A/66/156 and concomitant human rights abuses. Intrareligious and interreligious communication must play a crucial role in this continuous endeavour. 26. Unfortunately, we sometimes witness the outbreak of violence despite existing inter-group communication, including interreligious communication. The most notorious examples are civil wars in which former neighbours, who used to live peacefully side by side over many years, attack one another violently. Not infrequently, such violence occurs under the auspices of ascribed or actual religious differences. Ample evidence indicates that communication per se does not provide a guarantee for peaceful coexistence between different groups of people. Yet it would be dangerous to use this disturbing observation as an argument for downplaying the significance of communication. Rather, what is needed are effective policies for improving the conditions for a sustainable culture of communication. 27. Research in social psychology has confirmed that communication is generally conducive to peaceful, non-violent relations, provided the following conditions are met: (a) people, or groups of individuals, encounter each other on an equal footing; (b) communication has a long-term perspective (i.e., it goes beyond mere superficial brief encounters); (c) elements of common interest are identified and clarified; (d) there is encouragement from society at large, including from political authorities, in the sense of a general appreciation of inter-group communication. 28. Human rights, in particular the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression and the principle of non-discrimination, can help to bring about circumstances of improved communication, which, in turn, enhance the general prospects for the practical enjoyment of human rights by all. The Special Rapporteur would like to reiterate a quote from Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former Secretary-General: “Human rights, when viewed from a universal perspective, force us to face the most demanding of all dialectics: the dialectics of identity and otherness, of ‘self’ and ‘other’. They teach us, in the most direct way, that we are, at one and the same time, the same and different” (see E/CN.4/2003/66, para. 119). 29. Many interlocutors with expertise in the field of interreligious dialogue have expressed to the Special Rapporteur their experience-based conviction that regular encounters between individuals and groups, if conducted on an equal footing and with a long-term perspective, foster a better mutual understanding across religious divides. At the same time, it is important to be aware of possible frustrations which participants in dialogue projects might experience. It can happen that, as a result of serious attempts at getting to know one another, people may feel they are further apart than they had previously thought. And yet it would be wrong to contend that communication in such cases has been useless or even an outright failure. On the contrary, however frustrating the experience of limits of mutual understanding may be, a concrete lack of understanding is still generally better than an abstract lack of understanding, as an abstract lack of understanding, in the sense of ascribing complete “otherness” to a person or group typically renders groups of people vulnerable to uninhibited and dangerous negative projections, including conspiracy theories and scapegoating communications in which participants experience the limits of mutual understanding are clearly preferable to an attitude of refusing communication in general. This clarification is intended to encourage people to continue dialogue projects even in the face of frustrating experiences that may at times occur. 11-41943 11