“29 votes for Mrs. Audrey Azoulay, 29 votes for Mr. Hamad al-Kuwari” announced the results of the vote for the election of the Director-General of UNESCO on Friday 13 October 2017, from the highest rostrum of UNESCO, by the head of the Executive Office, which brings together 58 members of the Office who are entitled to vote according to the organization’s regulations The outcome of the deal was expected, even if the international media and observers had expected the Qatari candidate to win.
But soon I heard the microphone rattling again, so everyone turned towards the voice, which seemed turbulent and hoarse.. Suddenly, a heavy silence broke out among the audience and the voice of the head of the executive office resounded again to announce that he had made a mistake in counting the votes. After verification, it became clear to him that the result was 30 votes for Azoulay against 28 Al-Kuwari, at that time, the shouts of joy of the supporters of the French candidate covered the noise that scattered in the hall, and none of them thought about questioning the president for what happened, and thus this mystery remained trapped in those murmurs to this day, and it is also strange that the merits and results of the final vote on the international organization’s website on the The Internet, as usual in the previous four sessions.
And recently published by Hamad Bin Khalifa University Publishing House, “Bridges Not Fences: A New Approach to the North-South Relationship,” authored by Dr. Al-Kuwari, revealing the scenes of his experience at UNESCO and the secrets of civilized relations between the countries of the North and the countries of the South, and the transcendent and central view that this relationship produced before The countries of the North have harmed stability and peace in the world, in a flagrant denial of the superiority of other human civilizations over the West, including the Arab-Islamic civilization.
The book is based on a personal experience and a historical extrapolation of the author, the head of Qatar National Library, who has practiced diplomatic and cultural work for decades, seeking to remind the sons of this generation of Arabs of their civilization that was absent due to their conflicts and ignoring their role in building human civilization, and calling for building bridges instead of building walls in light of A new approach to North-South relations.
The author says that he did not want his book to be a process of reckoning, "but the honor of writing is to be a disclosure of what is happening, and a disclosure with the reader who is searching for the truth."
Moreover, "my personal experience provides a testimony to history, documenting with evidence and testimonies what we have witnessed from a malicious and systematic campaign that does not bear gratitude for the countries of the South. That campaign spared no effort to impede a new launch for UNESCO at the hands of an Arab Director General who was determined to reform an extremely large international organization." The time has come to resurrect a new spirit in its corridors, and he pledged his supporters to work to restore balance in favor of the countries of the South and to establish a relationship of trust and credibility between the various social and cultural components of this prestigious entity.
He continues, "The opportunity was wasted while a cloud of mistrust and confidence shaken the world between Western and Eastern civilizations, and the specter of a clash of civilizations frightened the peoples of the South again. It became clear to all those who believed in the ideal values of UNESCO that the fortress of those values had become subject to collapse, just as the conviction that Western centralism is not It is still perched on the discourse and practice of the countries of the North."
The author, Dr. Hamad Al-Kuwari, presents in his new book a testimony to history about the quest to resurrect a new spirit in the corridors of UNESCO (Al-Jazeera)
The role of the intellectual
The author begins, in the introduction to the book, by emphasizing that it is difficult in this civilized context in which we live for the intellectual to remain without a position. The virtue of his presence in his society is his commitment to human issues, and his endeavor with other social actors to build awareness of the challenges of the historical stage that our Arab and Islamic civilization is going through, which are A stage marked by confusion and crises, and governed by conflicts and tension in international relations between the North and the South.
And the author, Minister of State with the rank of Deputy Prime Minister, continues, "I have worked throughout my life to combine the theoretical position with practical practice, so that the intellectual is not only a maker of ideas, but he should be involved in the fields of action so that his ideas do not remain confined to abstraction and unimplementable in reality, because the origin of The idea is to find its way to benefit people and change their conditions for the better.”
And he continues, "I was fond of the literary path that Amin Maalouf followed, mixing the literary and the historical, and broadcasting questions between the folds of his novels about the relationship between the self and the other in the orbit of civilized questions," when the Lebanese writer dealt with the "real novel" or "the other" of the conflict between the Arabs And the Franks, in his work “The Crusades as Seen by the Arabs,” where he called the testimonies of Arab newsmen to be his main source in building the novel. From the Arab side, which was not seen as a religious war.
In addition, Maalouf did not search for "condemning the other" as much as he searched for historical equity that re-arranges the relationship between the West and the East, and the author refers - in the context - to the phenomenon of the disappearance of vision in the nomenclature, where language becomes a home for attitudes from the other, and places a veil over peoples. Which succumb to those labels as facts, and are nothing but an expression of the viewpoint of the Western discourse, which did not leave the tendency to supremacy.
The author mixes his diplomatic experience with his ideas, saying that he saw in the image of his colleagues in the corridors of the Security Council between the towers of Manhattan, "the fruit of the historical misunderstanding between us and the West, a misunderstanding that included the West with other civilizations and cultures as well. And I saw in their stumble the inevitable result of that, they became They face emptiness and emptiness, unable to devise solutions to the cycle of successive problems in the relations of nations with each other, after they were determined to establish peace among human beings.
And an analyst adds to the effects of the political on the cultural, he says, "Unfortunately, they were similar to the acrobat who walks on a string over the abyss without extending a net that protects him in the event of falling, or any means that helps him achieve his balance that saves his life." And he continues, "I wondered for a long time, was it This scene is the result of a worsening situation in international relations, or is it the result of decades - and perhaps centuries - of misunderstanding between civilizations? Is this not due to civilization’s neglect of the voices of other civilizations? Does civilization itself, in its current definitions, classify us as civilized, or does it place us in the category of barbarians? classification to contribute to the achievement of world peace.
“I am confident that the current situation is a descendant of ideas that permeate mainly Western thought. Despite the tendency of Western cultural discourse and its institutions calling for equality between nations, the successive crises of global dialogue make me recover those obstacles that kept shackles my subconscious from the bright discourses that raise high international norms, It is unable to present a solution to the simplest international dispute.” Thus, the author, the minister, lists hidden aspects of the underlying causes of crises and disputes between the North and the South.
The desert and the free vision of civilization
From the narrowness of the corridors of international organizations to the spaciousness of the beginnings, the author begins the first chapters of the book by saying, “I am truly the son of the desert. The Arabs, winds whose directions are unknown when they embrace the sand dunes, giving them a harmonious and wonderful scene that the greatest artists in the world cannot form. Those dunes extend without end to juxtapose with the waves of the warm sea in Khor Al Adaid.
And he continues, "One of the strange paradoxes of our world, which has lost the compass, is that the expansion of urbanization and urbanization throughout the world was accompanied by a digital revolution that removed borders, while some insist on denying the different other, contempt and distance from decision centers, sources of wealth and causes of human dignity, as if the process of demarcation of borders is still continuing constantly. The colonial mentality that people thought was the end of it.
French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) is quoted as saying that "people raise too many walls and not enough bridges."
The author wonders: Will UNESCO be a beacon that lights the way in the midst of the whirlwinds of the world? He says, “I internalized the principle of striving for peace, and made the UNESCO declaration one of the basic principles in my life: Yes, I worked as a diplomat for decades for reconciliation between nations in the corridors of the Security Council, and for understanding and dialogue. And the mutually beneficial exchange, and I am the ambassador of my country in various capitals of the world and its representative to UNESCO and the United Nations.In fact, I followed the same path when I assumed the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, and that is why the celebration of Doha, the capital of Arab culture in 2010, was characterized by its openness to all cultures of the world, acceptance of the different other and building bridges between Intellectuals come from all walks of life.
balance and dialogue
In the second chapter of the book, entitled "Seeking to Restore Balance between North and South," the author explains in detail the gap between the rich and developing countries, referring to the North's monopoly of most positions in international organizations, and criticizes the "mirage of diversity", referring to his experience in seeking to restore dialogue and his field visits to countries of the South in Africa and Asia. and Latin America and the Caribbean in order to hear their structural problems.
In the third chapter, he analyzes the prevailing cultural discourses, considering that the colonial era is over, but Orientalism is still prevalent in our lives and in the way the West thinks about the East. Despite this, he strives to do justice to Orientalism while freeing it from the complex of European concentration and reference to the one cognitive and civilized model, noting the history of Arab civilization and its contribution to Developing the system of governance of states, the contribution of Arabs and Muslims to science, and the additions of Arabs to humanities and literature.
In the fourth chapter, "Soft Power," the minister explains the constants of cultural diplomacy and its means, and discusses the stakes of sports, gift diplomacy and its functions, and its ancient historical evidence such as the model of Caliph Harun al-Rashid and Emperor Charlemagne, and deals with the experience of the Arab World Institute in Paris as a cultural bridge between the Arab East and Maghreb on the one hand, The West, on the other hand.
In the next chapter entitled "Civilization of Cultural Dialogue", Dr. Al-Kuwari discusses the topics of translation, council dialogue, and the patronage of senior princes and ministers for intellectual dialogue councils.
His author concludes by emphasizing dialogue, acceptance of the other and human understanding as an Arab message, and he mentions that vast resources are wasted buying weapons instead of building schools, libraries and hospitals, and that literacy and combating starvation are linked, and ends in the conclusion with an optimistic message, stressing that the news is in the children of Adam and as the Prophet, peace be upon him, said And peace be upon him, “All creation are God’s children, and the most beloved of his creation to him are the most beneficial to his children.”