Resolution adopted by the General Assembly
57/249. Culture and development
The General Assembly,
Recalling its resolutions 41/187 of 8 December 1986, 46/158 of 19 December 1991, 51/179 of 16 December 1996, 52/197 of 18 December 1997, 53/184 of 15 December 1998 and 55/192 of 20 December 2000 on culture and development,
Encouraged by the positive international response to the results of the work of the World Commission on Culture and Development and of the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at Stockholm from 30 March to 2 April 1998,
Recalling its resolution 56/8 of 21 November 2001, by which it proclaimed 2002 as the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage,
Recalling also its resolution 53/22 of 4 November 1998 on the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations and its resolution 56/6 of 9 November 2001 on the Global Agenda for Dialogue among Civilizations containing the Programme of Action and the objectives, principles and participants thereof, and recognizing that, in the light of recent events, the United Nations should give greater weight and visibility to the theme of dialogue among civilizations, cultures and religions, since the protection of cultural diversity is closely linked to the larger framework of the dialogue among civilizations and cultures and its ability to achieve genuine mutual understanding, solidarity and cooperation,
Encouraged by the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (“Johannesburg Plan of Implementation”), adopted on 4 September 2002,1 and the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, also adopted on 4 September 2002, which urges the promotion of dialogue and cooperation among the world’s civilizations and peoples, irrespective of race, disabilities, religion, language, culture or tradition,
Underlining the fact that tolerance and respect for cultural diversity and universal promotion and protection of human rights, including the right to development, are mutually supportive, and recognizing that tolerance and respect for diversity effectively promote and are supported by, inter alia, the empowerment of women,
Emphasizing the need to enhance the potential of culture as a means of achieving prosperity, sustainable development and global peaceful coexistence,
1. Takes note of the report of the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on the implementation of resolution 55/192;
2. Notes with satisfaction the adoption by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the medium-term strategy for 2002–2007, which directs the work of the organization on two cross-cutting themes, namely, the eradication of poverty, especially extreme poverty, and the contribution of information and communication technologies to the development of education, science and culture and the construction of a knowledge society, and is based upon the notion that culture may contribute effectively to the reduction of poverty;
3. Welcomes the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at its thirty-first session on 2 November 2001,4 and also welcomes the main lines of the Action Plan5 for the implementation of the Declaration appended thereto;
4. Proclaims 21 May the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, echoing the World Day for Cultural Development commemorated during the World Decade for Cultural Development;
5. Invites all Member States, intergovernmental bodies, organizations of the United Nations system and relevant non-governmental organizations:
(a) To ensure, in cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the implementation of the Action Plan; (
b) To implement the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace adopted by the General Assembly, respectively, in its resolutions 53/243 A and B of 13 September 1999;
(c) To implement the Programme of Action of the Global Agenda for Dialogue among Civilizations contained in section B of resolution 56/6;
(d) To implement relevant provisions on cultural diversity of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation1 and the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development;
(e) To strengthen international cooperation and solidarity in supporting national efforts of developing countries:
(i) To gain access to new technologies;
(ii) To receive help in mastering information technologies with a view to encouraging the production, safeguarding and dissemination of diversified contents in the media and global information networks, and, to that end, to promote the role of public radio and television services in the development of audio-visual productions of good quality, in particular by fostering the establishment of cooperative mechanisms to facilitate their distribution;
(iii) To establish cultural industries that are viable and competitive at the national and international levels, in the face of the current imbalance in the flow and exchange of cultural goods at the global level;
(f) To assist in the emergence or consolidation of cultural industries in the developing countries, and, to that end, to cooperate in developing the necessary infrastructures and skills, fostering the emergence of viable local markets;
(g) To acknowledge the importance of preserving and developing cultural heritage, including by encouraging the strengthening of domestic policies in the fields of protection, incentive and promotion of the various cultures, mainly the most vulnerable;
(h) To formulate policies pertaining to tangible and intangible cultural heritage, taking into account, in particular, resolution 56/8, by which the Assembly proclaimed 2002 as the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage;
(i) To assess the interconnection between culture and development and the elimination of poverty in the context of the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997–2006);
(j) To raise public awareness of the value and importance of cultural diversity, and, in particular, to encourage, through education and the media, knowledge of the positive value of cultural diversity, inter alia, as regards languages;
(k) Within the framework of the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People and based on the main lines of the Action Plan, to strengthen efforts towards the prioritization of the adoption of national policies that recognize the contribution of traditional knowledge, particularly with regard to environmental protection and the management of natural resources, fostering synergies between modern science and local knowledge and recognizing the traditional and direct dependence on renewable resources and ecosystems, including in the form of sustainable harvesting, that is essential to the cultural, economic and physical wellbeing of indigenous people and their communities;
6. Encourages the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to continue its work to promote greater awareness of the crucial relationship between culture and development and the important role of information and communication technologies in this relationship;
7. Also encourages the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in conjunction, as appropriate, with other relevant United Nations bodies and multilateral development institutions, to continue to provide support, upon request, to developing countries, in particular as regards national capacitybuilding and access to information and communication technologies, for the implementation of international cultural conventions, including with regard to conservation of heritage and the protection of cultural property, and for the return or restitution of cultural property, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 56/97 of 14 December 2001, on the return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin;
8. Requests the Secretary-General, in consultation with the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and other relevant United Nations bodies and multilateral development institutions, to submit to the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session a progress report on the implementation of the present resolution.
78th plenary meeting
20 December 2002
Further to the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity by UNESCO on November 2001, the General Assembly, in Resolution 57/249, welcomed the Declaration and the main lines of an Action Plan for its implementation, and proclaimed 21 May the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.
The Day provides us with an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the values of cultural diversity and to learn to “live together” better. UNESCO continues to promote greater awareness of the crucial relationship between culture and development and the important role of information and communication technologies in this relationship.
US Secretary of State commends Alliance OF Civilizations
Speaking in New York City on September 11,
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton underlined the importance of the UN Alliance of Civilizations.
"As President Obama noted in his historic speech in Cairo, faith should bring us together. That's why we have welcomed international efforts such as Turkey and Spain's leadership in the Alliance of Civilizations" said Mrs. Clinton.
Her remarks were made on the occasion of the Roosevelt Institute's Four Freedoms Medals Gala Dinner. They follow President Obama's own remarks about the Alliance of Civilizations in his Cairo speech in June 2009.
Global Issues
From the suffering of the Second World War emerged a new international meeting place, where the countries and peoples of the world could work together to promote peace and cooperation, economic and social development, and a global society guided by a clear vision, and codified by international law. That meeting place was the United Nations, and the system of related bodies born with and from it, known today as the UN family or UN system.
Over the years, the United Nations system has grappled with those uniquely global problems which cannot be adequately addressed by any one country alone, and which require cooperative efforts. These are the Global Issues on the United Nations Agenda. Here, on this website, we offer an overview of some of these issues, and guide you to places on the World Wide Web where you can gain additional information on each issue. We hope this deepens your knowledge and understanding of these issues, and what the United Nations is doing to address them.
21 May: World Day for Cultural Diversity, for Dialogue and Development
Further to the adoption of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in November 2001, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 21 May as World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (Resolution 57/249).
The Day will provide us with an opportunity to deepen understanding of the values of Cultural Diversity and to learn to “live together” better. This is why UNESCO appeals to the Member States as well as to all civil society to celebrate this World Day by involving as many actors and partners as possible.
UNESCO UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Adopted by 31 st. Sessionof the General Conference of UNESCO
Paris, 2 November 2001.
The cultural wealth of the world is its diversity in dialogue" The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity was adopted unanimously in a most unusual context. It came in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, and the UNESCO General Conference, which was meeting for its 31st. session, was the first ministerial-level meeting to be held after those terrible events. It was an opportunity for States to reaffirm their conviction that intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of peace and to reject outright the theory of the inevitable clash of cultures and civilizations
Such a wide-ranging instrument is a first for the International community.
It raises cultural diversity to the leve! of ''the common heritage of humanity", ''as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature" and makes its defence an ethical imperative indissociable from respect for the dignity of the individual.
The Declaration aims both to preserve cultural diversity as a living, and thus renewable treasure that must not be perceived as being unchanging heritage but as a process guaranteeing the survival of humanity; and to prevent segregation and fundamentalism which, in the name of cultural differences, would sanctify those differences and so counter the message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration makes it clear that each individual must acknowledge not only otherness in al! its forms but also the plurality of his or her own identity, within societies that are themselves plural.
Only in this way can cultural diversity be preserved as an adaptive process and as a capacity for expression, creation and innovation. The debate between those countries which would like to defend cultural goods and services ''which, as vectors of identity, values and meaning, must not be treated as mere commodities or consumer goods", and those which would hope to promote cultural rights has thus been supassed, with the two approaches brought together by the Declaration, which has highlighted the causal link uniting two complementary attitudes One cannot exist without the other.The Declaration, accompanied by the main lines of an acton plan, can be an outstanding tool for development, capable of humanizing globalization.
Of course, it lays down not instructions but general guidelines to be turned into ground-breaking policies by Member States in their specific contexts, in partnership with the private sector and civill society.
This Declaration, which sets against inward-looking fundamentalism the prospect of a more open, creative and democratic world, is now one of the founding texts of the new ethics promoted by UNESCO in the early twenty- first century. My hope is that one day it may acquire the same force as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Koïchiro Matsuura Director General
2009 World Cultural Diversity Festival
A major challenge of the Twenty-First Century is to make diversity out of difference, that is to say, to promote unity by cultivating – and not by reducing – human complexity.
Up until now, the forces of unity have tended to subject our planet to a simplified order, be it for ideological, imperialistic or economic purposes. Each of these efforts has missed the target and left bitter traces. It is now time to build kinship on the basis of plurality, starting with the rich diversity of humankind.
Culture is essential to this endeavor, as witnessed by the scope of world heritage sites and artworks and by the originality of creations which keep uniformity at bay.
Culture is at the heart of the Diversity Festival organized by UNESCO in many regions of the world, from 11 to 22 May 2009, to celebrate World Day for Cultural Diversity, for Dialogue and Development.
The Festival practices what it preaches, since it is made up of extremely diverse events, held in a multiplicity of places and countries from Paris to São Paulo. Far from proposing a preconceived vision, it calls on each and everyone to freely express a living.
Message from Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO,
on the occasion of World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 21 May, 2009
The annual celebration of 21 May as World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development provides an opportunity to reaffirm UNESCO’s constitutional mandate to preserve “the independence, integrity and fruitful diversity of the cultures” of its Member States and promote the “democratic principles of dignity, equality and mutual respect” through education, the sciences, culture and communication.
UNESCO believes that cultures are not monolithic but interdependent, resulting from mutual exchanges and borrowings, and that this diversity is a source of strength and unity. This belief is powerfully expressed in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of 2001, which proclaims that cultural diversity, “widens the range of options open to everyone; it is one of the roots of development, understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, moral and spiritual existence.”
Yet, we see daily evidence of the destabilizing forces of ignorance and mistrust and of the magnitude of the task ahead of us. The management of cultural diversity is undoubtedly one of the central challenges facing many societies today as they work to build inclusive and pluralistic knowledge societies.
The International Festival of Cultural Diversity, being organized by UNESCO at its headquarters in Paris and in many countries around the world from 11 to 22 May 2009, aims to raise awareness of the messages of diversity, freedom and human dignity, to open hearts and minds, and to rekindle hope all around the world.
On World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 2009, let us all commit to promoting and protecting the world’s cultural diversity, fostering dialogue and building a sustainable future for everyone.
Koïchiro Matsuura
Cultural Diversity
In its rich diversity, culture has intrinsic value for development as well as social cohesion and peace.
Cultural diversity is a driving force of development, not only in respect of economic growth, but also as a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual life. This is captured in the seven culture conventions, which provide a solid basis for the promotion of cultural diversity. Cultural diversity is thus an asset that is indispensable for poverty reduction and the achievement of sustainable development.
At the same time, acceptance and recognition of cultural diversity – in particular through innovative use of media and ICTs – are conducive to dialogue among civilizations and cultures, respect and mutual understanding.
The promotion of cultural diversity – the "common humanity heritage" according to the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, 2001 – and its corollary dialogue, has become one of the most pressing contemporary issues and, for this reason, is central to the Organization’s mandate.
Action in favour of cultural diversity
The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity represents a major step towards the recognition of cultural diversity as a key factor of sustainable development. However, the Declaration will serve no purpose unless it is translated into action. What is UNESCO doing to promote cultural diversity?
Ensure harmonious coexistence and willingness to live together peacefully
* Respecting Human Rights
* Promoting Intercultural Dialogue
* The Fight against Racism
* Action in favour of Indigenous Peoples Cultural
* Approach to HIV-AIDS
Defend diverse creativity and the multiplicity of cultural expressions
* Tangible Heritage
* Intangible Heritage
* Endangered languages
* Local Indigenous Knowledge on Nature
* Contemporary Cultural Expressions: cultural goods and services
* Crafts
* Creative Content: Radio, Television and New Media
* Multilingualism in Cyberspace
*Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Education
Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity
UNESCO's Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity explores new ways to turn creativity in developing countries into sustainable cultural industries. It aims to promote cultural diversity, support economic development and encourage job creation in a range of fields including music, publishing, cinema, crafts and the performing arts.
Launched as a pilot project in 2002, the Global Alliance will now use its experience in developing public-private partnerships to support programmes and activities implemented under the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. We would like to extend our gratitude to those who have participated in the Global Alliance Survey. The valuable input provided will surely assist the Global Alliance in defining its strategy and adapting its new platform to the needs of its stakeholders.
Sources:
http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/555/82/PDF/N0255582.pdf?OpenElement
http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/cultural_diversity/index.html
http://www.unaoc.org/content/view/409/73/lang,english/
http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=35636&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001271/127160m.pdf#page=10
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=39089&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001825/182524e.pdf
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=34321&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=24468&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html