Annual Expert-Level Meeting Between the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United Nations and Partner Organizations in the 'Tripartite-Plus' Format

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear friends and colleagues,

Welcome to the Palais des Nations and to this Expert-level Tripartite Meeting. I would like to specially welcome our friends from the OSCE and the Council of Europe. Let me also warmly welcome the European Commission and the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union. I salute our colleagues from the UN system, particularly the ones that have travelled from the field and UN Headquarters. I also extend my greetings to our Geneva partners “from across the road”, the ICRC and the IOM.

It is a pleasure for UNOG to host this year’s Expert-level Meeting on the subject of “Intercommunity Relations in Post-Conflict Environments: Learning to Live Together.” These expert-level meetings on issues of common interest to our organizations have become an important ad-hoc mechanism for informal consultations and information exchange. They also complement well the broader policy discussions held within the framework of the High-level Meetings.

As in the past, today’s discussions are intended to lead to concrete suggestions for enhanced cooperation among participating organizations. These suggestions, if we, the three principal convenors so decide, may then be submitted for consideration by tomorrow’s High-level Meeting.

The focus of this year’s meeting on inter-community dialogue builds on last year’s Tripartite Meeting on the rule of law ain Strasbourg and on the 2004 meeting in Vienna on threats to security and stability. This year our Expert-level Meeting is to seek answers to a number of questions, among them:

• How may international organizations best direct their efforts to promote inter-community dialogue in post-conflict societies?
• How can our different approaches be better coordinated and harmonized with a view to strengthening our impact in the field?
• In order to reach these goals, what effective mechanisms and tools contribute to sustainable reconciliation?
• How can we implement lessons learned in the field?

The promotion of healing mechanisms and intercommunity dialogue to address existing cultural, economic, ethnic and social fissures are all included in our mission mandates. Assisting others to learn to live together requires restoring trust through effective confidence-building measures. But we have also to further the reintegration of broken communities, to support building institutional capacity, and to help neutralize those, who would have us fail, in other words, the spoilers. The promotion of the rule of law and human rights as well as support for creating a strong civil society are crucial in the whole process. I won’t get into details, as this is the very reason that you have come together today.

However, I would like to draw your attention to some very encouraging developments. In the Outcome Document of last September’s World Summit, world leaders acknowledged the importance of respect and understanding for religious and cultural diversity throughout the world. In order to promote international peace and security, they committed themselves to encouraging tolerance, respect, dialogue and cooperation among different cultures, civilizations and peoples. They also pledged themselves to taking action to promote a culture of peace and dialogue at the local, national, regional and international levels and requested the Secretary-General to explore enhancing implementation mechanisms.

Each one of our organizations has specific strengths by which they can make a lasting impact in the area of reconciling post-conflict communities, thus greatly contributing to peacebuilding. Let me just highlight some of them.

By initiating the Alliance of Civilizations, the United Nations Secretary-General has taken concrete action that will help to bridge divides and overcome prejudices, misconceptions, and polarizations. The Alliance aims at addressing emerging threats emanating from hostile perceptions that foment violence, and to bring about cooperation among various efforts to heal such divisions. A High-level Group of politicians, academics and representatives of civil society will provide a thorough assessment of new and emerging threats to international peace and security, in particular the political, social and religious forces that foment extremism. It will identify and recommend appropriate strategies and actions in a report to the Secretary-General later this year.

The OSCE organized an international conference on inter-community dialogue in Kosovo in June 2004 and a meeting on promoting tolerance, inter-cultural, inter-religious and inter-ethnic understanding in Kazakhstan last month. These conferences have resulted in an exchange on lessons learnt and recommendations on how to make intercommunity dialogue more effective. A valuable tool to promote intercommunity dialogue is the OSCE-sponsored Inter-ethnic Dialogue and Resource Centre in the Mitrovica region of Kosovo, which enables people and NGOs in the region to co-operate, resolve social problems and propose social and political alternatives aimed at reconciliation among different communities.

In addition to the three areas, which the Council of Europe is most focused on – defending human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law – the organization has an original approach to peacebuilding. Through its efforts to promote a European identity and its project on history teaching, which aims to find common ground in the interpretation of certain controversial events in European history, the Council of Europe contributes considerably to building bridges between communities. In this context I would like to particularly highlight the Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention Project, which analyses the sources of conflict between cultural and religious communities and which assists policy-makers, civil society and all who play a part in culture to devise a policy of dialogue, which respects every aspect of cultural diversity.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
A central problem of communities emerging from armed conflict is that misperception feeds extremism, and extremism appears to validate misperception. That is the vicious circle we have to break. This problem is true on the macro-level – I just recall the general misperceptions between western and Muslim societies. But it is also valid on the micro-level, as we witness, for example, in the relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo.

In order to be successful, local ownership is necessary for every intercommunity dialogue, since it is the local populations who must learn, or re-learn to live in peace. We must be aware that no conflict can be overcome by the goodwill of outsiders alone. Those who live with the conflict understand the dynamics better than any international player and must see benefits that justify the compromises and sacrifices involved. Without local ownership, these decisions will sooner or later be put aside and conflict will recur.

Peoples and cultures need to learn to live together in full mutual respect and tolerance of our diversity and differences. The rule of law, democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression are the pillars on which to build sustainable peace and to ensure that differences are respected and accepted. If we do not learn to live together with our differences, the so-called “clash of civilizations” could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hope that we all have a productive day which would allow us to make a contribution to the discussions in the High-level meeting tomorrow.
Thank you.