LA CONVIVENCIA UN RETO

En este seminario, presentado por dos miembros de la asociación AMICS de Castellón, realizamos una reflexión conjunta acerca de nuestras concepciones de cultura e identidad. A partir de la realización de varias dinámicas hablamos sobre la naturaleza de los conflictos interculturales y la forma de tratarlos de una manera más eficaz.

Las dinámicas incluyeron una actividad en grupo en la que debíamos elegir, a partir de una serie de afirmaciones, cuáles de éstas pertenecían a nuestras creencias culturales y cuáles eran verdades universales. De esta manera, se generaron dudas al respecto de muchas de ellas. Afirmar que “las serpientes son peligrosas”, por ejemplo, puede considerarse verdadero para una persona occidental, pero no para culturas que conviven con ellas, en algunos casos como animales domésticos. De esta manera, otros ejemplos incluían elementos que hacen referencia a las relaciones afectivo-sexuales, el concepto de familia y otros aspectos de la vida. En definitiva se consiguió generar dudas al respecto de qué es cultural y qué es universal, con lo que concluímos que tales diferenciaciones no están claras.

En el seminario se puso de manifiesto la manera en la que se confunde interculturalidad con multiculturalidad, convivencia con coexistencia e incluso quizás, integración con asimiliación. De esta manera, el primer problema reside en considerar que los grupos humanos son grupos cerrados, donde no existen diferencias entre los individuos y donde el grupo actúa y opina generalmente al unísono. Desde un punto de vista práctico esto no tiene lugar en ningún grupo humano. Desde un punto de vista teórico, se entiende que la cultura es la forma de vida de una comunidad (cultura con "c"), sus manifestaciones culturales (cultura con "C") y también sus propios movimientos de contra-cultura (cultura con "k"). De esta manera, es imposible considerar a una comunidad como uniforme y cerrada al exterior, tanto teórica como prácticamente.

La mejor manera de entender la realidad multicultural es con el diálogo y es a partir del mismo que se deben construir las sociedades, sin jerarquías ni imposiciones. Es esta la única manera en que se puede afrontar de manera eficiente el multiculturalismo que, nos guste a todos o no, es ya la realidad de nuestras sociedades.

REFUGEES IN SPAIN

In this seminar we had the chance to listen to a member of the Spanish Comission for the Refugee Relief (CEAR). He raised the main topics concerning the work of CEAR and the main challenges this NGO faces nowadays.

Immigration is nowadays a key topic in European politics. It is a fact that the Western world needs migrants in order to keep the social states usually present here. It is also a fact that there is an estimation for immigration to decrease in Europe, due to certain European policies and the financial crisis. This might originate new problems to the necessary workforce in order to keep growing and providing the social state to European citizens. Some strategies pursuited by the European Union’s are return policies and severe border controls. These methods aim at disencouraging further refugee streams and also at selecting between wanted migrants and unwanted refugees. We have examples in Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, where immigrants and refugees are being demonized and proposals to expell them are done.

A refugee is however understoos as someone owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of aparticular http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifsocial group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Therefore, a refugee is even more a forced migrant (if possible).

Salva Lacruz illustrated that Spain also has huge problems with our refugees. First of all, people are hold there, without any legal advise or support. Furthermore, violence, beatings, torture and the violation against the right of freedom were observed by NGO's like Amnesty International.

CONTRA LA GUERRA EN LIBIA

Tras la Charla del Profesor Alejandro Pozo sobre la actual intervención de la OTAN en Líbia resumo a continuación las razones por las que tal intervención es injusta y para nada contribuye a la pacificación y liberación del pueblo libio:

- La mal llamada “Guerra Humanitaria” de Libia no se ha basado en reforzar la capacidad de democratización del pueblo Libio en contra de su dictador Muanmar Al Gadafi, como se suele argumentar en los medios de comunicación. Muy al contrario, entre los mal llamados “rebeldes” ahora armados por la OTAN, encontramos personajes de dudoso carácter demócrata como quienes eran ministros de Justicia e Interior del dictador hace tres escasos meses, los estrategas que ayudaron al dictador a dar el golpe de estado en los 60 o incluso exmiembros de su propio ejército. De ninguna manera se trata de una coalición popular que abogue por la democratización del país.

- La resolución 1970 de la ONU que dio paso a la intervención contra las fuerzas de Gadafi, no permitía el derribo del propio dictador o el asesinato de sus familiares y no autorizaba que se combatiera junto a los rebeldes o que se les suministrara armas. Por el contrario, esta resolución impuso un embargo total de armas a Libia, que incluye también a los rebeldes y que hasta hoy no se ha cumplido.

- La mencionada resolución ordenaba la congelación de fondos del dictador líbio. Aún a estas alturas, Gadafi sigue teniendo acceso a algunas de las cuentas que posee en países como Italia, país también presente en la OTAN y cuyas armas son construidas por empresas de las que él mismo es actualmente accionista.

- Gadafi ha sido hasta hace unos meses el aliado más importante de occidente en la región del Norte de África. Es conocido por su importante negocio armamentístico con países europeos y su posterior distribución de estas armas en otros países, armando y financiando a grupos rebeldes y regímenes totalitarios que han masacrado a población civil en África y los países árabes.

- El dictador libio ha sido un gran “amigo” de muchos líderes occidentales. George Bush le felicitó en 2008 “por su contribución a la paz en el mundo” y, tanto Aznar, Zapatero y el Rey de España han visitado y mostrado sus mejores maneras al dictador. Sería interesante saber si los que hoy le bombardean deberían rendir cuentas por su anterior relación y negocios con el inefable dictador.

- La intervención responde a intereses económicos y políticos muy concretos de los líderes occidentales que quedaron fuera de juego tras las revueltas de Egipto y Túnez. En Libia, los rebeldes ya han garantizado a los países de la OTAN un reparto de los recursos del país consecuente con la implicación y colaboración de cada uno de los países participantes en su revuelta.

- Durante la intervención se han despreciado y ridiculizado los intentos de mediación de terceros, dejando claro el interés de los miembros de la OTAN en la ofensiva militar.

- Los medios de comunicación españoles y europeos han demostrado gran parcialidad en el tema, obviando las opiniones contrarias a la operación, incluso en las ocasiones en que se les han enviado textos con la intención que se publicaran.

Reflections after Youth Project about Peace in Athens

I make this reflection after attending a very interesting European Youth Project in Athens. In this project, we had a great variety of people from European (Spain, France, Romania, Slovenia, Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal, Cyprus) and Mediterranean countries (Israel, Algeria, Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt) and we tried to address some important elements of our own conception of interculturality and the problems related to it.

The first part of the project had general exercises that questioned our values and beliefs related to moral and religious issues in hypothetical extreme situations. This part worked perfectly when it comes to be able to put ourselves in other viewpoints and understand other visions, that is, to work on empathy, the key for peacebuilding. However, the second part dealt especially with three controversial issues that plagued our newspapers in the last years: The veil prohibition in France, the Minaret prohibition in Switzerland and the problems with Prophet Mohammed’s Caricatures in Denmark.

The first piece of criticism might be obvious when reading the general thematic of all three: they all dealt with Islam. It is a fact, therefore, that we were dealing with topics that addressed to the reflection and questioning of only a few of the participants in the project: those adhered to the Islamic faith. For the rest, these topics presented as so, represented no major problem or contradiction with our Western way of thinking i.e. we might just defend our Western values and reject anything else without any further headache.

However, if the aim of this project was to create empathy and understanding amongst the different cultures, ideologies, religions, ethnicities in Europe and the Mediterranean, the fact is this part did not work. The general feeling for participants was that of considering that the way we understand things in the West is the way it should be understood for everyone.

To illustrate this I would like to expand especially the topic of the Prophet Muhammad Caricatures. When calls to “Freedom of Expression” were generally heard amongst the participants and affirmations that feeling offended by Caricatures that showed the Prophet of every single Muslim on Earth (never represented graphically as this is already considered an offense) with a bomb on his head was a “complete exaggeration” were generally accepted, it was made patent that the exercise was not working. Who on the world are we to tell others if they “exaggerate” on their feelings towards what we do? Who are we to impose on others our “freedom of expression” if it constitutes an insult/offense to them? But what is worse, who are we to consider ourselves in the position to make others question their feelings when we are not able to question our own?

The fact is the Muslim part of the group either felt extremely offended and reacted in a non-acceptable way to the majority (which presented them as “radical” and reaffirmed stereotypes about Islam) or remained quiet, which did not let way for a real dialogue about the topic. And the fact is most of the participants of the project (non-Muslims) went home with the same ideas and position they came with.

To be balanced, the exercise should have included questioning of Western values. Episodes in which our values, our religion, our political beliefs also have big contradictions with peace (even if hypothetic). No one tried to reflect on what would happen if similar caricatures were made in Saudi Arabia (excuses for the example) about Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary abusing sexually of an innocent child (making reference to the non-isolated episodes of abuse by some Christian religious personalities), but they strongly defended the caricatures as “freedom of expression”. No one seemed to think what they would do if when visiting certain countries in Africa they were obliged to follow their dressing code, even if this included showing our pudorous parts, but they strongly supported the ban on the veil in France, even daring to call it openly and undoubtedly a “political choice” of Muslim women, rather than a religious one. No one seemed to think how they would react if there was a ban on constructing churches or synagogues in Arab and Muslim countries (or bells for them) from now onwards (actually present in some of them), but they seemed to be perfectly supportive of the Minaret ban in Switzerland.

It is a fact that we can only think about peace as an ongoing process in which we are the main actors. We meaning all of us with our power of reflection and dialogue with others in order to find the best ways to make all of us “win” and achieve our interests, our living necessities, our freedom. However, the ideas of cosmopolitanism seem to have been misunderstood by some, when thinking that expanding their communitarian values to others and making them universal has something to do with peace or is an acceptable peace-building strategy. This practice is, nonetheless, not only opposed to any way towards peace and understanding, but also the beginning of every single intercultural conflict currently going on on earth. And that is why this dangerous practice is the first thing that should be addressed and questioned in any project dealing with peace and intercultural dialogue.

DEVELOPMENT POLICIES IN THE REGIONAL VALENCIAN GOVERNMENT

COOPERATION FOR DEVELOPMENT FROM THE VALENCIAN REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

In this Conference, that took place today, we had the chance to listen to one of the political figures in charge of Cooperation for Development , from the Valencian Government.

The talk put forward the necessity to have more control in what comes to be the destination and actual use of the public funds that the mentioned organism manages. In this way, the speaker was asked by some of the attendants about certain project controls, that should take place and seem not to work effectively in controlling the destination of funds.

In this way, some analysts on the topic have pointed out the necessity to change the current Valencian Law of for Development Cooperation, which indirectly is allowing private enterprises to manage the cooperation funds and is not establishing any parliamentary control on the program for Development.

Thus, cooperation in Valencia seems to have gained a relative discredit both within and out of our Community. As a matter of fact, the necessary conditions to be allowed funds are getting less and less restrictive, allowing newly-created NGO’s to be given huge amounts of money.

The assistance to this talk has been kind of deceiving in what comes to acquiring new knowledge about Development. The speaker was not able to answer all questions the way an expert would. The talk seemed to be rather a political speech (and I hope it had nothing to do with the fact that we have autonomic election in about two months), rather than an academic instance.

Furthermore, I believe for the Intercultural Seminars it might have been better to focus on the academic aspect of International Development Cooperation, rather than the political one. That is, the exposition of the claimed success of the current regional government in the field of Development was of no interest for most of the students there, who mainly come from abroad or other regions in Spain.

ARMED CONFLICTS AND PEACE PROCESSES

Conflict, Culture and Communication: Our Conceptual Imagination

Comments on the Intercultural Seminar given by

In this Intercultural Seminar we were presented to the different conceptions of culture and conflict and the way they can be related to intercultural dialogue. The seminar, which was given from an extremely theoretical perspective, assumed the fact that understanding the origin of these conflicts can be the key in order to apply them.

In this way, the presentation developed a prospection into the etymology and history of these concepts and the way they were used nowadays. It is a fact, however, that it was not easy to link such extremely theoretical investigations with the reality of Interculturality. In this way, questions that might have come to my mind related to the topic were not even mentioned and are part of important knowledge gaps I might expect to build in an intercultural seminar related to Interculturality.

In this way, understanding the necessities of our current globalized world and the challenges we face as future peace-builders against a very specific discourse claiming the end of Interculturality (like the German Prime Minister Angela Merkel affirmed) or the preponderating discourse in certain spheres that affirms the necessity to acknowledge a Clash of Civilizations and react against it are two key topics I would have liked to talk about.

On the other hand, the eternal discussion between Cultural Relativism, Communitarianism, Cosmopolitanism, etc... that have a direct relationship with the work of peacebuilders, peace educators and also peace researchers is also an unresolved one, but an interesting to have, in order to give grounds in order to orientate our work towards a certain structural change, and lead our future work with confidence and the acquisition of a specific goal towards which to continue in the thick of things.