Our Intercultural Dialogue HUB aims at acting as a hub, gathering all initiatives and resources related to Intercultural Dialogue in Europe, emerging from youth groups, youth networks, civil society organisations, academic centers and universities, making them available and inspiring for everyone.

The goal of international initiatives promoting duties is to reinforce the unquestionable symbolic value of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by creating a broader and deeper universal consensus. The interest in strengthening the long tradition of human rights implies admitting that these rights are not forever fossilised in the Enlightenment thinking that gave birth to them, nor in the historical conditions of their birth. We can say that they are a concept that goes beyond any conception of rights, hence their universal vocation and capacity to be transformed and enriched – although they are not an infinitely malleable concept. Understood as normative demands of human dignity, human rights can be assumed and reinterpreted in many ways, as there are always critical elements in the face of any attempt at appropriation by a given culture.

The EU 2010 White Paper Series "Intercultural Dialogue in the Framework of European Human Rights Protection" highlights the importance and analyses the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in terms of the promotion of cultural diversity, as championed by the Council of Europe particularly through its "White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue" (2008). For first time in EU the Court's views on the governance principles and preconditions of intercultural dialogue - and particularly the case law on freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and freedom of association and assembly - provide guidelines for politicians, academics and practitioners alike.

A number of international organisations, including the EU, the Council of Europe and the United Nations, started championing intercultural dialogue formats for cultural diversity management. Intercultural dialogue is framed as an alternative policy response to globalisation-induced challenges of cultural diversity. It gained momentum as an integration instrument in the 2000s, superseding multiculturalism and assimilation-oriented policies, which were declared as failed.  

Intercultural dialogue encourages readiness to question well established value-based certainties by bringing reason, emotion and creativity into play in order to find new shared understandings.