DG/2001/127 Original: English UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION Address by Mr Koïchiro Matsuura Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the University of Latvia Riga, 8 December 2001
Madam Minister of Culture, Mr Rector, Distinguished Members of the National Commission, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1 Allow me to express to you, Madam Minister and Mr Rector, my great pleasure in being the guest today of this distinguished university. It is the largest institution of higher education of your country - and I understand, in the three Baltic states - and has, over the course of almost one century, established its reputation as an institution of quality. Your University, like many universities around the world, is an invaluable partner of UNESCO: to advance human learning, to promote research, to create and share new knowledge, and to educate new generations are commitments we all share, in order to shape the emerging knowledge society so that all of humankind can reap its benefits. Clear and concrete evidence of this partnership is the scientific cooperation between UNESCO and the International Centre of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, as well as the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Coastal Development, both operating from your University. More broadly, I must say that the development of Latvia s potential in UNESCO s fields of competence contributes to promoting education, science and culture worldwide. I am very pleased to note that, during my two years as Director-General of UNESCO, I have witnessed how the Latvian intellectual community enriches UNESCO s priorities. In this respect, I would like to mention the participation of high officials, including the President of the Republic and high level specialists, in very important UNESCO forums dealing with education for all, bioethics, cultural diversity, and intangible cultural heritage. But allow me first to express here my pleasure in being in Latvia. This is my first visit to Latvia and my second in the Baltic States. Last April, I visited Lithuania at the invitation of President Adamkus and I am looking forward to visiting Estonia in the near future. I am aware of the importance your country is attaching to relations with Estonia and Lithuania, with which it shares close historical ties forged over the centuries. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the winning of independence reinvigorated these geopolitical and cultural links between the three countries and, in a broader context, opened new avenues to the traditional circuits of exchange and communication in the Baltic Sea region. For its part, UNESCO applauds successful subregional programmes and activities such as the Baltic Sea Project in the framework of the Associated Schools Project, as well as the future role which the Latvian National Library is intended to play in the region.
2 Despite its small size, Latvia has played an important role in history. Your people have always succeeded in preserving and transmitting Latvia s culture and national language during a history marked by difficult periods of tension and violence. Latvians possess an ancient humanist and pluralist tradition from which they have drawn the ethical principles that underpin modern society. I am very honoured to visit your country in a year which is very symbolic of recent events and more distant history: the 10 th anniversary of independence and the 800 th anniversary of Riga, a prestigious town with deep European roots, which was included in the World Heritage List in 1997. On this occasion, UNESCO had the privilege to host in Paris, this spring, an exhibition on Latvian Modern Art which I was most honoured to open with you, Madam Minister. Allow me here to express my deep pleasure regarding a third commemoration that is dear to my heart, namely, the 10 th anniversary of your membership to UNESCO. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, As you probably know, our General Conference completed its 31st session a few weeks ago. For many fields, it was a very important session, particularly as it had to embody our vision of UNESCO s role and responsibilities at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The General Conference was entirely organized around the promotion of two principles that are as fundamental as they are inseparable universality and diversity and which have assumed new significance in our rapidly globalizing world. As the outlines emerge of an international system which, above and beyond the relations between States, is becoming genuinely global, the need is felt in many areas of the economy, society and culture to define new rules of action, to establish standards and principles of regulation, or quite simply of operation, which are acceptable to all, since they rest on values that are recognized and shared by all. I am convinced that UNESCO will thus be called upon in the years ahead to reinforce its standard-setting action the universal side but in conjunction with the acknowledgement of diversity: diversity of needs and aspirations, diversity of environments and ways of life, diversity of systems of thought and belief. The harmonious management of diversity, in a way that takes account of
3 ethics and the interests of humanity as a whole, is probably the most pressing challenge facing the international community. UNESCO is not alone in this project. It is merely one instrument among many. Neither can it be everything to everyone. We should therefore focus even more closely on that which is our comparative advantage, by making ourselves a focal point for identifying and disseminating the best global expertise, a platform for policy dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange, and a catalyst for international cooperation in our fields of competence. This is what has led me in my proposals, which have been broadly supported by all Member States, to concentrate efforts and resources for the next two years on five fields of action that are considered to be absolute priorities: basic education; water resources and ecosystems; the ethics of science and technology, in particular, bioethics, diversity, pluralism and intercultural dialogue and finally, access to information for all, especially in the public domain. The General Conference of UNESCO concluded its work by adopting various far reaching and future-oriented strategic documents for the Organization. Indeed, with the approval of the Medium-Term Strategy for 2002-2007, the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Heritage, the statements adopted by the Ministers of Science on bioethics, and the first meeting of the High Level Group on EFA and various other major resolutions pertaining to the Organization s future action during the biennium 2002-2003, UNESCO is today well on its way to tackling some of the key issues of our time, and also to do justice to their complexity. If in the normative and standard-setting area ground-breaking work has already been accomplished in various fields and will continue to be accomplished in others such as the protection of the intangible heritage and multilingualism in cyberspace I must also stress that the Organization will have to fulfil its key roles in carrying out many other challenging and complex tasks. Among those tasks, the pursuit of Education for All is essential and many steps have already been taken to ensure support from the international community, both in terms of financial support and technical expertise. In this area, the Member States also have stressed the importance of ensuring strong linkages between the goals of education and poverty eradication, a compelling ethical mission for the international community as a whole. We hope that, in the
4 forthcoming Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, commitments will be made to ensure the availability of the necessary resources for achieving the international development goals set out in the United Nations Millenium Declaration. Naturally, I am very pleased to note that Latvia has made substantive progress towards the preparation of its national EFA plan of action; moreover, it will host a sub-regional meeting on Education for All for the countries of the Baltic Sea region on 24-27 January 2002. These are positive and important developments. The deep concern expressed throughout the world today concerning human security one of the strategic objectives of the Medium-Term Strategy must also be linked to efforts in education and poverty eradication, for we can and must do more to respond to the acute needs of the most vulnerable societies and the most vulnerable segments of those societies. We are making special efforts in Africa, giving our support to the New Partnership for Africa s Development (NEPAD), and this at a moment when the deepening world recession risks aggravating the already very serious plight in which many of those countries find themselves. We organized a very important Seminar on Africa inviting African leaders to establish clearer links between NEPAD and UNESCO s programme. We are also closely linking the activities of the Organization to the cause of advancing sustainable development, especially in the framework of the preparation of the Rio + 10 Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg next year and through the activities of UNESCO s five intergovernemental and international scientific programmes. Furthermore, in all the vast areas already mentioned, UNESCO must also act today as a global knowledge broker and an empowerment agent, contributing to the application of information and communication technologies in education, science and culture in the building of a knowledge society. The technological chasm between the haves and the have-nots is widening dangerously and we must face this reality by combining traditional media and technologies, such as radio and television, with more demanding and expensive tools such as the Internet. Much can be done in that way for distance education, especially nonformal education approaches at the local level in favour of the most excluded and often isolated communities.
5 Madam Minister, Ladies and gentlemen, One of the major challenges ahead, as I said earlier, is to balance globalization with diversity, to give globalisation a human face, at the national, regional and international levels. In regard to promoting greater understanding between peoples and cultures, the Round Table on Dialogue among Civilizations held in New York in September 2000 was a major occasion for deepening international resolve. President Vike-Freiberga participated in the Round Table and contributed to its success. Follow-up to the Round Table included the International Youth Conference Dialogue among Civilizations within the Framework of Culture of Peace, held last May in Rezekne, Latvia. Sadly, while we were celebrating the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations, the world was confronted with a wave of unprecedented terrorist attacks on the United States that aimed also to trigger the ill-named clash of civilizations. It is ill-named because civilizations have always been built around a broad-based dialogue within themselves and with others. Indeed, dialogue, respect for the Other and shared values are inextricably linked and the nexus they represent must be strengthened urgently, in particular in the Plan of Action recently adopted by the United Nations General Assembly for the UN Decade of Dialogue among Civilizations as well as in the Plan of Action of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, recently adopted by UNESCO, as I already mentioned. If the Declaration is a milestone by itself, resulting from many fora and debates of the Ministers of Culture of the world, the Plan of Action will be a key modality for translating the thrust of the Declaration into concrete actions to be undertaken by each country. In that framework, UNESCO s concern for the protection of intangible heritage is also essential. If we must still strive to further clarify the very notion of intangible heritage as a pre-requisite for normative action, we must also continue to contribute to giving full recognition to the vivid expressions of living cultures, which make up intangible heritage in all its rich variety. This is the main aim of the initiative by UNESCO to give recognition to the Masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage. Another of the major challenges ahead undoubtedly lies in the field of bioethics. Recent developments related to the cloning of human embryos clearly show that we must strengthen and consolidate international coordination in this rapidly evolving field. UNESCO, which pioneered efforts resulting in the
6 Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, is actively pursuing its role in this area, through its International Bioethics Committee, by enhancing inter-agency cooperation within the UN system and also by initiating the drafting of a consolidated normative document on bioethics. Needless to say, it is necessary for every country to take urgent steps at the national level in order to ensure well-informed debates on the complex issues of bioethics and to sensitize the scientific and educational communities to the variety of challenges to be tackled. In this regard, the convening of a Central and Eastern European Seminar on Biothics in Vilnius next year will serve a most useful purpose. In conclusion, one could say that the agenda before us is both daunting and complex. UNESCO, I can honestly say today, is prepared to tackle that agenda, but it also needs to rely upon the full and daily support from its Member States, in order to make its strategic vision a reality in the coming years. We are confident that your country will unfailingly extend to us that support.