The Coexistence Index (CI) is an instrument to measure levels of coexistence within a community, a society, or a country, and serves as a basis for comparison along with other social, political, and economic indices such as the GNP, or illiteracy and poverty indices.
The point is to contribute to including tolerance and communication factors within a community as fundamental elements to determine its social health and plan suitable policies, as well as intervention by the proper actors to improve it. Other concrete aims are to increase public perception of coexistence as a value against conflict or the vested interests leading to conflicts, to prevent future conflicts, and to facilitate self-evaluation among activists and field workers.
The CI was developed by The Coexistence Initiative (TCI), a resource and development center for activities and networks dealing with conflict resolution, community rebuilding, Human Rights, disarmament, education and tolerance, and other related themes.
The CI project was the result of a number meetings among a variety of actors involved in conflict resolution, Human Rights, peace building, and other similar themes, on the basis of research, field work, and political decision making At the moment it is being reviewed in order to determine how to follow up on it.
The IC takes into account a number of elements considered to be critical: defining objectives concisely; striking a balance between common factors and those that are specific to each community; promoting active participation in the communities involved.
There are plans for different types of IC products: a coexistence audit to be conducted in a participatory way aimed at a rapid gathering of simple data in order to promote and induce a public response, and a comparative index with a variable application depending on the different national or regional levels, which will facilitate comparisons and should include political education, project evaluation, and research.
This proposal was shared and discussed in the e-forum on a World Parliament for the Twenty-first Century. A complete file of the first stage of this forum is being put together by the forum facilitation team. You can find this forum here
The Coexistence Initiative
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T: 1-212-303 9445, F: 1-212-980 4027
http://www.coexistence.net
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