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Intercultural dialogue - A priority at EU level

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EU Reporter has spoken about intercultural dialogue and its challenges with Élisabeth Guigou (pictured), former French minister for European Affairs (1990-1993) in pre-EU Mitterrand era, minister of justice (1997-2000) and minister of social affairs (2000-2002) both during Chirac era. Guigou was a member of the National Assembly for Seine-Saint-Denis’ 9th Constituency from 2002-2017, and she has served as the president of Anna Lindh's Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures since 2014, writes Federico Grandesso with the contribution of Fajaryanto Suhardi.

How do you think the intercultural dialogue in the near-future would likely take place after the pandemic considering the so-far positive rate of global vaccination in the vicinity?

EG
Our foundation, the Anna Lindh Foundation (ALF) which is now representing 42 country members, has continued its remarkable work. Despite the pandemic – even before it happened – we’ve had experiences in conducting webinars. So when the pandemic hit on a global scale followed by most countries closing borders, we succeeded in maintaining our debates, maintaining our programmes, and maintaining our exchanges that worked on a virtual basis which is sort of ideal, of course, in the pandemic situation. Inside the foundation – we are 4,500 NGOs, roughly and perhaps more – we managed to maintain our work, but of course, webinars and visual conferences cannot replace face-to-face exchanges, naturally.

What kind of suggestion would you like to give to the European authorities in order to have a better understanding between different cultures, for example, the economy-political issues typical between Europe and Mediterranean countries?

EG
We’re actually working very closely with European institutions, the European Parliament, European Commission and the External Actions Service who are our main partners alongside UNESCO, the United Nations (UN), and the World Bank. And to all of our partners, we say we have to concentrate on youth, because they are the ones who have the access to the new technologies. They are also the first victims of all problems in our society, for example, the problems of unemployment and precarity because of countries closing borders. And they are the ones who will have to face climate change in the future. And they will have to face the challenges opened up by the new technologies. Therefore, we advise to focus on youth – which is also our choice inside the ALF – and to mobilize as much as we can through NGOs those young people who refuse to be the sick and down-trodden ones in their society. Obviously we will not be able to accommodate all of them but then it becomes a matter of providing them with access for education. This is why we propose to enlarge the communication with all the partnered universities. First I must say my personal proposal was to create an Erasmus of NGOs because I think that alongside with the giving recognition to the possibility to have exchanges to students or to board members of secondary schools, there is a space to recognize the great work done by the NGOs. Inside those NGOs largely run by these youthful people, they have been so especially proactive and imaginative and really viewing themselves as some sort of activists in charge and in control. For this bold objective, the ALF managed to keep its program in Libya – in even some of the worst spots with the chaos in this country – but let’s hope they would be able to get out of the terrible situation after years of gruesome political unrests and instability. But anyway, in the last two years we managed to do that and I must say that some of these young organizers come from Libya and they were among the best of them. So this is why I think that (idea of establishing) Erasmus of (some sort of) association for NGOs is really something that could enable us to improve our actions.

That’s really a great initiative and we can’t help but ask despite the unimaginable difficulties in the country, how did you manage to start the project in Libya?

EG
Of course we have a great team who organized that and thankfully we have all the contacts, and of course we tried to help those young people to have the access to the programme. When it was possible I remember, just before the pandemic, we managed to make the list of selection of the young Libyan candidates to go to New York for the talk at the UN Headquarter, one of our longstanding partners. They asked the UN General Secretary how youth can be an actor of promoting peace. Therefore, we have proved that we have such an exceptional number of bright and accomplished young Libyans – in this case there were two presenting at the event with one particularly distinguished young lady. What we do basically is organize the meetings with high-ranked personalities to enhance their experience, and we take care of the visa arrangements. This process happens after the selection made by our national-level network, and of course they made the final cut because they met the standard based on our specific criteria.

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Did you have any interesting experiences in handling your program in other problematic areas or perhaps the dangerous zones in a literal sense?

EG
We have our initiatives in places such as Lebanon and Jordan that are familiar to extreme political problems that they would normally face, especially right now with the problems of migration of people coming from Syria and Iraq. What we try to do is to have our programs which continue to give hope to these young people. We also work on the issue of media literacy because we believe they need to know how to handle and use the information, especially to enable them to distinguish between fake news and facts, and also to encourage them to learn to express themselves in the media as it is very critically important because when we talk about fighting hate speech or radicalization. It is always more efficient to give youngsters the platform where young people speaking to other young people than to have official messages passed through social networks or even any classic media.

So, in that sense, you affirmed the notion that the youth are the agents of change for a better and positive future?

EG
We are, of course, very respectful of diversity, but the ALF believes that the whole balance of humanity is really invested in the interest of respecting the values of humanity – in many ways we share this mutual understanding that is proven a useful tool of communication. So, what we try to do is to empower young men and young women – because we need to begin the conversations on raising awareness of gender equality – to encourage them to express themselves, to know the problems in their surroundings as a part of local and global citizen. So, they are no longer silenced or afraid to say what is important for them. In a retrospective, this is of course a sort of form of respect to the values of humanity.

Speaking of female empowerment and emancipation, which roles and which areas do you think these young women are able to fill in – as we know in places like Syria and Jordan where the situations are generally unfavorable for women?

EG
For example, two years ago in Amman, Jordan, we organized a meeting of NGOs coming from southern Europe, and Southern and Eastern Mediterranean territories that have proven their excellent track records in terms of being creative and active in the field of empowering women in their society.That was very interesting because they were coming across from, let’s say, diverse and various experiences and I think, without the ALF imposing anything, the experiences they had not only gave them food for thoughts but also food for actions. The young participants of the NGOs present there have been selected through a series of careful manner. We were hosted by the Jordan Media Institute founded by Princess Rym Ali who incidentally is going to succeed me as the head of the ALF – and this is just an example of the work that we tried to accomplish without imposing any kind of preconceived ideas. On the contrary, we have fought about many issues besides gender stereotypes and prejudice. In all the countries where we are actively involved in, we want to have all women, especially young women, to be active in their surroundings to never give up their critical thinking and enduring spirit to keep them aware and stay alerted as an important part of the community and we, of course, facilitate them to be able to do that.

Years after working on this project, do you actually see any real change in these Mediterranean countries where they are largely known for lacking in practicing and giving the women freedom, let alone empowering them?

EG
Well, I actually don’t want to talk about the policies of the governments since it is not in my capacity but what I observe is that the young men and women who participated in our programmes, those exceptional individuals have changed their mental attitude, and this is absolutely obvious to see because they chose to have a talk between them about experiences they had never known before. For example, on the issue of gender equality, a young woman from southern area of the West Bank (Palestine) talked to a young man from the north of Europe and she said that the main concern in her country is that if a woman wants to separate or get divorced from her spouse/husband, she is not going to be barred an) deprived from her rights to have the share of custody of the children, while the young European man said that in his country the situation is the contrary. She’s practically learning something from that kind of exchange. It shows how we think about similar issues in different ways. Of course, there are always good and bad in our society. For these young women and men, obviously it is important to be more demanding especially in this conversation on gender equality. That’s all I can say. But in relation to your question, I have been looking and studying closely on the evolution of the political system in these countries and what I think is that we are really thinking how to help absolving these young men and women that some of these are universal human rights that need to be recognized, thus, it’s impossible to be ignored or denied. As the result, it really shows the quality and the interests coming out of those exchanges that enabled those young men and women to see that they can ask to their authorities, and they can be an activist of certain issues fighting for many different kinds of rights. The result of this youth movement is obvious in the fields of gender equality, climate change and media literacy. We just tried to educate them as a part of citizens of their respective country to be active and more demanding for the respect of common values that should be acknowledged everywhere no matter how different their political system is. We respectfully don’t interfere in the making of laws or anything in these sovereign countries because it’s not our job.

Final question: What is your number one priority as the President of Anna Lindh Foundation (ALF) or perhaps any goal you haven’t succeeded but greatly want to achieve at the moment?

EG
Our first priority should be to develop the young Mediterranean voices program. I think this is a tool that is of a high value and efficient, and this is the kind of program that we have a great experience in and it is working very well. Hopefully we would have the possibility to well develop this program with these exceptional young individuals involved in our national network of 42 countries. I hope we can promote peace, for example, the recovery effort in Syria.

But not only bound in this area, maybe we might help the conflicted or politically unstable areas in a certain neighborhood to draw a formal experience and to have the power to talk to the authorities because nothing replaces these kinds of exchanges, either virtual or real ones, between young people in the concern of protecting common values of humanity and the will to find innovative ways to fight challenges. They will face issues like the climate change or digital economy issues and its consequences in the context of social and economy fixes. We also hope to find ways to diminish the economic and social consequences (i.e. collapses) due to the pandemic. In that respect, we are aiming in creating more useful works by involving as many young people as possible as part of global citizen – we’re not the only one but we are the biggest one.

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