| United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |
UNESCO-UNU
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"The process of globalization [...] must be made
to benefit those at the margins as well as those at the centre, the poor as well
as the privileged, the shackled as well as the free."
Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations
October 2002
About the conference:
The conference will bring together leading experts on globalization to discuss the challenges we face in making globalization work for the benefit of all humankind. It will take stock of the achievements made in understanding the multiple linkages between the economic and political driving forces of globalization and socio-cultural development. And it will evaluate the effectiveness of political action taken to balance the negative with the positive effects of globalization on people’s lives. This assessment will serve as a basis to identify areas and means for improving the policy response on part of governmental and civil society actors on the international, regional, national and local levels to the challenges of globalization.
Programme:
A public forum on 30 July will explore our current understanding of the factors promoting globalization, the side-effects of globalization – intended or unintended – in a number of key policy areas, and the impact on cultural diversity and ethics brought about by globalization. The forum will be followed by a workshop on 31 July that will focus on best policy practices as well as areas and means for improving the policy response to the challenges of globalization.
Japanese-English interpretation will be provided on 30 July. The workshop on 31 July will be conducted in English.
A regularly update conference programme is available at: http://www.unu.edu/globalization/programme.html
Registration:
Interested members of the public are invited to attend all or part of the conference.
You can register online from the UNU's conference website at: http://www.unu.edu/globalization/
Deadline for registration: 18 July 2003
Organizers
The conference is co-organized by:
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
United Nations University (UNU)
Supported by:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan
Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc.
About UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations system. The Organization’s main objective is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms (Article 1 of UNESCO’s Constitution). UNESCO pursues its action through five programme sectors: education, natural sciences, social & human sciences, culture and communication & information. The Organization is headquartered in Paris with over 50 field offices and several institutes and centres throughout the world. Founded in 1946, it currently has 189 Member States.
More information is available at http://www.unesco.org
.
About the United Nations University
The United Nations University is an organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly in 1972 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training, and the dissemination of knowledge related to the pressing global problems of human survival, development, and welfare. Its activities focus mainly on peace and governance, environment and sustainable development, and the interlinkages between science, technology and society. The University operates through a worldwide network of research and postgraduate training
centres, with its planning and coordinating headquarters in Tokyo.
More information is available at http://www.unu.edu.
Background: Globalization with a Human Face
The social, human and cultural dimensions of development and globalization have been at the core of the work of the United Nations University and UNESCO for the past decades. In 1999, the United Nations Development Programme chose as the focus of its annual Human Development Report the theme of “Globalization with a Human Face.” The report argued that although globalization – a process characterized by shrinking space, shrinking time and disappearing borders – has the potential of bringing great advances for humankind, markets alone cannot ensure that these advances are equally shared by all members of the global community. The main reason lies in the fact that global market forces can have negative effects on the provision of public goods such as social services, a healthy environment, or pluralistic cultural expression; a view that has come to be widely shared in the international community. In order to achieve a just distribution of the benefits of economic globalization, the negative side effects of globalization have to be offset by reforms of governance on the international, regional and local levels aimed at ensuring that those currently not driving the process of globalization can make their voices heard in the political processes affecting the range of their own personal choices.
In its Medium-Term Strategy for 2002-2007, UNESCO has centered its mission around the theme of contributing to peace and human development in an era of globalization through education, the sciences, culture and communication. This theme creates a fundamental linkage between UNESCO’s mandate and role on the one hand and globalization with a human face on the other. A key goal within this strategy is to build international consensus on emerging norms and principles to respond to new challenges and dilemmas as a result of globalization. The trend towards homogenization of educational, cultural, scientific and communication activities is disquieting and risks bringing about uniformity of content and perspective at the expense of the world’s creative diversity. The growing commercialization of many spheres previously considered as public goods - such as education, culture and information - jeopardizes weaker, economically less powerful but nevertheless equally important segments of the world community. There are currently very few set rules of the game and unless a universally agreed framework can be defined, the poor and the weak will continue to be denied the benefits of globalization. Globalization must be made to work for all.
The verbal commitment to policy development and implementation aimed at countering the adverse effects of globalization on the part of national and international governmental actors is certainly strong. In addition, much academic activity has taken place to explore in depth the relationship between economic globalization and social and cultural development. The actual situation of persisting gaps in income between rich and poor countries and the provision of means to satisfy basic human needs, however, shows that policy outcomes are not yet satisfactory.