ABSTRACT
The Mediterranean region is a region of contrasts. In Braudel’s language it is a place
where ‘contradictions’ converge and diverge. On the positive side, it is a region of
rich cultural heritage; on the negative side, it is a region in which external and
internal political forces have systematically wounded the identity of its people and
their relationship with each other. From Rabat to Damascus, from Athens to Tunis,
from Lisbon to Nicosia, the Mediterranean region is a cultural, economic and social
area in search of a ‘common language of development’. Cultures differ but yet they
converge into a Mediterranean identity which scholars have defined in various
academic terms but so far have failed to institutionalize into educational
programmes of studies across lower and higher education institutions in the whole
region. The repercussions for this failure are that investments and exchanges in the
region have been sporadic and yielding insignificant economic results. Systems of
communication between the Mediterranean countries are far from the standards of
the ‘old’ continent. In fact, the Mediterranean region is a region of ‘silence’ broken
by the horrors of civil wars and conflicts ‘in the name of God’. It is a region of
invisible walls that divide the northern from the southern shores; that divide
religions; that divide systems of governance; that divide regional infrastructural
initiatives; that divide systems of education and training; that divide ordinary men
and women from achieving the same quality of life as that experienced in many parts
of the Western world. It is a region which, in many parts, still looks down upon its
own human resources and relies upon external influences and expertise in a
mediating role among its very own forces of development.
