A/HRC/6/6 page 18 64. The Alliance of Civilizations was launched by former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, at the initiative of the Prime Ministers of Spain and Turkey on the occasion of the fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly. A leading role was played by Federico Mayor, former Director-General of UNESCO. This initiative seeks to forge collective political will and mobilize concerted action at the institutional and civil society levels to overcome the prejudice, misperceptions and polarization that militate against such a consensus, in particular in the exacerbation of mutual suspicion, fear and misunderstanding between Islamic and Western societies. The Alliance of Civilizations aims at overcoming these tensions through non-military means, using as main grounds cooperation in the fight against terrorism, the correction of the economic inequalities and the promotion of cultural dialogue. In April 2007, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, designated Jorge Sampaio, the former President of Portugal, as High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations. 65. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has dealt extensively with the issue of Islamophobia in recent meetings, creating in the context of the OIC 10-year programme of action, the Observatory on Islamophobia at the General Secretariat in 2006. The Observatory was tasked to monitor and document all activities indicating hatred of Islam around the world. In May 2007, the thirty-fourth session of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers adopted the Islamabad Declaration, which condemns the growing trend of Islamophobia and systematic discrimination against the adherents of Islam and calls upon the international community to prevent incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims and take effective measures to combat defamation of religions and acts of negative stereotyping of people based on religion, belief or ethnicity. 66. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the recent appointment, by President George W. Bush, of a Special Envoy for the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and hopes that this decision will contribute to furthering the dialogue, understanding and cooperation between the United States of America and OIC and will constitute an important step in reassessing post-9/11 policies and measures which may have directly or indirectly contributed to Islamophobia and ultimately in building the most urgent bridge between the West and the Islamic world. The Special Rapporteur expresses the hope that the European Union, in line with its most recent initiatives, will take the same symbolic decision. 67. Indeed significant efforts have been made at the European Union level, in particular since the establishment of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in 1997. On the basis of data collected, the EUMC has studied the extent and development of manifestations of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and related intolerance, designed strategies to combat racism and highlighted examples of good practices regarding the integration of migrants and ethnic and religious minority groups in the EU member States. On 1 March 2007 the EUMC became the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). The Special Rapporteur strongly hopes that the excellent cooperation established with EUMC and its very dedicated Director, Beate Winkler, will be strengthened with the new Agency and that the combat against racism will remain a central dimension of its mandate. 68. The Council of Europe has also dealt with such phenomena in the past years. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) was set up following a decision of the first Summit of Heads of State and Government of the member States of the Council of Europe, held in Vienna in October 1993, and strengthened by a decision of the second Summit