World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations"

During the seven years of its existence, the Forum has achieved some important results. The annual autumn session on the island of Rhodes, which in the beginning was the starting point for all of the Forum’s events, initiated the formation of an international network of experts. Today we are witnessing an enlargement of internal communications among the participants of the network and the enforcement of their coordination in promoting the idea of the dialogue. Today the annual meetings at Rhodes represent a major event of the World Public Forum. Rhodes Forum has become an open platform for discussions, where experience is exchanged and the true spirit of dialogue is developed.

Rhodes Forum

Every autumn since 2003 the ancient Greek island of Rhodes hosts a session of the World Public Forum «Dialogue of Civilizations» called the Rhodes Forum that brings together public figures and statesmen, academics, religious figures and representatives of the arts, mass media and business spheres from all over the world. The sessions of the WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» proved the urgency and efficacy of the Forum by brining the focus of world public opinion to the problems of intercultural dialogue and the need to work out instruments to make interaction among cultures and civilizations possible. The results achieved by the Forum give a hope for further harmonization of international relations and strengthening of stability in the world.

The participants of the Forum’s programs or Rhodes Forum claim that the dialogue of cultures and civilizations is quite possible. According to Vladimir Yakunin, the World Public Forum was constantly working in an international atmosphere of events that seemingly proved quite the opposite. But meeting at the Forum’s events the representatives of different civilizations have reaffirmed each time that beyond political sphere a dialogue on the level of civil society is not only desirable and necessary, but it is also practically possible. «Now the logic of Forum’s development has led us to the need of making this dialogue more substantial; in a way that would generate the functioning structures of a dialogue. Dialogue of Civilizations is called upon to develop a new culture of international partnership, co-operation and interaction, it has to foster new values and bring in new goals to the international community» — said Vladimir Yakunin.

Latin America

In March 2005, Cuba hosted the WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» international conference entitled «Latin America in the 21st century: Universalism and Originality." The subject of meeting was the current situation in Latin America — a region that is undergoing a process of civilizational self-determination. One of the main achievements of the conference was placing the most important issues of Latin America within the international context. Participants of the conference declared their intention to defend freedom of social choice and multipolarity of the world community.
In November 2005 participants of the World Public Forum joined the annual Intercontinental Convention on Psychology and Human Science «HOMINIS’05» which gathers many people and traditionally attracts the attention of many experts in the field.
One of the main components of the World Public Forum’s activity is development of intercultural contacts. And one of the platforms for facilitating the intercultural dialogue is the ll-th International Havana Poetry Festival, which took place in June 2006 in Cuba and brought together over 100 poets from 28 countries.

India

India — a country with a rich culture and history — is one of the most active participants of the World Public Forum. One of the first conferences was held in December 2004 in Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and was dedicated to dialogue in the context of globalization. An edition of the book «Wings of fire» written by President of India Abdul Kalam was presented at this conference.

On January 24th — 26th, 2007 a conference «Development Model and Global Integration» was held in Jawaharlal Nehru University. The conference was co-organized by WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations," Indian NGO «Eurasian Foundation» and Russian NGO «Center of National Glory." More than 200 representatives of scientific, public and political spheres of India and Russia took part in the event. A bilateral exchange of ideas and opinions on the most acute challenges of innovational development of India and Russia at the beginning of the 21st century took place. At the conference participants examined the main principles and instruments of civilizational analysis of national development projects' in the context of global interactions.

The conclusion was drawn that it is the new figures in the system of global interaction who are making the most active efforts in this direction. It is Russia, India, China and several other countries who, to a considerable degree, share responsibility for becoming the prospective bearers of the multilateral innovational development of human society. The participants pointed out that for successful realization of the innovational development model it is necessary to contribute to the correlation of the «national projects» and first of all from the expert community of Russia and India.

On January, 26th conference participants attended the presentation of the combined cooperation result of Jawaharlal Nehru University Center of Russian and Central-Asian Researches and Center of National Glory of Russia — collective research project «Russian Civilization." In this work a panorama of Russian Civilization was presented not only by contemporary epoch, but also in a wider historical context.

Conference activities were concluded by the awarding of the «Dialogue of Civilizations» International Prize to the «Kapur Surya Foundation» President and WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» co-chairman Jagdish Chandra Kapur. Mr. Kapur was awarded this prize for promoting of the ideas of dialogue of cultures and civilizations and for his great personal contribution to the founding of the World Public Forum «Dialogue of Civilizations».

Europe

Promoting intercultural dialogue is not the only aim of the World Public Forum. It is also actively engaged in establishing and developing economic relations among various regions of the world, especially in Europe. In May 2004, Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, hosted the international conference «Europe in the 21st Century: the Crossroads of Civilizations." In the course of the conference, which gathered representatives of the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, USA and other countries, — former Prime-minister of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman said that relations between Russia and the European Union in the sphere of economy and culture significantly influence European civilization, and that the European Union has to collaborate with Russia more actively, because its culture is one of the main components of the European civilization.

Two years later, in May 2006, under the aegis of the World Public Forum «Dialogue of Civilizations» Prague welcomed the International Congress of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs «East-West: Integration and Development." The congress brought together entrepreneurs from the Czech Republic and Russia. The main goal of this meeting was to discuss questions of intensification of economic relations between Russia and the European Union and the development of business-relations among representatives of the Russian and Czech business communities. Honorary guest of the Congress, Prime-Minister of the Czech Republic Jiri Paroubek, presented the Czech government’s strategy of widening economic cooperation with Russia. The participants of the Congress came to a conclusion that it is possible to face global challenges of world economy only if the international business community will have a clear vision of the development problems in particular regions.

On March 13–14, 2007, WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» organized an international seminar under the aegis of UNESCO. The event took place in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France. The subject of the seminar was: «Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations: A Bridge between Human Rights and Moral Values." Participants from more than 30 countries took part in the event. The program of the seminar comprised two plenary meetings and three round tables with the following agendas: «Human rights in the context of cultural and outlook diversity," «The role of government bodies, civil society, schools and the media in the dialogue of cultures and civilizations," «Challenges of global mobility: promoting „living together“ principles and strategies.»

The aim of the Paris seminar was to study the correlation and mutual relations between human rights and cultural values, between the set of formal human rights and the notions of moral dignity of individuals that exist in different human cultures and civilizations. The topics under discussion have been considered from different viewpoints reflecting varied cultural and moral positions. As a follow up to this seminar, Forum and UNESCO have convened an international conference “Ancient Civilizations, New Beginnings: a Dialogue of Change” in December 2007.

On June 4–5, 2007, WPF «Dialogue of civilizations» organized the International Regional Conference titled «European Civilization Space: Baltic Dialogue» in Tampere, Finland. More than two hundred participants took part in the conference.

Participants of conference focused on the prospects of cooperation in the field of innovations, energy and transport. Problems of interrelations and mutual subordination among the regional economic dialogue’s subjects were recognized as one of the most acute in this sphere. Experts considered it to be necessary to avoid both excessive politicization and superfluous commercialization of regional cooperation, and also to combine the region’s economic development with the ensuring of its ecological security.

Discussing the common features of the legal culture of Baltic States the participants underlined the influence of various national legal schools and traditions on its development. Relations of Russia and Finland were mentioned as a positive example of relations between EU-countries and the Russian Federation.

Middle East

The work of World Public Forum is particularly active in the Middle East, a region that especially suffers from the lack of understanding between cultures and civilizations. Every year the Rhodes Forum devotes a special section to the issues of stability in the region and working out recommendations to the practical settling of current problems.
In November 2004, the work of President of the Republic of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh in the area of strengthening friendship ties among nations and his contribution to international antiterrorist efforts have been acknowledged with the International «Dialogue of Civilizations» Award.

A special round-table on Christian — Muslim dialogue was held in Jordan in May 2006. Jordanian King Abdullah the Second was honored with the International «Dialogue of Civilizations» Award for his outstanding contribution to strengthening intercivilizational accord.

An international conference of the Word Public Forum «Dialogue of Civilizations» took place in Manama city (Kingdom of Bahrain) between 27 and 30 January 2008. «Bahrain dialogue of civilizations» was held under patronage of the country’s Prime-Minister Sheikh Khalifa Salman Al Khalifa with more than 400 participants from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, United Arab Emirates and Russia, including leading Russian experts in economics, sociology, natural sciences, interreligious relations, medicine, as well as experts and representatives of the Council of the Gulf Countries.

All the reports, discussions, plenary sessions, scientific seminars of the conference were held in an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding between representatives of different countries. Vectors for further development of dialogue and cooperation were set and many offers of new joint projects were presented. Thus, following the results of the conference, a General Agreement of cooperation was signed between ALECSO and the WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations».

Canada

Under terms of growth of civilizational tension and transformation of international society structure dialogue re-development paradigm of the existing education as key factor forming the model of perspective social development is very up-to-date. An international conference «Education as a Dialogue Model of Social Development» took place in Ottawa (Canada) on 11 — 13 June, 2008 and was devoted to this problem. The conference was organized by the WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» and Carleton University (Ottawa), supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada and the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canada.

More than 100 leading experts from Russia, Canada, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Austria, Great Britain, specialists in economics, education and migration policy took part in two working sections, educational and economic.

In the framework of conference in his opening speech WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» General Secretary Oleg Atkov mentioned: «Our conference is about our life today, how we want to live tomorrow, so that our children do not live under conditions of our predatory century, so that consumerism is not dominating their minds, so that they can focus on moral and spiritual values. Environmental problems are perceived when there is no water to drink or when you have to drink water which is not suitable for that. And it is awful when society’s degradation comes and the soul is empty. Only education can help to understand complicated problems of our century and not to allow spiritual vacuum to come into souls and minds of people.»

Discussion of today’s world economic system characterized by a chapter of crises identified a number of deep contradictions between the aims and targets stated by its key objects and globalism potential. As participants emphasised, today neither global financing, nor international organizations, nor transnational corporations are able to solve many of the world’s problems, including climate change, exhausting of non-renewable resources, poverty and inequity in social-and-economic development of various countries and regions, problem of availability and safety of new technologies.

At the final plenary session of the conference the WPF «Dialogue of Civilizations» Executive Secretary Vladimir Kulikov mentioned: «The key result of the meeting is that we will come back here. It is obvious from the type of discussion, from the dialogue’s modality. The current forum — the first one in the North America — is characterized by the fact that the experts from different countries had a many things to say each other and all of them were ready for open discussions.»

The First WPF Summit in Vienna

The World Public Forum «Dialogue of Civilizations» under the patronage of UNESCO convened a meeting of high level experts to discuss the most pressing socio-cultural problems facing the world today in the Hofburg Palace (Vienna) on November 10, 2008.

The meeting, which brought together about 40 experts, high ranking politicians and public dignitaries from around the world discussed the most current problems that have been prompted by globalization and that were aggravated by the current financial-economic situation in the world.

After the conclusion of the Vienna meeting of high level experts the International «Dialogue of Civilizations» Award was given to the Federal Chancellor of Austria Dr Alfred Gusenbauer. At the ceremony, the WPF Secretary General Oleg Atkov announced that the WPF Prize was presented to the Austrian Federal Chancellor «for strengthening peace and mutual understanding among peoples." The organizers of the Forum, Oleg Atkov pointed out, view the new Laureate as a European leader who, in the course of many years, has been making a major personal contribution to the elaboration and practical implementation of the ideas of a dialogue among civilizations and cultures based on the recognition of different cultures in their virtue.

In his acceptance speech Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer pointed out that he views the Prize not only as a personal award, but also “as an award for the whole of Austria – for its role as an international mediator.” “This is also an award to Vienna which has always been ready to receive all those who call for peace and a dialogue,” the Chancellor emphasized.