Human Rights Across Cultural Dialogue

In the summer of 2008, the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute decided that the promotion of a human rights culture in Egypt and in Denmark would be one of four strategic aims. The decision reflected the institute’s will to engage actively in what we believed to be a important area for societal development and concern in both countries. In Denmark, the fallout of the so-called “cartoons crisis” continued to accentuate the debate about how small-scale European countries could or should integrate religious minorities – and in particular Muslim minorities. In Egypt, the controversial activism of the Muslim Brotherhood, and not least the group’s publication of the first draft of a political party platform, contributed to stirring up heated debates about religious minorities’ rights and obligations in Egypt.

In that context, the institute welcomed the initiative taken by one of the strongest Egyptian human rights organizations, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, to develop a format for an international conference on the topic, aiming to produce fruitful dialogue between human rights defenders, experts, researchers, and decision-makers from Egypt and Denmark. And so, under the title “Bridging the Cultural Divide”, DEDI provided a platform through which the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies in collaboration with a one of its strongest Danish counterparts, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, could develop the idea into a project. In 2009 the institute funded the proposal and in December 2010 the conference was held in Copenhagen, Denmark.