Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Member of the Council of Ministers and Minister for Tolerance, launched on Wednesday the “#TweetForTolerance” competition that aims to become a platform in which all the people of the Arab region and the Middle East can express their views and ideas about coexistence, tolerance, human fraternity, respect for others, acceptance of differences, and other human values, and reject all forms of extremism, intolerance and violence.

The contest is being held in cooperation between the Ministry of Tolerance and the Arab Youth Centre in Abu Dhabi and the Twitter office in the Middle East and North Africa. The competition gives the opportunity for participants to express their vision of tolerance in three languages: Arabic, English and French.

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This came during the virtual press conference organised by the Ministry of Tolerance on Wednesday, where the launch of the innovative competition was officially announced in partnership with the social networking platform, Twitter, for all the youth of the Arab world. This was done in the presence of Afra Al Sabri, Director General of the Minister of Tolerance Office, a number of the leaders of the Ministry, more than 50 young people from different Arab countries, the leaders of the Arab Youth Centre and Twitter’s Middle East office representatives.

Sheikh Nahyan added that the launch of the “#TweetForTolerance” competition in cooperation with Twitter is just the beginning of the launch of the Ministry’s interactive activities regarding Arab youth in all Arab sister countries. The competition will introduce a new platform that carries messages and ideas in the area of tolerance and human brotherhood in complete freedom without any mandate. In order to participate, up to three people can create or use an existing Twitter account through which they can share impactful content around tolerance and compassion.

Participants in the virtual conference.

He said that a guide will be provided for all competition participants that includes the conditions, method of participation and the concepts of tolerance, to encourage young talent and stimulate their creative capabilities in creating meaningful content to spread the values of tolerance and human fraternity on social media (Twitter), stressing that the competition will be launched for two weeks from the moment of its launch.

With regard to the conditions for participation in the competition, Sheikh Nahyan stressed that these are merely procedural conditions that provide an opportunity for everyone to express their opinion freely and creatively, allowing the message to be spread across the largest possible audience.

These conditions state that the participant should be of Arabic nationality, residing in the Middle East or North Africa and should use the competition hashtag #TweetForTolerance, #tweet_pour_la tolérance. To join the competition, participants should follow the Ministry’s account @uaetolerance, and “Like” the competition’s tweet. The criteria for selecting the winning account will focus only on key factors including the impact it creates, the level of creativity, the amount of engagement around it, and the visuals it contains.

For the general criteria for participation in the competition, Sheikh Nahyan pointed out the importance of including innovative content on Twitter whether in the form of an image, video, or text, in addition to promoting one of the concepts that the Ministry is working on spreading among the youth including acquaintance. This is to understand and accept the views of others, dialogue and teamwork that demonstrate the confidence of the members of the group with one another when working on a common goal. It also ensures that participants mutually exchange experiences with each other, share responsibility and collaborate with regard to problem solving, in addition to the concept of human fraternity, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and sympathy, which mean that we should accept ourselves and our faults and deal with them kindly without focusing on negative feelings and phrases.

Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak announced at the beginning of the conference that the Ministry of Tolerance recently trained a large group of Champions of Tolerance from the various nationalities residing in the UAE.

He said that the next stage of youth orientation aims to protect future generations against extremism, intolerance and hatred, to support their authentic human and societal values that call for tolerance, coexistence, respect for others and acceptance of differences.