La diversité culturelle: une force collective au service du développement durable.

Par Mme Ingeborg Breines, Director

UNESCO - Geneva Liaison Office

Je tiens d’abord à féliciter l’Equipe de ContinentPremier pour la célébration de son deuxième anniversaire, ses engagements pour renforcer les media en Afrique et sur l’Afrique.

Je vais brièvement parler de deux choses ; directement et indirectement d’une haute importance pour l’Afrique :

1. des instruments normatifs sur la diversité culturelle
2. la Journée internationale sur la liberté de la presse

Il est important que les systèmes éducatifs, les industries culturelles, le cyberespace et la recherche scientifique développent des espaces pluriels où chaque langue, et chaque voix, puisse trouver, avec les valeurs et les connaissances qu’elle véhicule, les moyens de son existence et de son expression.

Dans les sociétés de l’avenir, le local et l’universel devront dialoguer sans cesse et sans hiérarchisation. La nouvelle convention de l’UNESCO sur la protection et la promotion de la diversité des expériences culturelles est importante dans ce contexte. L’UNESCO espère que la Convention sera ratifiée par les Pays membres dans les plus courts délais et que la Convention soit mise en œuvre pleinement dans respect des droits humains et de la libre circulation des idées par le mot et par l’image.

La diversité culturelle est en effet indissociable de l’économique, du social et de l’écologique et constitue une force collective au service du développement durable.

The Convention seeks to reaffirm the links between culture, development and dialogue and to create an innovative platform for international cultural cooperation; to this end, it reaffirms the sovereign right of States to elaborate cultural policies with a view “to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions” and “to create the conditions for cultures to flourish and to freely interact in a mutually beneficial manner” (Article 1).

The 3 May we will celebrate the World Press Freedom Day, this year in Sri Lanka, and the 2006 UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize will be given to the Lebanese journalist May Chidiac.

The theme of the WPFD this year is Media, Development and Poverty Alleviation.

“Free and independent media should be recognized as a key dimension of efforts to eradicate poverty, [one of the Millennium Development goals adopted by the international community in 2000] for two main reasons,” explains the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura in his message marking World Press Freedom Day. “First, free and independent media serve as a vehicle for sharing information in order to facilitate good governance, generate opportunities to gain access to essential services, promote accountability and counteract corruption, and develop the relationship between an informed, critical and participatory citizenry and responsive elected officials.”
“Second,” says the Director-General, “free and independent media are associated with a range of ‘goods’ or benefits that are highly relevant to the challenge of poverty eradication - including the recognition and strengthening of basic human rights, a stronger civil society, institutional change, political transparency, support to education, public health awareness (such as education campaigns on HIV and AIDS) and sustainable livelihoods. There is also a strong positive correlation between freedom of expression and higher incomes, lower infant mortality and increased adult literacy.”

In order to avoid clashes of ignorance and instead strengthen all opportunities for dialogue, the international community must respect both freedom of expression and religious beliefs.

Finally I would like to mention that a WSIS multi-stakeholder meeting on Action Line 8 is organized for all stakeholders on cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content in the Palais des Nations on 12 May. I am happy to invite you to that meeting.

Thank you for your attention.