7 Cultural Diversity and Minorities
2 177 7 Cultural diversity and minorities Figure 7 A single flower does not make a garden, nor does a single bird bring spring. The Arab Human Development Report, 2003 7.1 Introduction1 Sitting in Egypt, eating Italian food, listening to French songs with a group of friends from Jordan, Lebanon, Spain or Sweden is becoming more and more commonplace for some young people. The traditional nation state, a territorial unit covering people who share a common national identity (historically, culturally or ethnically),2 faces new challenges – especially with people’s increasing mobility and globalisation, two factors which have helped to blur territorial boundaries and transform nation states, making them co-operate with each other. But still, the majority or dominant national cultures around the world are, in one way or another, imposing their identity on other groups at the nation state and global levels. Multi-ethnic environments are often faced with an official mono-culturalism that frequently comes at the expense of minority rights. According to the World directory Themes 178 of minorities, it is hard to pinpoint accurately the proportion of the world’s population that identifies themselves as minorities or as belonging to minority communities. However, this proportion is estimated to be above 10% and statistics suggest that more than 20% of the world’s population belongs to 6 000 different minority com- munities.3 As is the case all over the world, countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea contain diverse cultural, ethnic and religious groups.4 Berbers, Baha’is, Copts, Kurds, Saharawis, Roma, Jews, Indian, Alawites, Finns, Hungarians, Turks, Arabs, Catalans, Buddhists, Druze, Swedes, Italians and many more groups exist as minorities in some countries and regions, while they may belong to the “majority” in others.
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