Kuwait, represented by the Kuwait Society for Human Rights (KSHR), took part here on Friday in a regional workshop on the role society and media should play in fostering tolerance and respect for diversity in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sponsored in part by the UNESCO and UN Human Rights Committee, the workshop goes on today and ends tomorrow, bringing together media personnel and human rights activists from 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa in addition to others from the US, UK, and the EU.
KSHR representative in the workshop, Hussein Al-Otaibi, indicated in a press statement that it has become urgent to address challenges such as religious extremism and terrorism facing many societies and that it was incumbent on civil society and international and regional organizations to disseminating such values as respect for diversity of opinions and religious beliefs.
Moreover, he said these organizations should underscore the value of accepting "the other" racially and culturally and should spread notions of communality among all the peoples of the earth, no matter what their religion or race or culture may be.
He hoped that the workshop here would flesh out the need in the Middle East and North African region for firmly cultivating through the media the imperative to fight hate and inciting violence and disparagement against "the other." The media and all civil society entities in the region should dedicate much time and effort to propagate the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other among the youth, he said, as he praised the UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Committee on their efforts to coordinate between the civil society entities and the media in the region toward successfully campaigning for tolerance and human rights in the Arab world.