The event will be presented by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.
The way European culture as we know it was made possible by a spirit of civilizational synthesis which, at the same time, has always accompanied emerging cultures. The term “Renaissance,” insofar as it means getting beyond an intended “Middle Age,” seems to propose an interpretation that restores some golden time past, Classical Antiquity, clearing away the fog of some “dark” intermediate era. However, more careful reflection on the cultural sources from Europe shows that this “Middle Age” was less transitional and obscure; closer to Orientalizing sources in which the role of Al-Andalus is highlighted, an atypical component of what historian Charles H. Haskins detected to be an earlier Renaissance in the twelfth century. A fair assessment of that legacy from Al-Andalus, as well as its transmission to the rest of Europe, places Spain and its cultural heritage at a privileged crossroads with connections linking Mediterranean and European cultures, and conveying them across to the other side of the Atlantic.

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The session will include speakers Carmen González, a tenured professor at the UNED and head researcher at the Real Instituto Elcano; Georgina Lara, who is responsible for topics of human trafficking at the International Organization for Migrations, and José Luis Pardo, Ambassador on a Special Mission for Migratory Affairs with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation. Moderated by: Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe

Migration is a reality today on on a worldwide scale. People’s movements are increasing in number and the circumstances which they face on their journeys require a joint response by the entire international community.
  
We are currently seeing the greatest flow of migrants since World War Two, which is why international migration represents one of the crucial challenges being faced by society in the twenty-first century. New migration in a globalized world displays different features from the migration movements of the past. According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 30,500 people have lost their lives attempting to migrate irregularly, and out of these approximately 4,000 died or disappeared on migration routes over the last year of 2018 alone.

The way migration policies are designed and implemented must take into account complex factors such as multiculturality and co-existence in societies taking in migrants, as well as the protection of the human rights of the most vulnerable: irregular migrants. The series Dialogues on Open Societies, organized by Casa Árabe with the cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, will arouse debate about the contemporary problems affecting both shores of the Mediterranean.

Carmen González Enríquez is a head researcher at the Real Instituto Elcano, where she runs the areas of Public Opinion and Migrations. She is also a tenured professor in the Political Science Department at the UNED. She has been a visiting researcher at the Centre on Migration Policy and Society at Oxford University and at the Center for Political Studies in Budapest. In recent years, her research has led her to take part in several projects financed by the European Commission, including ITHACA (Integration, Transnational Mobility and Human, Social and Economic Capital Transfers), METOIKOS (Circular migration patterns in Southern and Central Eastern Europe: Challenges and opportunities for migrants and policy makers) and CLANDESTINO (Undocumented Migration: Counting the Uncountable).

Georgina Lara is a member of the International Organization for Migration with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and a specialization in International Cooperation. She is responsible for the areas of Human Trafficking and Transsexuals at the IOM. She forms part of the PROTECT project, which focuses on protecting migrants from sexual and gender-related violence, as well as providing support to victims.

José Luis Pardo is a career diplomat who joined Spain’s diplomatic service in 1993. During his career, he has focused on three main fields: the Arab world and the Mediterranean (second in chief at the embassies in Libya, 1996-1999, and Jordan, 1999-2002, and the Advisor for the Barcelona Euromed Process, UPM, 2005-2007), the European Union (Advisor for Community Affairs at the Berlin embassy from 2002 through 2005, and Assistant Director General for Foreign Activity and EU Trade Affairs, from 2007 through 2014), as well as focusing globally on migration. In 2014, he was named Ambassador of Spain in Niger, and since 2017 he has been the Ambassador on the Special Special Mission for Migratory Affairs.

Photo: UK Department for International Development photostream

The conference will be given by Tasnim Abderrahim, a visiting member of the ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa program, and Tarek Megerisi, an ECFR researcher on Libya. Presented by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s Coordinator of International Relations.

In recent decades, migratory movements through the Mediterranean have filled the political agenda and captured the attention of the media, forcing European countries to debate over how to respond to this challenge. But how is this seen from the other shore of the Mediterranean? 


Tasnim Abderrahim
Abderrahim is a visiting member of the ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa Program, where she focuses on the topic of migration within the framework of EU-North Africa relations. Prior to that, she worked at the European Center for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) in Maastricht, and as a research assistant at the Centre des Etudes Méditerranéennes et Internationales (CEMI) in Tunisia. Her fields of research include migration, decentralization and local governance, as well as Tunisia’s foreign relations. She is the co-editor of Tunisia’s International Relations Since the “Arab Spring”: Internal and external transition, a book which examines the changes in Tunisia’s foreign policy and bilateral relations before and after 2011.

Tarek Megerisi is a political analyst and researcher with the ECFR who specializes in Libyan affairs and, in general, governance and development in the Arab world. He began his career in Tripoli at the Sadeq Institute and several international NGOs which perform research and give assistance for democratization to Libya’s post-revolutionary authorities, from 2012 to 2014. In 2014, he returned to London, where he has been working as an analyst and researcher. He consulted on Libya’s policy on a series of international missions in the country and has contributed to several issues of the publicationForeign Policy about current events in Libya. He has also authored articles for organizations such as WPF and the Legatum Institute, and he has contributed to broader publications for journals such as ISPI.

Nasser Kamel will be taking part in a conversation with Senén Florensa, Spain’s Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and other International Bodies in Vienna. The event will be presented by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.

Regional cooperation and dialogue form the foundation for dealing with the major challenges faced in the Mediterranean Basin from the perspective of stability, human safety, the environment and a reactivation of the economy.  The Union for the Mediterranean, with its twenty-eight EU members and fifteen countries from the southern shores, as a direct heir to the Barcelona Process (1995), is in a unique position to seek opportunities and strengthen the good neighbor and integration policy. The role of women in society, transportation, energy, industry, the environment and employment are just parts of the common agendas to be analyzed by the Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean, Nasser Kamel, in his talk with Ambassador Senén Florensa, Chairman of the Delegate Commission of the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed).


Senén Florensa is currently Spain’s Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the Office of the United Nations and other International Bodies in Vienna. He was Spain’s Consul General in Rome from 2017 to 2018 and Spain’s Ambassador to Tunisia from 2000 to 2004. He was the Director General and later Executive President of the European Institute of the (IEMed) from 2006 through 2017. He is the director of the journal afkar/ideas and of the Mediterranean Yearbook published by IEMed. He was the president of the World Congress of Middle East and North Africa Studies (WOCMES) in 2010, the Secretary of International and European Affairs of the Autonomous Regional Government of Catalonia and a member of the Organizing Committee of the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992.

Sami Naïr, a professor of Political Science and the director of the Institute of Studies for Mediterranean and Atlantic Cooperation, and Nicolás Berlanga,  Migrations Advisor for the Africa Department at the European External Action Service, will be presented by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.

The phenomenon of migration is complex and has many facets, which means the answers given cannot be simplistic. There must be more to matters than just opening and closing borders. What responsibilities are held by issuing, transit and destination countries? In what ways can migration and development be integrated so that these three factors may be beneficial in terms of migratory flows?

Within the European space, it is advisable to highlight that there is a division of powers between the EU and the Member States on migration. Likewise, in recent years, episodes of inaction and inflexibility among certain Member States have been alternated with showings of solidarity seen among towns and city halls. Within this context, it is important to insist upon the humanitarian factor and dialogue amongst all of the parties concerned, which may contribute to a re-examination of the vertical North-South relationship.

Sami Naïr is a political scientist, philosopher, sociologist and professor who specializes in migratory movements who created the concept of “co-development.”  He is the director of the Institute of Studies for Mediterranean and Atlantic Cooperation (IECMA). He was an MP in the European Parliament for the French Socialists (1999-2004), a time period in which he was a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee for Persons’ Rights, Common Security and Defense Policy. Amongst his positions in academia, he has also been the director of the Centro Mediterráneo Andalusí at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville.

Nicolás Berlanga is the main advisor on migrations in the Africa Department at the European External Action Service.  He has been a European European Union ambassador to Togo (2013-2017), the Main Advisor for the European Union Delegation in Cameroon and the chargé d’affaires for the European Commission Delegation in Vanuatu. From 1992 to 2000, he worked with the NGOs Action Against Hunger and Doctors Without Borders in countries like Kenya, Somalia, Armenia and Nicaragua. He was also a United Nations observer in Angola and Haiti from 1990-1991. Since 2002, he has been a civil servant in foreign relations for the European Union.

Presented by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s Coordinator of International Relations.

Reports from different international entities coincide in ranking the countries of North Africa and the Middle East amongst the worst in terms of gender equality. Though the situation differs by country, and in certain cases the Law has moved ahead considerably in guaranteeing rights on paper, the unrest which began in 2011 has not achieved the inclusion of women in public life under conditions of equality with men, and many consider themselves second-class citizens. Perhaps Tunisia could be named as a unique case where the triumph of protests has led to an improvement in women’s status.

 
Najat el Hachmi was born in Morocco after her father had already emigrated to Catalonia. At the age of eight, she moved to the town of Vic. She earned her undergraduate degree in Arabic Philology from the University of Barcelona. She has been writing since she was eleven years old, in the beginning as a form of entertainment, but little by little writing grew into a way for her to channel her thoughts about feeling like she was from two places at once, and a way to bring these two worlds to which she belongs closer together. In 2004, her book Jo també sóc catalana (I Am Catalan, Too) was published. She appears as a guest speaker on the radio and has articles published in the written press. Her work The Last Patriarch was bestowed with the Ramon Llull Award of 2008 and the Ulysse Award for a first novel in 2009, and she was a finalist for the Prix Meditérranée Étranger in 2009.

The series “Dialogues on Open Societies” is an initiative of Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation with the cooperation of Casa Árabe, co-directed by Doménec Ruiz Devesa, Advisor for the Cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, and by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.

Presenting the event is  Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s Coordinator of International Relations.

The Arab diaspora consists of the descendants of Arab immigrants who, either voluntarily or as refugees, emigrated from their native lands to non-Arab countries, mainly in South America, Europe, North America and the Caribbean, as well as parts of Asia and West Africa. In the Americas, the majority are descendants of the waves of migration out of Lebanon, Syria and Palestine during times of the Ottoman Empire, whereas in Europe they are more related with processes of decolonization in the Maghreb region as of the second half of the twentieth century. More recently. the crises in Iraq and Syria have led to new incomers who are reshaping identities and expectations in the societies which take them in. Carole Alfarah, Leyla Bartet and Mohammed Dahiri will be analyzing the different characteristics and contributions of these diasporas.

Carole Alfarah is an independent Syrian photographer. Since 2009, she has documented topics related with marginalized peoples, youths, child labor and the working mothers in her country.  From 2009-2010, she completed a year of training in photojournalism at the World Press Photo Foundation. In 2012, she was forced to leave Syria as a result of the conflict there. From that year until 2015, she worked on the project My beloved broken home about the marks left behind by the war in her country. She has received prizes such as the Arab Media Award on Child Rights given by Unicef.

Leyla Bartet is a writer, journalist and sociologist who graduated from the  Institut d’Etudes du Développement Economique et Social (IEDES Univ. De Paris 1). Until July of 2016, she held the position of Civilian Attaché at UNESCO’s Permanent Representative’s Office in Peru, and she has performed a wide range of consulting work for that organization. She has also been a guest conference speaker at the French universities of Caen, Amiens, Paris  and Poitiers. She has had several books and essays published about Arab immigration to South America. Her latest book, Miradas Cruzadas. Seis ensayos sobre las relaciones interculturales entre América del Sur y los Países Árabes (Crossing Glances: Six essays on intercultural relations between South America and the Arab Countries), was just published by Editorial Académica Española. She writes for the Peruvian magazines Qué hacer and Perú Hoy.

Mohammed Dahiri is a professor in the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, with a PhD in that field from the Universidad Hispalense in Seville. His main lines of research include international migrations in the Euro-Mediterranean space, interculturalism and diversity management. He has authored, co-authored and edited a wide range of research working, including: North Africa and the process of change: political, legal, social and economic transformations (Université Paris VIII, 2015); Civil society and transitions in North Africa: Egypt-Algeria-Tunisia-Morocco (Icaria, 2013) and Moroccan Residents Abroad: An economic bridge between countries of residence and Morocco (Diwan, 2012).

Latifa Lakhdhar, a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Tunisia’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Waleed Saleh, a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, will be introduced by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.

According to scholar Asef Bayat, the commonly repeated question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy must be examined on the basis of Muslims’ intellectual convictions and political capabilities, rather than focusing on it through the “essence” of Islam. It is individuals, groups and movements that define the makeup of the political world, and not holy scriptures. Therefore, attempting to clarify the relationship between Islam and democracy requires an analysis of social movements and their historical context in order to seek out the proper nuances at the heart of the matter. It is more appropriate to ask under what conditions Muslims can make Islam and democracy most compatible (assuming that the term democracy is devoid of ambiguity). It is precisely breaking away with the idea that all Muslims are the same, static and monolithic, which makes up one of the ideas clearly established by Edward Said in his work Orientalism. The ways in which hegemonic social role-players interpret their moral obligations and determine more authoritarian or inclusive political outcomes are not all the same either. With one corollary: political Islam is also diverse. For instance, the Iranian revolution of 1979 cannot be compared with the uprise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or the existence of Ennahda in Tunisia with that of the AKP in Turkey.

Latifa Lakhdhar is a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Tunisia’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her many varied works revolve around Islamic religious history and the history of women with regard to religious heritage. An activist in the leftist democratic movement since the late 1970s, and in particular the Communist Party of Tunisia, she was a founder of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women and a member of the Tunisian Association of Research for Development. In 2011, she became the Vice-President of the “High Instance for Political Reform, the Democratic Transition and the Achievement of the Objectives of the Revolution.” In 2015, she became the Minister of Culture and Heritage.

Waleed Saleh is a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. With a bachelor’s degrees in Arabic Philology from the University of Baghdad and in Hispanic Philology from the University of Valencia, and a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Saleh has worked as a professor at several centers of learning in Iraq and Morocco. He authored the book “El ala radical del islam. El islam político: realidad y ficción (“The Radical Wing of Islam. Political Islam: reality and fiction,” 2007) and “Irak: invasión, ocupación y caos” (“Iraq: Invasion, occupation and chaos,” 2005), as well as others.

Islam, like any other religion, has followers who follow many different currents and interpretations. In the West’s collective imaginary, the most dominant among them seem to be those which are highly conservative and fundamentalist, and they have gained strength in recent decades due to the support give by certain Gulf countries. However, these voices are not the only ones in existence, or even the most dominant, among the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world.

Islamologists like Rachid Benzine defend a critical/historical perspective as a way to approach the Qur’an, to take a step back when examining the sacred text and allow for interpretations which take its historical context into account. At this conference, Rachid Benzine and Luz Gómez will be analyzing liberal currents in Islam which provide alternatives to ahistorical, literalist interpretations that stir up religious fanaticism.

Rachid Benzine is an Islamologist who specializes in Qur’anic hermeneutics and a notable figure in liberal Islam in the French-speaking world. He is an associate researcher at the Paul Ricoeur Fund and has been a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence. Some of his most notable publications include Les Nouveaux Penseurs de l’islam (The New Thinkers of Islam, 2004 and 2008), Le Coran expliqué aux jeunes (The Qur’an Explained to Youths, 2016) and, with Christian Delorme, Nous avons tant de choses à nous dire. Pour un vrai dialogue entre chrétiens et musulmans (We Have So Much to Say to Each Other: For true dialogue between Christians and Muslims, 2018) and La République, l’Église et l’islam (The Republic, the Church and Islam, 2016). He has written a book with liberal rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, Des mille et une façons d’être juif ou musulman (On the 1001 Ways to Be Jewish or Muslim, 2017). He has also published an epistolary novel and adapted it for theater, titled Lettres à Nour (Letters to Nour, 2016).

Luz Gómez is an associate professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. A specialist on contemporary Arab ideologies, she has had the following books published: Diccionario de islam e islamismo (Dictionary of Islam and Islamism, 2019), Entre la sharía y la yihad. Una historia intelectual del islamismo (Between Shari’a and Jihad:An intellectual history of Islamism,  2018) and Marxismo, islam e islamismo: El proyecto de Adil Husayn (Marxism, Islam and Islamism: The project by Adil Husayn, 1996). In 2012, she was awarded the National Translation Prize for her version of In the Presence of Absence, by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. She is also a contributing writer for the Spanish daily newspaper El País.

Taking part are Gerald Knaus, founder of the European Stability Initiative, and Kristina Kausch, a senior researcher for the German Marshall Fund. Moderated by: Eduard Soler i Lecha, a senior researcher at the CIDOB.

The rivalries between regional powers have been shifting and changing since the 2011 uprisings. Alliances are becoming increasingly volatile and inconsistent, in terms of both state and non-state role-players. In order to understand the way these conflicts are being redefined, as well as seeking out paths for cooperation in the Mediterranean, it is essential that we examine internal, regional and global dynamics. This analysis will take a look at a few specific cases and the way in which the EU has reacted to crises, above all in fields like migration and security. Similarly, there will be a discussion of United States’ role in the region and the way in which geopolitical borders have grown blurrier, involving neighboring regions like the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Balkans, as well.

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Gerald Knaus is the founder of the European Stability Initiative, a think-tank with offices in Berlin, Brussels and Vienna, which does work on southeastern Europe, the Caucuses, European expansion the future of the EU.  Kraus studied at the Universities of Oxford, Brussels and Bologna, and has taught Economics at the University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine, as well as working for five years at NGOs and international entities in Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 2001 to 2004, he worked at the UN Mission in Kosovo. He was a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and is a specialist on state-building processes and intervention.

Kristina Kausch joined the German Marshall Fund in Brussels in 2016. Ms. Kausch’s research focuses on Europe’s political relations with the Middle East and North Africa, political transformations in the Arab world and geopolitical trends in the Middle East. Prior to that, she worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, directed the Middle East Program at FRIDE, and was an expert at the German cooperation agency GIZ. She has had three books published on the region, as well as  articles in both academic journals and the written press (The Guardian, El País, Middle East Eye and Süddeutsche Zeitung).

Eduard Soler i Lecha is a senior researcher at CIDOB and the scientific coordinator of MENARA, a European project on geopolitical changes in the Middle East and North Africa. He is a political scientist and has a PhD in International Relations from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His fields of work include: Euro-Mediterranean relations, Turkey’s foreign and domestic policy, political change in North Africa and the Middle East, Spain’s Mediterranean policy and cooperation in the field of security in the Mediterranean.

Participating in the event will be Basma El Husseiny, director of the organization Action for Hope, and Ignacio Gutierrez de Terán, a researching professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Moderated by: Nuria Medina, Casa Árabe’s Culture Coordinator.

The year of 2011 was a turning point in many Arab countries, because it saw the popular expression of a will to change. Culture and artistic creation are tools which allow for the empowerment of people and socio-economic improvement, and they can make social change easier in the medium and long term. Music, literature, theater and the audiovisual or plastic arts can be helpful in promoting significant change among artists and civil society, as well as meeting the psychological needs of those displaced by conflicts.

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Basma El Husseiny is an art management specialist and cultural activist who currently runs the organization Action for Hope, headquartered in Beirut. She has taken part in supporting independent cultural projects and organizations in the Arab region throughout the last two decades. She is a UNESCO expert on cultural governance and prior to that was responsible for the Media, Art and Culture Program of the Ford Foundation in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Arts Director of the British Council in Egypt. She is also Egypt’s representative in the Arterial Network, the largest cultural network in Africa. Until September of 2014, she worked as a founder and managing director of Al Mawred Al Thaqafy, a regional non-profit organization which supports young artists and writers, while stimulating cultural exchanges inside the Arab region and with the world.

Ignacio Gutiérrez de Terán is a professor with the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies and Eastern Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. As a researcher, he has focused on studying the identities of group, faith, region and socio-political factors among the communities in the Middle East, the Maghreb region and the Horn of Africa.  He has also dealt with aspects related to so-called “political Islam,” above all in Syria, Lebanon and Somalia. At the same time, he has had translations, articles and books published about Arab erotica books, especially Al-Tifashi’s “Delight of Hearts,” The Perfumed Garden” (in collaboration with Naomí Ramírez Díaz) and “Praise and diatribe of courtesans and ephebes,” by Al-Jahiz (with Pedro Buendía).

Taking part along with him is Martín Ortega Carcelén, a professor of International Law and International Relations at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Presented by: Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s Coordinator of International Relations.

The Arab League was founded in 1945, with the objective or promoting better coordination among the policies of Arab countries, as well as seeking their economic integration. The idea of a regional economic block arose in 1953. In 1958, the Arab Economic Unity Council was created, and in 1964, the Arab Common Market. Later, stagnation in the project gave rise to the creation of new regional organizations, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981 and the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) in 1989. Conflicts between states like that existing between Morocco and Algeria complicated the UMA’s success, unlike the GCC, which, until the deterioration of relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia,  had been the epitome of successful regional integration. Given the reconfiguration of strategic alliances in the region, it is a good time to reflect upon the future of
regional Arab integration.

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Bichara Khader is a professor emeritus of the Université catholique de Louvain in Brussels and the founder of the Center for Studies and Research on the Contemporary Arab World. A specialist on the Arab world of Palestinian origin, he has been a member of the Group of Top Experts on Foreign Policy and Common European Security (European Commission) and a member of the Group of Experts for Cultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean (European Presidency). His works have dealt with a wide range of topics, including everything from the Palestinian conflict to the status of Muslims in in Europe, discussing topics such as Islamophobia.

Martín Ortega Carcelén is a professor of International Law and International Relations at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He was formerly the director of the Cabinet for Analysis and Prevision at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and was also a head  researcher at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies in Paris. He collaborates with IE University and the Deusto Business School and contributes opinion and commentary articles to the newspaper El País, as well as appearing on the Canal 24 network broadcast by RTVE. He was the director of the INCIPE and has completed research stays at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg.

Moratinos, the United Nations’ High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, will be introduced by Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe, and Domènec Ruiz-Devesa, a Member of the European Parliament.More than ever, diversity has become a reality that enriches human life. Pluralism in nations and cities, ethnicities and identities, beliefs and traditions, forms the spectacular mosaic of humankind. In the midst of an increase in culture-based conflicts, radicalization and xenophobia, we must acknowledge that there is a plural set of civilizations which must co-exist in peaceful, inclusive societies. This is Objective 16 within Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and is the raison d’être of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC)  which, created by Kofi Annan in 2005 and co-sponsored by Spain and Turkey, embraces and promotes the values of tolerance and respect for others.

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Miguel Ángel Moratinos has been the United Nations’ High Representative of the Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), with the rank of an Undersecretary General, since January 2019, He has devoted his professional and political career to international relations and development cooperation, above all as Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation from 2004 through 2010. As of 1987 and in 2004, he held the position of Assistant Director General for North Africa (1987-1991), Director of the Institute of Cooperation with the Arab World (1991-1993), Director General of Foreign Policy for Africa and the Middle East (1993-1996), Ambassador of Spain in Israel (1996) and Special Representative to the EU for the peace process in the Middle East (1996-2003). As the head of Spain’s diplomatic corps, he presided over the UN Security Council in the year of 2004, holding the acting presidencies of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the European Union Council.