So – What happened to the Danish-Jordanian Trade?

Some time ago I promised to publish the Danish-Jordanian trade figures for 2008 on this site.

Trade from Denmark to Jordan grew with 19% in 2008 and export to Denmark from Jordan 10,1%.

The numbers are still not impressive but the export figures are the highest to Jordan since 2003: 58 mio. USD export to Jordan (49 mio. USD in 2007) and 2 mio. USD export to Denmark in 2008. These figures do not take into account the trade that is reexported to other Arab countries – presumably mostly Iraq.

Adding services (only figures available from 2007) Jordan has a small trade surplus of 8 mio USD based on 31 mio. USD of Jordanian services to Denmark and 23 mio. USD of Danish services to Jordan.  

So 2008 turned out to be a good year for trade between Jordan and Denmark.

Beyond Stereotypes – follow-ups

Thank you very much for your participation in the “Beyond Stereotype” event last night. It got nicely crowded and a little bit to warm in the theatre. The feedback I got in the lounge afterwards was very positive.

Some would have liked to have had more time for discussion – and so would I – but after 2½ hours of sitting down (not counting Nabils exercises) on Thursday night I think it was the right decision to break up. After all it was 21.30 in the evening and the music was waiting outside.

The discussion can continue – either on this site, on 7iber.com or on some of the other bloggers site as on Roba’s which have drawn a large number of comments (some agressive) on Arab stereotyping. Unfortunately I didn’t notice this until today.

A couple of follow-ups from last night:

While some would have preferred more and more political discussion another person suggested to me, that the theme was too sensitive in this part of the world for a political discussion and that we instead should focus on the more sociological aspects of stereotyping like blogger Miriam did very nicely. In some ways I agree to this, since I believe it is important to understand stereotyping not only as a negative phenomenon but also as a sometimes positive and very useful way of dealing with people. Everybody is stereotyping – not because we want to – but because our brain can only process so much information at a given moment. The trick is to move from stereotyping (generalising) into individualisation. And that is what we do, whenever we get in personal contact with somebody. I know it is a cliché but that is one of the reasons that tourism – in particular individual tourism – is very important to fight negative stereotyping.

One the other hand as a principle I do not agree that some issues are too sensitive to be discussed – quite the opposite – those issues in particular need to be discussed. That being said, my 18 months in Jordan has taught me, that the reaction to discussing some topics is so aggressive and negative that it is – today – futile to even engage in such a discussion. But stereotyping is not one of those issues.

Will Omar Marzouk be back in Jordan? Most probably – we at the Embassy will try to do our best to get him back to do a complete stand-up show – hopefully this year. If we succeed we will let you know right away.

I didn’t get the possibility to comment on a sceptical remark from the audience about the lack of Danish negative stereotypes on the net. I do not claim scientific value to my research but I actually didn’t manage to find some really negative Danish stereotypes through Wiki or Google (only in English). Maybe it is because we are just a very small population of 5.5 million (like Jordan) or simply not interesting enough as an ethnic group. Even searching for Scandinavian negative stereotypes didn’t yield much. Didn’t look for specific Jordanian stereotypes – but I guess it will be difficult as well. These three links were the best I could find for Danish stereotypes.

What are Danes like?    Yahoo Answers     Yahoo Answers 2

If you can come up with links to “better” (negative) stereotypes of Danes please do.

Where can you watch the full version of “An Arab comes to Town”? I was told that it will be released on DVD soon – in the meantime the Embassy together with the Royal Film Commission are planning an open-air screening at the Film Commission late May early June – probably in connection with a workshop with the participation of the Directors Georg Larsen and Ahmad Ghosien. We will announce the screening in the same way as we did with the “Beyond Stereotype” – through the Royal Film Commission and 7iber.com

UPDATE: An article from Jordan Times about the event.

Beyond Stereotypes

As per request my speech from yesterday evening.

 

Check against delivery

Welcome

Thanks to Municipality and Mayor Omar for use of this hall – I know he has a weak spot for stand-up so he really had no other option than to accept.

Thanks to the Royal Film Commission for all their assistance and for use of their Facebook group. We look forward to do more with you in the future.

One the Danish side this event has been created by the Danish Center for Culture and Development – with humble financial assistance from the Foreign Ministry – so to them all the credit.

I think we have a good program for tonight and with Nabil’s gentle but firm guidance we will be in good hands.

Stereotypes – you know what – I happen to belong to a somewhat exclusive stereotype – the diplomat. 80 years ago a diplomat was stereotyped by his “good temper, good health and good looks”. That was a diplomat. Little later things became less rosy – then a diplomat was a “cookie pusher” – a guy doing nothing but attending tea parties. 

Today – in my country – a diplomat – for not speaking about an ambassador – is a person always wearing tuxedo, moving around in “elevated circles” and attending cocktail parties to no good. And thanks to an often repeated TV-commercial the diplomat favours a specific type of Swiss chocolate. This is the image that is regularly being portrayed in movies, news paper articles and on TV.

I don’t deny or shy away from the fact that I belong to the diplomat category – but I find the stereotyping a bit unfair. I didn’t bring my black tie; most of my working hours are spend on political, security or trade issues and meeting with people from all walks of life in all kinds of places; and I don’t like the chocolate. I am pretty sure that my fellow colleagues feel the same way.

But it is hard to fight a well grown stereotype. In the Foreign Service we have tried for years and years – without success. It doesn’t matter how many times we are seen publicly working under extreme, dangerous or unhealthy conditions. It doesn’t matter how much we try to be of assistance to Danish companies and Danish citizens in trouble or how successful we are in doing that. It actually doesn’t matter what we do in real life – the stereotype sticks like glue.

Luckily – it is one of the more benign stereotypes – we are only hurt on our egos and we can joke about our stereotyped selves:

My experience tells me very clearly that moving beyond stereotypes takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. 

While preparing for tonight I used Wikipedia to look-up stereotypes. Couldn’t find any Danish ones. A wider search gave a few hits – one person was asking where you could find negative Danish stereotypes – he had only found a few positive ones. I searched also in vain for the negative ones – the only thing that came up a couple of times was that Danes are not very open towards strangers. The only really negative one was one that I had found earlier here in Jordan – it is made by my favourite cartoonist Emad Hajjad. He takes the Danish symbol – the national flag and twists the cross in the flag to make a nazi swastika cross – equalizing all Danes with Nazis. Serious stuff.

Arab stereotypes you find in tons on the net. On Wiki It has its own article. The Arab American community talks about the “three B’s syndrome”.  Arabs in TV or movies are Bombers, Belly Dancers or Billionaires. I think I know which one is the dominant one today.

That brings me to touch on a very well known Arab/Muslim stereotyping of Danish origin – the Cartoon. I don’t want to recall the whole story about this – just to emphasise that for many reasons this probably got a lot more media exposure than it deserved from the outset.

But it did illustrate one thing very clearly. What we do and say in our own little back yard is picked-up and reacted to in ways that was not originally intended and that can get totally out of control. It reminded all of us in my country that we are living in a global village and that we are faced with a new challenge.

How do we find the right way between behaving as we are used to do and then taking into consideration that other people in the global village may have different norms and standards?  What if the others are seriously offended? Should we care?

Many people are worried and most do care. Let me give you some numbers from a recent poll from Gallup Institute for the Danish Youth Council: They asked a large sample of Danish youth: Do you agree that Denmark is hated in the Middle East because of the Cartoons: 65% did agree and only 10% did disagree. I wasn’t asked – but I would definitely disagree with that statement.

Anyway – a follow-up question was: Do you agree that it is particularly important to have a dialogue with youth in the Middle East to improve the perception of Denmark? 67% did agree, 7% did disagree. Others questions gave answers along the same line.

Most Danes also want to live peacefully with their neighbours in the global village. So we have to discuss how we are able to protect our own society as a society that develops through un-censored free speech and open exchange of views and leaves space for different political views and religious beliefs.

Can we in the future avoid all kind of speech that could lead to a new crisis? No. It is in the nature of a free open society that we cannot – and that we will not – control all things. Any individual or group has the possibility to say and do things that might be considered provocative or offensive somewhere. But what we can do is to discuss ways to avoid that such incidents – in particular if made with bad intentions – become crises between whole populations. We all have to work to ensure strength in our relations to avoid that small incidents can become and be used for major crises. We should work together to find ways. There are three keywords: dialogue, dialogue and dialogue. Maybe we should add a fourth – humour.

And dialogue and fun is what we hopefully will have in this hall tonight. I look forward to our discussion and I thank you for participating tonight.

Stand-up stereotypes…!

Please join me at the Al Hussein Cultural Center this Thursday the 16th at 7.00 PM for an evening with stand-up comedy, film, debate and hopefully animated and heated discussion about Arab and Danish stereotypes. DJ Shadi will entertain in the Lounge after the event. More on 7iber.com 

UPDATE: My good friend Ambassador Hasan Abu Nimeh has an interesting article in Jordan Times today. In the article he discuss integration, in particular integration of muslims living in Europe: “The key words are integration, respect for the rule of law on the part of the Muslim immigrant communities, and adequate consideration for the Muslims’ religious and cultural commitments, on the part of their hosts.”

Immigrants and descendants from Muslim countries are pleased with Denmark

Immigrants from Muslim countries are favourably disposed towards their lives in Denmark.

In a survey (in Danish) conducted by Statistics Denmark for CEPOS (Center for Political Studies) in 2007 (but for some unknown reason only published last weekend) 79 percent of the immigrants and 91 percent of the descendants from Muslim countries indicate that their lives are better in Denmark, compared to what it would have been in their countries of origin.

In the same survey 76 percent of the immigrants and 75 percent of the descendants answered, that they were satisfied with the general social situation in Denmark. This level is a par with that of ethnic Danes. This suggests that although the group is often presented as being very dissatisfied with the social conditions in Denmark, general satisfaction is dominating.

It is good news, partly because immigrants’ satisfaction in itself is positive, and partly because one must expect that this satisfaction is a better starting point for integration. In the survey, respondents were also asked about specific aspects of the Danish society compared to their countries of origin. The respondents are most satisfied with the economical conditions in Denmark compared to the countries of origin, and least satisfied with the rights of religious minorities. The assessment of the economic situation of the respondents seems to be the most significant for the level of overall satisfaction.