From the Expert Colloquy on “Dialogue serving intercultural and inter-religious communication” to the Draft Declaration on “Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention”,

Jean Petaux, expert

Setting out to say a few introductory words about the themes of this Ministerial Colloquy, I cannot help thinking of the famous drawing once produced by the late TIM, a leading French cartoonist, whose work appeared weekly in L’Express from the 1960s to the 1990s. This drawing was simple, yet terrible. Its subject was the attitude of a certain superpower, immediately after a war which had pitted it against a certain south-east Asian country for the best part of 10 years. It showed a huge bomber, which was releasing an endless cascade of napalm bombs - and the last thing it dropped was a first-aid kit. This was TIM’s way of saying that, with the fighting over, the superpower in question was making a few gestures by way of reparation.

You may well ask: “What has this got to do with the European Ministers responsible for Cultural Affairs and our meeting today?” On the face of it, nothing. Apart from the fact that none of us knows whether history may not, at this very moment, be moving towards one of those tragic repetitions which show us again and again that – as the words posted at the entrance to the Auschwitz Museum remind visitors – those who forget the past are doomed to relive it. On the face of it, nothing. Unless we see that first-aid kit as a metaphor for culture – something we despatch when the fighting is over, in an effort to heal the wounds and win back the hearts.

But this is not the aim of the work which the Council of Europe has been doing on intercultural dialogue for the last few months. We can no longer see culture as the bandage we apply to a people’s wounds, as a well-meant remedy for human suffering. We need, quite simply, to turn our thinking on this question round. We need to realise that settlement afterwards and prevention beforehand are compatible, that reconciliation afterwards is easier if dialogue beforehand is never interrupted – if we drop the first-aid kit before the bombs. Some people may feel that current events - in their full, burning actuality – make the things I am saying seem surreal and out of place. But paradox is not necessarily false. And things done can sometimes be undone. If that were not so, we would never have had the Edict of Nantes, or the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in Nelson Mandela’s South Africa.

Do the European Ministers responsible for Cultural Affairs have a part to play in conflict prevention? This is the basic question which all of us here have to answer. And this is the question which the Council of Europe has made one of its priorities since 2001, trying in various practical ways to answer it.

No one can deny that the work on intercultural dialogue and conflict prevention, which the Council started doing from 2000 on, went almost unnoticed and attracted little interest to start with. Then things started to change - and change quickly. There was talk of a “clash of civilisations”, of “wars of religion”, “conflict between good and evil”, and a “collision of beliefs”. These and other outworn phrases – as absurd as they were dubious in intellectual, historical and political terms – were trotted out as a substitute for serious, searching and cogent reflection. Until, that is, a few organisations, groups and individual thinkers stood up in protest and tried to pave the way at last for serious, useful discussion.

The Council of Europe - that organisation of the “neither-young-nor-old Europe”, that genuinely European and indeed first European organisation in terms both of seniority and membership – joined a number of non-European institutions, such as the Japan Foundation, in trying to launch a debate which went beyond casting anathemas and parroting shibboleths.

Why did this initiative come from Europe? Perhaps because, as Necil Nedimoglu, General Rapporteur at the Expert Colloquy in October 2002, put it: “International dialogue and conflict prevention are global, yet Europe, with its Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, is the right platform to tackle these issues. Innovative methodologies are needed, a more inclusive and integrative approach should be found”.

Why was this initiative taken at the Council of Europe? This was no mere chance. The Council itself was a product of the greatest of “Europe’s civil wars”, and that was why it realised – long before others did - that conflict turns violent when intercultural dialogue ceases, and that exchanging books is a better way of building peace than trading duty-free goods, commodities and capital. That was also why, when the seemingly eternal Yalta system started to collapse, the Council was, in 1990, the first European institution to open its doors to all the states of Europe.

It was this which led it to organise an exceptionally high-level meeting from 7 to 9 October 2002, bringing together over a hundred internationally known experts, academics, religious leaders, politicians, cultural policy-makers, diplomats and scientists from Europe and outside. Some of them were representing intergovernmental and/or non-governmental organisations, others were speaking solely for themselves - but they all had a moral authority, depth of experience and intellectual standing which gave everything they said an undeniable weight, relevance and value.

This colloquy, “Dialogue serving intercultural and inter-religious communication”, highlighted four essential points.

- diversity must be encouraged, since diversity makes dialogue possible;
- dialogue must focus on disagreements and differences;
- culture and religion are often instrumentalised and made a pretext for conflict, although nearly all - conflicts have economic, political and social causes;
- we must have lasting structures to foster conflict prevention and we must find symbols to spark -awareness and serve as markers for intercultural dialogue.

The conclusions reached by the various workshops and by the General Rapporteur, and the analytical summary of the debates which I had the task of preparing, all converged on one salient point - which was accepted both by the Council of Europe’s Secretary General and by the member states’ Foreign Ministers. In fact, the European Ministers responsible for Cultural Affairs now have, without going outside their areas of responsibility or ignoring the work done by their colleagues in other ministries, a new task: they must pave the way for in-depth reflection at European level on ways of promoting intercultural dialogue while respecting cultural diversity.

Seen in this light, the purpose of the draft Declaration submitted for examination and discussion at the colloquy which begins this morning, seems crystal-clear:

“Defining a European framework of co-operation creating on one side the conditions allowing for the promotion and construction of an intercultural society based on intercultural dialogue and respect of cultural diversity, and favouring on the other side, the management and control of conflicts, the prevention of violent conflicts and the promotion of post-conflict reconciliation; this objective should be reached through the implementation of cultural action programmes aiming at bringing cultures closer, through positive confrontation and development of cultural exchanges (in all their components, including religious one) involving all generations of people.”

One of the main questions I asked myself when I was preparing the preliminary draft Declaration, which the Ministers’ representatives discussed in Paris in December 2002, concerned the more specifically inter-religious dimension of intercultural dialogue. It seemed important not to isolate this aspect, for fear of stigmatising it. On the contrary, we agreed to treat it as one facet of intercultural dialogue, among others. It was also important not to confuse the tasks and responsibilities of cultural policy-makers in our various member states, with those of other ministerial, institutional and philosophical authorities directly concerned, for example, with religion. Apart from the danger of focusing unduly on religion, any such confusion would have blurred the message which the Ministers responsible for Cultural Affairs must be able to send when they adopt the Declaration in Opatija in October 2003, having first discussed it at the present meeting. I feel that this message can be summed up as follows:

“Reaffirming the place and role of culture in conflict prevention is fully in line with a whole series of texts, the oldest of which was adopted over 50 years ago. Political, economic and social developments in Europe and elsewhere in the last few years - if not the last few months or even weeks - have brought the sensitive issues of diversity, dialogue, intercultural exchange and the cultural dimension of intersectoral co-operation back to the forefront of the debate. This situation makes culture a central issue, and it must not be parted from its humanist dimension, which is based on respecting others, listening to them and accepting what they have to offer, without distinction of race, culture, sex, belief, social class, opinion, etc.”

The various working sessions, and the valuable suggestions on amendments which produced the draft declaration in the form you have before you, highlighted the need to recall the values you all share, as representatives of the Council of Europe’s member states, and also to lay down three vital principles as guidelines for your work in this area:

respecting the rules of subsidiarity, while establishing a framework for national and intergovernmental co-operation aimed at fostering intercultural dialogue and conflict prevention;
introducing measures, in co-operation with your colleagues, to guarantee respect for cultural diversity in all its forms - linguistic, artistic, ethnic, anthropological, religious, economic and social;
co-operating with the authorities responsible for other areas of government policy in conducting a coherent and co-ordinated action programme.

Taking up the points made at the Expert Colloquy in October 2002, the draft Declaration on intercultural dialogue and conflict prevention accordingly makes a series of proposals, with four main emphases:

- cultural diversity
- intercultural dialogue
- emocratic cultural governance
- inter-sectoral co-operation and support for exemplary conflict prevention practices.

The hundred or so experts who met at the Council of Europe in autumn 2002 thought that action taken in the cultural field should be incorporated into the “Intercultural dialogue and conflict prevention” action plan - essentially for the purpose of ensuring real cohesion in the Council’s work and mobilising the resources required for it. This is the spirit of the recommendations which conclude the draft Declaration.

These recommendations were designed as practical approaches to implementing your Declaration, affirming your new responsibilities and indicating your tasks. At present, there is not a moment to be lost: if Europe, taken as a whole, wishes to play a visible role in the complex interplay of the great geo-strategic units, then the “cultural card” is certainly the one it will have to play to do that – and live up to its own responsibilities.

Your massive presence at this informal meeting is the clearest possible sign of that: it shows how deeply the European Ministers responsible for Cultural Affairs are aware of the responsibilities which now weigh on them. This new situation is an opportunity - and a danger.

The danger is the danger of letting slip this chance of affirming the importance of culture in the midst of the tragic events which are unfolding around us for, as the old phrase has it, “opportunity knocks only once”.

The opportunity is the opportunity to put culture back at the heart, not just of the European complex, but also - and above all - of Europe’s relations with the other geo-political regions. We cannot afford to miss this opportunity, for, as Professor Vjeran Katunaric of Zagreb University put it at the colloquy in October 2002, there is now a greater need than ever, “to respect an intellectual good conduct code and intercultural ethic in every discussion of diversity, since we also need a civilised basis for disagreement, and must learn to live with disagreement too”.