Morocco’s King Mohammed VI said Tuesday that the Alliance of Civilizations is a strong pillar for peace, underscoring the need to uphold the dialogue it undertakes and ensure its success.
He made the remarks in an address to the ninth Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), which kicked off in Fez.
“There is really no point in carrying out major projects if we do not manage to go beyond this first link in the chain of ‘living-together’, in the name of a single humanity, which puts back human beings at the center of its concerns,” King Mohammed told the participants in the two-day event.
He said that the dialogue fostered by the Alliance should hold its rightful place and bring about the conditions for success.
It is from dialogue that salvation will come, the King added, provided that it is inter-civilizational, inter-generational and inter-continental.
“The UNAOC is holding its 9th Global Forum on African soil and thereby giving a strong signal of continuity and universality,” the King said in the letter read by his advisor, Andre Azoulay.
A founding member of the Alliance of Civilizations, the kingdom has been involved in all of the organization's struggles, the letter noted.
“Morocco is built around a model of openness, harmony and synergy that has seen the convergence of Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassanian confluents, and that has, at the same time, been enriched by African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for his part, said “Morocco has long been a champion of inter-faith dialogue and a leader in our fight against extremism.”
He particularly thanked King Mohammed for his personal and permanent commitment to the defense of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, tolerance and diversity as a richness for the societies and the world.
Hate speech, disinformation, and abuse are proliferating, targeting especially women and vulnerable groups, Guterres warned.
He called for “building an alliance of peace that spans the global and the local to meet the tests of our time.”
At this time of peril, Guterres called for taking inspiration and standing together as one human family, rich in diversity, equal in dignity and rights, and united in solidarity.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, the High Representative for the UNAOC, said the Alliance of Civilizations should be an initiative that studies and discovers the similarities and synergies that exist philosophically, religiously and practically among different cultures and religions, while helping to distinguish and identify their differences.
