International Day of Tolerance - Article Example

The move to protect the beauty and relevance of diversity and variety is being repeated by UNESCO after it was first started in 1995. It would be noted that in 1995, the UNESCO celebrated International Day of Tolerance to bring attention to the world on the need for cultural diversity and variety to be respected, as variety is the spice of life. On the 16th of November, 2014, the International Day of Tolerance is being celebrated again. Like it has always been, the focus of the day is going to be on cultural diversity and the need to respect the views and differences that exist in the cultures of different people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds. This article, therefore, reflects on the topic of tolerance as a global phenomenon of importance.
Donna (2013) notes that “according to the United Nations, tolerance is the capacity to accept differences, respect one another and stand up for what one knows is right.” From this definition, it would be realized that tolerance is a multi-variant phenomenon that encompasses several aspects of human existence and behavior. Firstly, tolerance has to do with acceptability, where acceptability will be seen as the ability to live with the fact that other people have the right to do things differently (Heysse, 2010). tolerance also has to do with respecting one another, where there is the realization that beyond acceptance, we must look at the differences that other people practice as dignifying and worthy of practicing. Finally, there is an aspect of tolerance that gives attention to the ability to stand for what one believes; meaning that tolerance must also do with us accepting what we believe in.
There are several reasons for which tolerance must be practiced among all people. This is because tolerance is important for many reasons, among which is the fact that it helps in achieving and promoting peace. According to the United Nations, the presence of acrimony and lack of understanding is what often takes away peace from among people and results in conflict and cases of war (Smith, 2008). Meanwhile, when there is tolerance, there is respect for the views of other people, without any acts of malice and show of supremacy. Indeed, there are several exemplifications of acts of war and conflicts that arose between factions as a result of a lack of appreciation for one other’s socio-political views (Scheffler, 2010). Should there be tolerance among such groups the acrimony that arose would not have existed because there would have been peace.
Presently, there are several cases of non-tolerance that plague and fight against the peace of the world. The commonest of these could be mentioned as racism and genocide. Through racism, people are looked down upon and discriminated against on the grounds of their race and ethnic background. As of 16th November 2014 approaches and for that matter International Day of Tolerance approaches, it is important that occurring situations where a section sect of people will see themselves as superior over others and thus look down over them become a thing of the past. There are also studies to the effect that the worse forms of racism and tribal hatred are the recipes for genocide (Heysse, 2010). Generally, genocide has been defined as the intentional killing of a large group of people due to their ethnic or cultural background (UNESCO, 2012). With a global spirit of tolerance, the need to accept extreme levels of provocations resulting from cultural and ethnic differences would not exist.
Other forms of non-tolerance such as polarity, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia are all practices that retard global development. The benefit of the International Tolerance Day that we all await would therefore be very beneficial in terms of ensuring and consolidating the type of development we all expect and hope for in our world. Not long ago, there were a series of acts of terrorist acts that were fuelled by differences in geopolitical ideologies. Typical examples of these are the terrorist bombing in Somalia and the infamous September 11 attack. Due to the new global village phenomenon, once such magnitudes of attacks happen, it is the world at large that losses because once the growth and development of one part of the world become affected, the growth and development of the entire globe become equally affected. Read More