The opening ceremony of the 2026 Nishan Forum on World Civilizations was held on September 28 in Qufu, Shandong Province. At the ceremony, Edmond Moukala, UNESCO Representative to Ghana and a national of the Republic of the Congo, delivered a keynote speech titled "Harnessing Civilizational Resilience for Global Governance."

Edmond Moukala said that standing at the birthplace of Confucius means standing at the intersection of five thousand years of human wisdom and a digital future full of unknown challenges. We are living in an era of "great reconfiguration": the old systems of the twentieth century are crumbling, and the new digital age calls for a renewed set of moral norms. The dominant global narrative equates modernization with Westernization, urging nations to abandon their inherent cultural foundations to fit standardized global models. Yet crises emerging in the early 2020s have proven that a standardized world is inherently fragile, and true resilience stems from cultural diversity. Against an increasingly fragmented global landscape, he identified three core spiritual pillars of Chinese civilization: benevolence, righteousness, and harmony. Under the forum's overarching theme of "Civilization, Order, and Justice," he proposed grounding Confucian ideals in practice through five governance dimensions: strategic institution-building, ethical justice, foundations of moral education, narrative mobilization, and care for people's livelihood.