THE SECOND STAGE OF THE ALLIANCE
By Pierre Calame pic@fph.fr
First Contribution to a Collective Thinking Process
A/ First Stage of the Alliance: an Attempt to
Put Things in Perspective
The Alliance for a Responsible and United World, which became in
1999 the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World in
order to privilege the relationship between unity and diversity,
was born in 1994 and was gradually developed by the progressive
approval by people and institutions from many different countries
and backgrounds of the Platform for a Responsible and United World,
drafted in December 1993. The Platform itself is the fruit of extended
cross-cultural research conducted by the Group of Vézelay
between 1998 and 1993.
The Group of Vézelay’s work was financed
by the FPH, which also backed at the time the birth and the development
of the Alliance.
Right from the beginning, the Alliance determined
for itself a vocation, some elements of working methods, and a timetable.
A vocation: to contribute to defining and implementing
the great mutations highlighted in the Platform as inescapable.
Some elements of working methods:
1. To promote a gradual process, favoring at all times the interaction
between diversity and unity, and between the local and the global.
To combine three forms of approaches—three paths, so to speak:
the “geocultural” path, which symbolizes the diversity
of contexts, the “socioprofessional” path, which symbolizes
the diversity of socioprofessional spheres, and the “thematic”
path, which symbolizes the diversity of the challenges.
2. To move beyond analysis and denunciation toward producing proposals
and to base these proposals on concrete realities, innovations,
and experiences.
3. To maintain permanent interaction among the three approaches
and to highlight the connections among the proposals in an effort
to show the interdependence among the problems and the strategies
for change.
A timetable: the Platform proposed the organization of an “Earth
Citizens’ Assembly” in the year 2000. The actual outcome
was the “World Citizens Assembly” held in 2001.
The vocation, the working-method elements, and
the timetable of the Alliance defined a style and a state of mind
to start from. From then on, the Alliance was to be “invented
as it went along.”
Three periods can be identified within this first
“founding” stage of the Alliance (1994-2002):
- first steps (1994-1997);
- structuring attempts (1998-1999);
- elaboration of Proposal Papers; preparation and staging of
the World
Citizens Assembly (2000-2001).
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