Colonel-General Ahmed Khalfan Al-Mansouri, Secretary General of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Award for Tolerance, one of Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, participated in the forum of Policies of Common Values: Building More Tolerant Communities, held in Brussels, Belgium, and hosted by Bussola Institute. Colonel-General Al Mansouri addressed a session as a keynote speaker on opposition of social classism – challenges and opportunities. The session was attended by a number of former prime ministers, ministers in the European Union, and members of the advisory board of the Bussola Institute.
Colonel-General Al Mansouri presented to the session the vision and goals of the International Institute for Tolerance and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Award for Tolerance, and the role they played in spreading a culture of respect and coexistence. He also introduced the attendees to the UAE model for tolerance and coexistence. He emphasized on how important to work together rather than individually towards more tolerant communities that can live in coexistence and reject violence and extremism, setting aside differences of religion, ethnicity and sectarianism. Colonel-General Al Mansouri highlighted the efforts of UAE in enhancing values of tolerance by introducing laws and regulations, such as the Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Hatred Law issued in 2015 by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE. He also highlighted how UAE announced 2019 as the Year of Tolerance and established the International Institute for Tolerance, among other initiatives and decisions; all of which evidently proves that the UAE is now an incubation hub for tolerance. He showcased the UAE experience of coexistence, diversity and multiculturalism with more than 200 nationalities living there.
The forum agenda covered three main tracks; the first focused on the increasingly-widening social classism. In this track, His Excellency Zaki Nusseibeh from the UAE Government spoke as a keynote and defined the general context. They keynote speech was followed by a discussion panel with Dr. Mary McAleese, Former President of Ireland, who addressed the widening social classism. The second track, Opposition of Social Classism: Challenges and Opportunities, addressed success stories of social participation in countries such as Croatia, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Ireland. This was an opportunity to highlight the concept of tolerance as a multi-aspect approach to address many types of social classism.
The third and final track, Building More Tolerant Communities, presented different policies to manage tolerance in the society. The track also addressed questions on tolerance governance and the need to make international effort to oppose the widening social class that ultimately leads to extremism and violence.
Bussola Institute in Brussels, Belgium, is the organizer of the forum. It is a not-for-profit organization, committed to forging multicultural interconnections between the GCC Countries and the European Union. Since it was established, Bussola Institute, with its slogan “the values that gather us”, takes serious interest in issues like extremism and social classism and how to restrict the impacts of these issues by using interfaith dialogue and by researching policies that support social coherence, thereby supporting values of tolerance in communities.