“The INGO Conference of the Council of Europe is elaborating a practical guide to conduct dialogues where they are most needed. The aim is to provide a hands-on concise, user-friendly Tool. Its approach will not be on the “high end culture”, but rather aims to help build social cohesion and the human rights based approach regarding diversity issues.
The accumulation of unresolved issues in matters of diversity and migration over the last two years have led to an intolerable level of Human Rights infringements in European countries. The Conference of INGOs has witnessed this regrettable evolution and has discussed it.
The Council of Europe NGO Forum of 23-25 March in Istanbul gave the opportunity to reactivate the intercultural dialogue theme. Over 70 NGO representatives, many from South Eastern Europe, participated. Civil society activists from Egypt and Tunisia met with INGO Conference leaders in a small but important side event of the Forum. Three Workshops looked into the new challenges of intercultural societies and a fourth team began its work on assembling the Toolkit for Conducting Intercultural Dialogue. This team consisted of a Barbados-born British, a Portuguese, a Russian, a Swedish-Italian, a Romanian and a Swiss Coordinator. The team began to work based on the Forum’s Workshop findings and the Feedback to a Questionnaire from the participants.
On 14 April the INGO Conference Standing Committee adopted the draft chapters of the Toolkit and gave the green light for the editing and writing and it continues to oversee this work. The INGO Conference Plenary meeting of 21 June unanimously approved the overall content and approach. The Dialogue Toolkit is scheduled for presentation and for initiating the test phase in mid-November.
Along with the Toolkit, the INGO Conference will develop a Dialogue Implementation Phase and is looking forward to working in partnership with interested and competent bodies.”
[Original post: Council of Europe Non-Governmental Organisations]
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 