KEY ROLE OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL
ORGANISATIONS IN THE CULTURE OF PEACE HIGHLIGHTED AT UNESCO SYMPOSIUM
Paris, November 27 (No.2000-128)
- More than
400 people representing over 130 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) took part
in a symposium on November 24-25 at UNESCO Headquarters entitled The Culture
of Peace: An Idea in Action, designed to assess the progress of the global
movement for a culture of peace and non-violence, which was launched at the
start of the year.
At the end of this
International Year for a Culture of Peace, the NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee
wanted to assess the various activities undertaken by the NGOs throughout the
year, take stock of the progress made for the culture of peace worldwide and,
finally, look to the future in order to strengthen co-operation between the NGOs
and UNESCO in this field before the start of the International Decade for a
Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010).
Apart from the plenary
sessions, the symposium featured eight workshops which discussed the eight
themes of the programme of action of the United Nations: fostering a culture of
peace through education; promoting sustainable economic and social development;
promoting respect for all human rights; fostering democratic participation;
ensuring equality between men and women; advancing understanding, tolerance and
solidarity; supporting participatory communication and the free flow of
information and knowledge, and, finally, promoting international peace and
solidarity.
Opening the symposium on
November 24, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, welcomed the success of
the International Year for a Culture of Peace. He recalled that the Declaration
and the Programme of Action adopted by the General Assembly of the United
Nations in September 1999 at the launch of the Year had invited NGOs “to
strengthen their partnership links between themselves, governments and the
United Nations system, to give meaning to a genuine global movement for a
culture of peace.”
The NGOs went into action to
distribute the Manifesto 2000, written by Nobel Peace Prize laureates and
UNESCO, which calls on individuals to make the search for peace and non-violence
part of their daily lives. Mr Matsuura added: “Today, one month before the end
of 2000, we can be sure that this call has been heeded. Seventy-two million
people, more than a hundredth of the world’s population, have signed Manifesto
2000. They have made a commitment to translate into practice in their daily
lives the principles which foster a genuine culture of peace.”
The Director-General said that
in its Programme and Budget for the next biennium, UNESCO had identified five
priorities which make a direct contribution to building a culture of peace:
basic education; water resources and ecosystems; cultural diversity and
pluralism and inter-cultural dialogue; access to information, in particular
information in the public domain, and, finally, the ethics of science and
technology. He concluded by stressing the importance of involving civil
society through the NGOs and of the co-operation between UNESCO and the NGOs.
“The term ‘partnership’ evokes diversity, complementary action and
increased resources,” he said.
Three young people - Korean,
Algerian and French - representing the Appeal of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates for
the Children Foundation, then addressed the symposium. They notably drew the
participants’ attention to the risks of globalisation and called on them to
end an economic war which they said causes the deaths of many children. Their
concluding sentence encapsulated the spirit of the entire symposium: “Violence
will not work.”
The next debate began with an
introduction on the history of the culture of peace, which has its roots in
philosophy and religion, as Christian Renoux of the International Fellowship of
Reconciliation (IFOR) said. The debate then turned to the notion of non-violence
and commitment to peace, with the participation of Vassilis Vassilikos, the
Permanent Representative of Greece to UNESCO and author of the political novel Z;
Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo from Burkina Faso; and Hildegard Goss-Mayr, from
Austria, the Honorary President of IFOR. The session was moderated by Dan
Haulica, President of the NGO Committee of UNESCO’s Executive Board.
The roundtable that followed
tackled themes such as the concept of military power in relation to the idea of
democracy, but also the need for intervention on humanitarian grounds and in
particular emergency assistance versus long-term aid. Anwarul Karim Chowdhury,
the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations,
where he has been and remains one of the strongest advocates of the culture of
peace, took part in the roundtable.
After reminding the
participants that the 20<>th century had
witnessed both humanity’s darkest hours as well as the birth of pacifist
movements, Mr Chowdhury added that those who have a role to play in promoting
the culture of peace had been identified, notably in civil society. He
said a great alliance was needed to secure the success of the culture of peace.
UNESCO has begun this now unstoppable movement. However, unless the NGOs play a
pro-active role, there will be no support for international programmes and no
encouragement for individuals, Mr Chowdhury warned.
The workshops proved to be
extremely productive and led to conclusions and concrete recommendations that
Monique Fouilhoux, President of the NGO-UNESCO Liaison Committee, summed up
around three main points: the need to inform, the need to educate and the need
to engage in dialogue and exchange ideas. The need to inform involved
distributing the Manifesto 2000 and also “speeding up the exchange and
sharing of information” and a greater involvement of NGOs working in the
cultural field. The need to educate, Ms Fouilhoux said, meant “strengthening
the role of schools as well as that of the family”. Finally, the need to
engage in dialogue and exchange ideas requires taking measures to ensure that
each and everyone of us remembers what happened in the past; as well as breaking
down language barriers by improving communication.
Finally, Françoise Rivière,
the Executive Director of the Executive Office of the Director-General,
highlighted UNESCO’s involvement in and mobilisation for the culture of peace.
Ms Rivière stressed that the Organization had already made a large contribution
to the culture of peace, but that it should now face the major challenge of
incorporating the culture of peace into all of its activities, such as the
environment and water utilisation as well as in heritage preservation. Giving as
examples the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia and the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, she
said: “We are no longer carrying out restoration for its own sake, but because
the sites represent the plurality of humanity.” Ms Rivière said that
instilling a culture of peace, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
disappearance of pronounced military tension between East and West, involves
building “civil peace between people of different groups.”
Another meeting organised
within the framework of the International Year for a Culture of Peace is taking
place today and tomorrow at UNESCO Headquarters. It is the first International
Meeting of Directors of the World Peace Research and Training Institutions, with
the theme “What agenda for human security in the 21st century?” On the
subject, Mr Matsuura said: “While the Cold War belongs to the past, the same
cannot be said of the numerous territorial, ethnic and religious conflicts that
persist in various parts of the world, thriving on intolerance, discrimination,
the damage of the environment and extreme poverty.”
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