UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION. Address by Mr Federico Mayor

Transcription

1 DG/97/16 Original: Spanish and French UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION Address by Mr Federico Mayor Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on Tolerance and the Media Bilbao, 3 May 1997

2 DG/97/16 (The Director-General began his address in Spanish) Your Excellency Mr Lendakari of the Basque Country, Mr President of the International Federation of Journalists, Distinguished Adviser for Culture, Ms Ana Maria de Cane, Representatives of the World Press Freedom Committee and of the Inter-American Press Association, I should like, first of all, to thank the Government of the Basque Country for all the support it has given to the organization of this event on tolerance and the media. Today, 3 May, is a day on which we all look back and take stock of the situation. It is also a day on which we reaffirm that press freedom is absolutely essential, not so much for coexistence as for living together side by side, and that, in the final analysis, democracy is based on this fundamental cornerstone. I should also like to thank the International Federation of Journalists, the Union of Basque Journalists and all those who have collaborated in the organization of this event. I welcome the presence of journalists, writers and representatives of regional organizations, all of whom are committed to the cause of freedom, justice and solidarity. Freedom of expression and tolerance are essential for the fulfillment of UNESCO s mission. Justice depends on the former, on freedom, while the recognition of diversity, of plurality, which is our greatest wealth, depends on the latter, on tolerance. This wealth is the source of our strength. This unity centred on a number of basic principles is what ensures that this strength - which is always non-violent - eventually prevails. Tolerance is opposed to racism, discrimination and exclusion. Such exclusion may be attributable to economic, political, religious, cultural or linguistic causes, but it also means exclusion for educational reasons. As Director-General of UNESCO, I should make it clear that formal education has also furnished grounds for exclusion, and hence we must go deeper into the knowledge of these intolerable imbalances, inhuman conditions, these bipolarities in which some people - a mere handful - have more and almost all have virtually nothing. And doing this is not to justify them, but to find the reasons that will make it possible to avoid the roots of the conflict. Because this is ultimately the mission of the United Nations system, and it is ultimately our own mission - a mission, let us recall, expressed in that great pledge at the end of a terrible war, where all the perversities of that conflagration became manifest, up to and including genocide. It was then that the founders of the United Nations system said: We the peoples of the United Nations [are] determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. This is our mission. Sometimes we do not realize that institutions, standards, procedures and so forth, gradually conceal the living jewel that is the mission of institutions, churches and governments. And the day-to-day - the immediate - hides from us the reality of our supreme

3 DG/97/16- page 2 responsibility. Our responsibility is to avoid the scourge of war. And for that reason, we have to dig deep to the roots of conflict. If UNESCO is to construct the defences of peace in the place where war begins, namely, in the minds of men and women, then we have to know exactly how we can give people control over their own lives. We have spoken much of the sovereignty of nations, and little of the sovereignty of each man and woman over themselves. This entails giving all human beings this capacity to shape their own lives; to say yes or no in accordance with their own convictions and their own thinking. This lies at the heart of education, and it is for the sake of education that we must strengthen intellectual and moral solidarity. The founders of UNESCO were not afraid - as we have since been - of mentioning a number of keywords such as morality, ethics, values, love and the family, which we have gradually phased out and concealed behind other, less committed, terms. As the great Catalan poet Salvador Espriu used to say to his children I shall have lived to save the meaning of certain words for you. Thus, it is through intellectual and moral solidarity that we shall save the meaning of some keywords, and by the same means that we shall be able to foster mutual understanding and knowledge, looking beyond politics and economics - above all economics, which masks so many fundamental reasons behind a barrage of macro-economic indicators and currencies with which we attempt to unify and unite peoples... However, peoples can be united only by values, culture and diversity, if these are properly respected. Peoples are never going to unite around strictly economic interests or the guiding thread of the macro-economy. UNESCO s Constitution states that it is necessary to foster the free exchange of ideas and knowledge to develop and increase the means of communication between peoples and to employ these means for the purposes of mutual understanding and a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other s lives. As Lendakari said, in the final analysis, we are concerned with behaviour, and everyday behaviour is the supreme expression of culture: for this daily conduct is the quintessence of what we have inherited. Our traditions, what we have thought, what we have forgotten, what we have dreamt, what we have invented, what we have imagined.... all this is what constitutes our behaviour at each moment in time. Only by this means can we live every day with awareness of others, not only showing respect for them, but also engaging in exchanges. It is not by withdrawal or by fortifications that a culture, a cultural identity or a people is protected. This was never the case. Protection comes through interaction, open-mindedness, ongoing exchange and tolerance - in short, the persevering attitude not only of respecting, but of interacting with one s fellow human beings. It is in this permanent awareness of otherness that tolerance resides. The means to peace that UNESCO has at its disposal are education, science and culture, but all of them depend on communication. It is Article I of our Constitution - it would have the same force if it were Article 56, but it happens to be the first - tells us that we shall construct peace in the minds of men and women through education, science and culture, and adds that UNESCO will guarantee the free flow of ideas by word and image. There can be no peace if there is no freedom of expression - and here there is no room for compromise or negotiation, for trade-offs or grey areas. Freedom admits of no restriction. To put it another way, it would be like trying to install floodgates against the sea; hence, it would be pointless to try to place impediments on the freedom that we are asked to guarantee, precisely because it is a matter, not of the rule of law as such, but of the rule of justice. Moreover, if laws are to be

4 DG/97/16 - page 3 just, citizens must be able to participate. If I do not participate, I do not exist as a citizen; for this reason, freedom of the press is essential to democracy. Peace is a premise, a prerequisite. Without peace, there is no possibility of exercising these fundamental rights inherent in human beings: there can be no justice, no freedom, no education, no housing, no possibility of development, no respect for the environment; there can be nothing but war. War, conflict and violence pervade everything. It is for this reason, as you know, that since we shall be celebrating next year the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I have proposed that the human right to peace, to live in peace, be added. By this I mean that form of living together which acknowledges and welcomes plurality and which knows that all human beings are both different from one another and unique at every point in their lives. The role of the media in the changing world is now more important and more relevant than ever, since it involves a mobilization, a call which has to emanate from this people, who can and must participate. Those who govern us need to be reminded that it is in the long term, against the great backdrop of history, that they must finally take up a position and make decisions. They need to remember that short-term, everyday investigations furnish only data to be taken into account, but can never govern decision-making. Today, short-sightedness fogs much of this outlook, and we see how large groups of countries at a subregional level, even at a regional level, lose their focus in this everyday mundanity, instead of being able to construct a longterm defence of the historical and forward-looking values on which a different future can be based. Today, 50 years after that declaration of intent to shield future generations from war, we can claim that progress has been made. Although we sometimes hear a great many very negative assessments, we have to remember that there are also many positive aspects. Who can forget South Africa, where the system of racial apartheid, one of the most abominable of systems, existed? It is true that we still have to overcome social apartheid in those regions: it is a time bomb and it must be defused. Yet what a marvelous thing it was that in the sordid jail on Robbens Island there were people like Nelson Mandela, capable of fostering love with open arms instead of stirring up hatred and vengeance. How marvelous it is today in Namibia to see everybody living side by side without any distinction as to skin-colour or background. How marvelous it is to see Mozambique, and recently even Angola, and El Salvador and Guatemala. So many steps forward have been taken. On the other hand, what a pity it is that peace should have been achieved and the embrace of reconciliation given only over the dead bodies of thousands upon thousands of young people. What a pity that we do not realize how spectacularly war and violence have failed at this latter end of the century. The failure has been total. We have discovered antibiotics, means of transport and extraordinary telecommunications media. Science has made giant strides and yet, on the whole, we have not succeeded in renouncing the logic of force. We have not managed to discard the principle whereby I am stronger than you, therefore I impose myself on you, therefore I beat you and oppress you. And this is not in the past, but in the present, and not only in a few countries but in many. In our own everyday lives we have grown accustomed to the workings of force, of imposition, and in some cases of violence. This is what must be said: violence has failed. We

5 DG/97/l6- page 4 have not avoided many conflicts, and, what is more we have paid the intolerable price of our children s lives. What will happen if we do not correct some of these violent tendencies: social violence, unfair distribution of wealth, gender bias (men occupy almost all the space and relegate women to the background; on a world scale, only 4 per cent of women are allowed to speak out, and less than 10 per cent are parliamentary representatives - the voices of those without a voice). We must accordingly correct and redress many anomalous situations, and for this purpose we need an active press, a press that describes events with the strictest accuracy. What really happened cannot be altered. The responsibility of journalists is to state the facts with the greatest possible neutrality. However, the editorials, in which journalists give an opinion, are a different matter, for then it is incumbent on them to foster this deep-rooted transformation that society needs today: they should help us to live together, learn to live side by side. As you know, this is the recommendation made by the International Commission which I established four years ago and which was chaired by Jacques Delors, the former President of the European Commission. It tells us to learn to know, learn to do, learn to be and learn to live together. This is the great challenge that we have to face as the century draws to a close. To achieve this, tolerance and the media are absolutely indispensable. We cannot dispense with those who, today, can bring awareness to all the citizens of the world - awareness of the imbalances that must be corrected through our everyday actions, but also through what we say. The crime is our failure to speak out, and in particular the failure to speak out of many scientific and academic communities which should now be telling those who govern us that a strict scientific approach is necessary in many areas, such as energy and the environment. How is it possible to decide, nowadays, without knowing the strict scientific principles on which decisions should be based, and which cannot be either emotional or remote from reality or based solely on an act of faith? There is also a failure to speak out when we know that force is being used, although it may not be obvious, or when advertising or the audiovisual media encourage violence that we subsequently try to repress. There is no better way of teaching than that of setting an example. Let us not deceive ourselves: we cannot tell our children one thing in the classroom and then show them another through the example of our conduct and of the media; we cannot face them with such an enormous contradiction. We have to say to the citizens of the democracies: you have tremendous strength, because you can reject what is trumpeted by these often shameless advertising media and the message of the media which use violence and negative forms of expression, especially in front of an audience of children. I accordingly want to tell you that democracy is wonderfully strong if we know how to use it, and if we know how to avoid silence. As I have said, silence can come to be a crime. A few years ago, we all witnessed with joy the collapse of the Berlin Wall and at the same time the collapse of a system that represented oppression and silence. Those people had been silenced and gagged, and the system was collapsing. We were all delighted. What had collapsed was a system which was based on equality but which had forgotten about freedom. Moreover, the furore created by this collapse was such that we did not perceive the frailties and weaknesses of a system which, while based on freedom, neglected equality and solidarity.

6 DG/97/16- page 5 We must be aware of this: the present-day system - this system which upholds a number of principles of freedom - should remember equality, the need to redress these imbalances and the need for solidarity. Violent extremism, xenophobia nationalism, environmental degradation, drug addiction (that perverse traffic in what afterwards irreversibly affects so many many people in the world), social marginalization in rural areas (those millions of women who spend all their time on so many continents working to fetch a few litres of water which have to be boiled, or to collect a bundle of firewood to cook meals) - while we, sometimes only a very few kilometres away, are caught up in the dynamics of extreme consumerism, surrounded by superfluity. How can peaceful multiculturalism be established? How can intellectuals, writers, journalists, educators and scientists contribute to the construction of a tolerant, peaceful society? There is one way: earlier I referred to those who have been silenced; I refer now to the silent ones who have to raise their voices, for this is the root of democracy. It is that all citizens count and are not just counted at elections or in opinion polls. Arrangements must be made for meetings and dialogue, and it must be proclaimed that violence is inadmissible; that from the culture of war, in which we have been living for centuries, we now want to move on to a culture of peace; we want to move on from the logic of force to the force of reason. We cannot pay the price of war and peace both at the same time. Some of us cannot at the same time be on the highways, including those of communication, while others are on the byways, which also include those of communication. Some days ago, very near the border between Namibia and Angola, the first solar village was inaugurated by UNESCO - a village running on solar energy. We said to ourselves that we were converting a byway into a road already flowing into those highways. We could tell all those people that now they could watch videos, that now they could use interactive CD- ROMS, that we were giving them this learning without frontiers that is a prerequisite for peaceful coexistence on an international scale. We need means of communication, we need radios, we need the press, so that in rural areas we can give all citizens a quality of life that obviates the need for mass emigration, and hence the need to live on the outskirts of cities in a state of poverty which leads to loneliness in a crowd and which becomes absolutely unbearable. When we learn to pay the price of peace and not of war, when we know how to invest in peace and not in war, then, not in just one village but in all villages, we can go up to the women and tell them: now you are going to be citizens because you are going to have time for your intensive training, so that you can do work that will give you an income, and so that you do not lead this life of permanent oppression and dependence. We could manage water resources on a worldwide scale. Today, at the start of this new millennium, water is an element that is much more important than all the others, in the form of clean drinking water. And yet only 0.07 per cent of total water resources belongs to the heritage of humanity. One of the most outstanding projects that could be considered for the coming century would be the construction of aqueducts and perhaps, although to a lesser degree, viaducts: we ought to be able to find an answer to these great challenges of our time, and for this reason we need to take a different approach to investment. We must invest in urban transport: we are polluting the air that our children and grandchildren will have to

7 DG/97/16- page 6 breathe and we are not taking any action; we commission new reports and we continue to postpone decisions on subjects that are vital for the future. (The Director-General continued in French) If the promotion of human rights requires the active participation of the media, conversely the effectiveness of such participation depends on respect for human rights and, in particular, as Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides, on respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. In a democratic society, communication between the individual and groups, between citizens and government, between consumers and industry, feeds the entire social system and provides it with the factors necessary for it to function properly. Besides being an essential means of spreading knowledge, communication is also a vector of values. Now, more than ever before, we have to pass on values to our children, and these go by the names of justice, equality, freedom and sharing, all of which are essential to the construction of our common future. Such values are not negotiable. It is true that pluralism is now faced with many problems: technological progress, economic pressures, government interference, and the subordination of information to interests other than those of readers, listeners and television viewers. All these factors are consequently detrimental to the quality and pluralism of information. The new technologies should not cause exclusion. The media should not be used for partisan purposes. I am thinking, of course, of the newspapers, radio stations and television channels which have given their allegiance to various factions, such as in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and which have called publicly for violence and ethnic cleansing and even genocide. Using the methods of totalitarian propaganda, based on techniques of crowd manipulation, conditioning and disinformation, these media, taken over and diverted to serve the cause of hatred, have become instruments of war. Such conduct is not acceptable, and I enjoin the profession to undertake in-depth reflection on its ethics, and on the need for the press, whether written or audiovisual, to propose or invent ways of operating and rules of self-regulation that will help to prevent such aberrations. The credibility of journalists is at stake. As an intergovernmental organization, UNESCO should not interfere in the issue. I repeat: the ethics of information is a matter for professionals and for professionals alone. You have a weighty task before you: be assured that UNESCO stands ready to lend you its support. As you know, UNESCO endeavors by all possible means, whether by training journalists or by supplying equipment, to give a voice to all the men and women of the planet. Today, we are happy to celebrate World Press Freedom Day in accordance with the wishes of the journalists who met in Windhoek. This Day is designed to be a reminder that the establishment of democratic societies is based on freedom of expression, and it is also a symbol - a symbol of what has been accomplished and of what still remains to be done. With

8 DG/97/16 - page 7 the presentation of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Press Freedom Prize, there emerges the symbolic figure of a man who gave all he had - his wisdom and his professional skill, but also his life - for the defence of these irreplaceable values to which we subscribe and which alone will enable us to cause peace and democracy to prevail. Mr Lendakari, (The Director-General concluded his address in Spanish) Guillermo Cane, let us say at once, gave his life for the unfettered exercise of his profession. Let us hope that his example and his memory may prevent others from dying for causes that deserve to be lived for - causes such as non-conformist, freedom and justice, causes that spring spontaneously from the heart and mind, and which nobody should expect to come from outside. The answers to the essential questions are to be found in the deep wellsprings of every one of us. Nobody - and we now have to remember this more than ever before - has the right to take or destroy the life of anybody, for whatever reason, whether literally or in the sense of silencing or gagging people, or preventing journalists from performing their fundamental duty for the sake of peace and justice on this planet. Thank you.