29/03/2011 President
“The North-South Prize has a special meaning, which goes beyond being a simple reward. It is a symbol and a cause”, PACE President Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said today at the North-South Prize award ceremony in Lisbon. “It is a symbol of the one world in which we are all living, a world in which the North and the South, the East and the West, should be nothing more than geographical references”, he stressed. “But it is also a noble cause which aims at bridging gaps and uniting people across the globe around their most fundamental and cherished freedoms and rights,” he said.
The PACE President underlined the action, the political experience and the “huge moral authority” of the two prize-winners Louise Arbour – former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, as well as former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former Brazilian President. He also praised their commitment in favour of dialogue and understanding amongst cultures and religions, and recalled the holding in two weeks in Strasbourg, of a major debate on the religious dimension of inter-cultural dialogue, with the participation of religious leaders representing all the major faiths on the European continent.
Yesterday, Mr Çavuşoğlu met the Foreign Minister, the Speaker of Parliament, the Portuguese delegation to PACE, as well as the Portuguese High Commissioner for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue. Talks focused on the need to enhance inter-cultural dialogue and cooperation with neighbouring countries in the light of the revolutions in the Arab world, the economic crisis, the reform of the Council of Europe and of the PACE, and the EU accession to the European Convention of Human Rights.