An intergovernmental organization (IGO) is an organization composed primarily of sovereign states, or of other organizations through formal treaties for handling/serving common interests and governed by international laws. IGOs are established by a treaty that acts as a charter creating the group. Treaties are formed when lawful representatives (governments) of several states go through a ratification process, providing the IGO with an international legal personality. Intergovernmental organizations are an important aspect of public international law.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization with observer status at the United Nations. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, promotion of human rights, freedom of the press, and free and fair elections. It employs around 3,460 people, mostly in its field operations but also in its secretariat in Vienna, Austria, and its institutions.
The Clash of Civilizations is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Sayyid Mohammad Khatami is an Iranian politician who served as the fifth president of Iran from 3 August 1997 to 3 August 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture from 1982 to 1992. Later, he was critical of the government of subsequent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is an international human rights non-governmental organization. It is a standing group of 60 eminent jurists—including senior judges, attorneys and academics—who work to develop national and international human rights standards through the law. Commissioners are known for their experience, knowledge and fundamental commitment to human rights. The composition of the Commission aims to reflect the geographical diversity of the world and its many legal systems.
Lyal S. Sunga is a well-known specialist on international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.
The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) is an initiative that attempts to "galvanize international action against extremism" through the forging of international, intercultural and interreligious dialogue and cooperation. The Alliance places a particular emphasis on defusing tensions between the Western and Islamic worlds.
William Emmanuel Rappard was a Swiss academic and diplomat.
Hans Köchler is a retired professor of philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations. In his general philosophical outlook he is influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, his legal thinking has been shaped by the approach of Kelsen. Köchler has made contributions to phenomenology and philosophical anthropology and has developed a hermeneutics of trans-cultural understanding that has influenced the discourse on the relations between Islam and the West.
Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington's theory of a Clash of Civilizations. The term was initially used by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler who in 1972, in a letter to UNESCO, had suggested the idea of an international conference on the "dialogue between different civilizations" and had organized, in 1974, a first international conference on the role of intercultural dialogue with the support and under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Manfred Nowak is an Austrian human rights lawyer, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the European Inter-University Center for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) in Venice, Italy; Professor of International Human Rights and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and a former judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2016, he was appointed Independent Expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
The International Relations and Security Network (ISN) was part of the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which is located in Zurich, Switzerland. It was an online information service that provided a range of open access products and resources that concentrated on international relations (IR) and security studies. In 2016, the ISN ceased to be a stand-alone project and was fully integrated into its parent organization as CSS Resources.
Geneva Call is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. It is currently focusing its efforts on banning the use of anti-personnel mines, protecting children from the effects of armed conflict, prohibiting sexual violence in armed conflict, working towards the elimination of gender discrimination and building armed non-State actors’ knowledge and implementation of broad International Humanitarian Law (IHL) rules.
Global Justice or Global Revenge? International Criminal Justice at the Crossroads (2003) is a book by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler.
Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission stemmed from the dispute between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Libya concerning arrangements for the trial of two Libyans accused of causing the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.
Ulrike Lunacek is an Austrian politician who served as State Secretary for Cultural Affairs in the government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in 2020. She is a member of the Austrian Green party The Greens – The Green Alternative, part of the European Green Party.
The Muslim Jewish Conference (MJC) is an annual inter-cultural, inter-religious conference based in Vienna. MJC is a dialogue and leadership project that targets future leaders from sectors of economics, academics and politics in the start of their careers.
Ambassador Ersin Erçin is a senior Turkish diplomat, with an extensive experience in multilateral diplomacy particularly on matters of international, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security, disarmament, and economic and environmental security.
Global Network for Rights and Development is a Norwegian non-governmental human rights organization established in June 2008. It was declared bankrupt in 2016. While operational, the organization focused on advancing the rights of refugees, poverty eradication, women's empowerment, and good governance, most notably in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute is an think tank which receives funding from the Russian government. Its headquarters is located in Berlin, with representative offices are located in Moscow and Vienna. It is also planned to open an office in India in 2018. The Institute carries out research into issues concerning international relations and international security. The subjects at the forefront of the Institute's activities are East and West, and issues related to the war against terrorism, infrastructure development, the search for alternative models for economic development, and the preservation of human values. Employed in the Institute's research activities is the so-called "Index of Dialogue" which enables the propensity towards conflict in any given area to be assessed, including the risk of it escalating to the "hotspot" stage.
