A SENEGALESE jurist has added his voice to the growing call for tolerance and human fraternity worldwide amid today’s global conflicts and disruptions.
Speaking at a conference on the issue in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates this week, Adama Dieng made a challenging call to participants from the world’s major religious faiths who were in attendance.
He said: ‘All of us who agreed to participate…in this gathering are certainly committed individuals and collectives that… through our philosophies, through our faith, or by our humanity, do celebrate if not promote, each in their own way, the foundations and benefits of tolerance…’
‘Indeed, all of us here today are convinced of the benefits of peaceful co-existence.’
Dieng, a former UN Under Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, however added: ‘But we must nevertheless look each other in the eye, and ask ourselves…if all the leaders…contribute to the same desire to eradicate intolerance. Of course not.’
He said that there were political leaders… [who] ‘sometimes no longer hide their perversity’ and ‘show their desire to contribute in an evil way to the advent of an intolerant world, a world of self-retreat, a breeding ground for isolationism, racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’.
Dieng, currently the President of the Pan-African Alliance for Transparency and the Rule of Law (PATROL), went on: ‘Their scary populists promises make them say that they are better, and that the others are defects; that they are superior, and that the others deserve bullying and dispossession; that they are powerful…and that the others can be crushed, dumped and vilified; that their blood is pure, and that the others are poison; that they are the necessary evil to save the world, and that the others are the reality of yesterday and represent a future that must be spat on and crushed.
‘These leaders and these trends are numerous.
‘They explain that this is the new world, the world of abuse, the one which refutes the usefulness of interconnection and mutually advantageous multilateral cooperation in our global village.’
Dieng added: ‘These new crusaders of disruption, these new apostles of hatred, these new messiahs of “me first” or “we first”, deny the beauty and realities of our common humanity without shame and without shudder.
‘This is why the initiators of this conference, this is why the Emirati authorities, must be applauded and supported, because their courage and their vision bring us back to the path of hope, the beauty of commitment, the posture of clearly and continuously saying no to hatred, the need to refute lies.’
He said that his personal experience serving at the UN ‘strengthened in me the faith to never be discouraged, to contribute to perpetuating the need to preserve human dignity’.
Dieng said that this helped him in fighting injustice, hatred and genocide, adding that he was continuing humbly ‘on this path with the establishment of PATROL, which aims to strengthen the rule of law…in Africa…where the concept of “fraternity” takes on ever-renewed strength’.
The Global Tolerance Alliance initiative includes ‘world organisations, government affiliations, world faiths, educational institutions, technology and scientific networks and cultural entities – all gathered to celebrate and appreciate what is already being accomplished in the achievement of tolerance, inter-religious understanding and peaceful co- existence’.
This third Global Tolerance and Human Fraternity Summit was hosted by the UAE’s Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence headed by the Minister, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.
It focused on common humanity; sustainable development through faith, dialogue and inclusion; and a sustainable future.