Alliance of Civilizations

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The Alliance of Civilizations is a United Nations Secretary-General initiative intended to galvanize collective action across diverse societies in order to combat extremism, and overcome cultural and social barriers between mainly the Western and predominantly Muslim worlds.

Proposed by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero at the 59th General Assembly of the United Nations and co-sponsored by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the initiative aims to produce actionable, time-bound recommendations by the end of 2006 for UN member states to adopt.

To guide this effort, the UN Secretary-General assembled a High-level Group (HLG) consisting of 20 eminent persons drawn from policy making, academia, civil society, religious leadership, and the media and originating from all regions and civilizations.^[1] The HLG had its first meeting in Spain in November 2005. The High-Level Group (HLG) for the Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) had its second meeting in Doha, Qatar from 25 to 27 February 2006 with the agenda aiming to find ways to calm the cartoon crisis between West and Islamic world.^[2] The third meeting took place in Dakar, Senegal from 28 to 30 May 2006. The members submited their report outlining recommendations and practical solutions on how the Western and Islamic societies can solve misconceptions and misunderstandings between them in fourth meeting convened in November 2006 in Istanbul. According to the report, "politics, not religion, is at the heart of growing Muslim-West divide".^[3]

Among the members is former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who proposed the Dialogue Among Civilizations initiative, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African Nobel laureate, Prof. Pan Guang, who obtained the Saint Petersburg-300 Medal for Contribution to China-Russia Relations, and Arthur Schneier, who is the founder and president of the “Appeal of Conscience Foundation” and who gained the "Presidential Citizens Medal”.

The Office of the Secretariat of the Alliance of Civilizations is based at United Nations New York Headquarters. It is currently working to support research on recommendations for the consideration of the High-level Group.