UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC
Speech by Professor. Michael OMOLEWA
Chairman of the Executive Board,
____
AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION (UNESCO)
President of the UNESCO General Conference
and Permanent Delegate of Nigeria to UNESCO
during the Intergovernmental meeting of Experts
on the Preliminary Draft Convention concerning
the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural
Contents and Artistic Expressions
UNESCO Headquarters: Paris, France
20 September, 2004
Ambassador Hans-Heinrich Wrede
Director General,
Mr Koïcihro Matsuura
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors
and Permanent Delegates
Eminent Experts
Representatives of the
Intergovernmental Experts
Representatives of the Advisory Group
Representatives of the Civil Society,
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen
Brothers and Sisters
Dear Friends and colleagues
I consider it a great privilege to welcome you all to the opening of the first
intergovernmental meeting of experts on the Preliminary Draft Convention on
the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions.
When the General Conference adopted at its 32nd session Resolution 34,
inviting the Director-General to submit at its 33rd session the “draft of the
convention on cultural diversity” concerning the protection of the diversity of
cultural contents and artistic expression, it took a step, a momentous step
towards the furtherance of one of the ideas that where at the foundation of
UNESCO.
The work ahead of you is most challenging and will no doubt call for all
the skill and dexterity you can master in trying to fashion-out a text
universally accepted and efficient for meeting the expectation of the
international community.
If you succeed, or should l say if we succeed in our work for the
preparation and finalization of this particular convention we would have
knocked-in one of the final nails in the coffin of “that ignorance of each
other’s ways and lives that have been a common cause throughout the history of
mankind and that suspicion and mistrust between peoples of the world through
which their differences have all-too-often broken into war”.
You might justifiable call the above, echoes from our constitution. You will
indeed be right if you do but we only have to look around us today to realize
how very topical it still is: we are still battered by ignorance and suspicion in our
dealing one with another.
The importance of the responsibility given to UNESCO for the preparation
of this convention therefore, stares us in the face as we note how far
we still are from the attainment of the ideals that nurtured the creation of our
organization.
But we have cause for hope. For we can recognize the evolution of
international thinking from the old consideration of cultural difference as
excuses for lack of tolerance and even conflict, to the situation today, where we
have come to assume our differences and to embrace the richness which gave
meaning to our diversity. Your work on behalf of UNESCO is to move resolutely
forward this evolution.
It gratifying to note all the preparatory work under the impulsion of the
Director-General: and I would like to congratulate all those who have
participated in the enterprise so far.
As I look round this room I am particularly delighted by the top level
representation of Member States, which to me is a firm indication of the high
quality of the expectation of the member states from the process which began
immediately after the end of the last General Conference and which you are now
called upon to carry forward. The world looks upon the organisation to perform
one of the key functions given to it by the world community and I am sure we are
equal to the task.
The first Director General of UNESCO once argued that the organisation
would always receive the needed cooperation “once the nations realize that
UNESCO believes firmly in maintaining the fullest diversity and variety of
cultures” among other considerations. This position on the preservation of
cultural diversity was supported by several delegates at the first session of the
General Conference in November 1946. On that occasion Professor Jaroslav
Stransky of Chechoslosvakia observed in his intervention that “UNESCO
represents a great and fine ideal of cultural unity”. In a similar way, the delegate
from Brazil observed that “the treasures which we intend safeguarding and
augmenting are the collective patrimony of humanity, the fruit of its creative
genius, or the anonymous contribution of past generations.”
As you start your deliberation, please allow me to conclude with an advice
from history; the advise given in a statement made on the morning of Friday 22
November 1946 by Mr D. R. Hardman, the head of the U.K delegation at the
fifth plenary meeting of the first session of the General Conference of UNESCO.
He said: “we must be international and we must keep our nationalism were it
belongs”. We must see to it that in our proper pride in our own culture we do not
impose on the world one way of life. The white radiance of universal
enlightenment includes in its spectrum colours from the cultures of every race
and nation. By constructive and practical means we may do more to buttress the
defences against war and create genuine peace in the one world, to increase the
real spiritual, intellectual and material welfare of mankind… let us be as boldly
imaginative as the artist as scrupulously objective as the scientist as sympathetic
and devoted as the teacher; let us above all keep that faith in the ordinary man
which is the essence of democracy … but though we work hopefully we must
realize that time is short.
I wish you every success in the challenging task before you
I thank you for your attention and God bless you.