and a whole geopolitics of power was set in motion to continue to guarantee Western moral, political and cultural supremacy.
But if the last two decades have shown anything, it is precisely that there is no clash of civilisations. What there is, if anything, is a ‘clash of ignorances’ or a geopolitical power struggle, which has used cultural and religious diversity to justify its theory, and to polarise and divide the world in a false confrontation built on spurious interests.
Today the context has changed. We are facing a multipolar world with different actors and multiple global challenges that require new approaches.
At the Alliance of Civilisations, we feel challenged by the changes our world is experiencing, and therefore we remain committed to creating new opportunities for cooperation with different organisations, from religious leaders and representatives of civil society to high-level leaders and members of the private sector.
Promoting intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, with a broad and renewed outlook, is crucial to combat isolation, mistrust and confrontation. The Alliance is committed to this.
Moreover, our mission is particularly important in tackling the root causes of polarisation and radicalisation and in providing a counter-narrative to racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and other forms of religious hatred and intolerance.
Hatred brings out the worst in the human race. And it is our collective responsibility to stop and condemn hate speech against people based on religion, belief, race, gender, sexual orientation or any other grounds.
There are many cultures and civilisations, but we are all part of one humanity, which is why our motto is ‘Many cultures, one humanity’. Because there is much more that unites us than separates us.
