UNESCO: This is No Time for Complacency

New York, Nov 9 2009 12:10PM

World leaders cannot afford to be complacent in the quest for freedom, human rights and diversity, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the incoming head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ">http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=29008&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">UNESCO) warned today.

Irina Bokova, Director-General-elect of UNESCO, used the anniversary of the Wall’s fall to stress that the battle for universal values has not yet been won.

“Today we live in a globalized world, but too many walls remain,” said Ms. Bokova in a (http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=46847&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html) press release issued in Paris, where the agency is headquartered. “UNESCO’s task is to break through these walls, wherever they may be and whatever form they take.”

Ms. Bokova, who succeeds Koïchiro Matsuura as UNESCO chief on 15 November, served as foreign minister of Bulgaria during the 1990s.

She described the fall of the Berlin Wall as “an event of immense historical importance for world peace and the advance of democracy. It was the start of a new era, giving rise to hopes, not just in Eastern Europe but around the world, for a better life. A page has been turned.”

But she also noted that while globalization could be “a liberating force, it also carries the risk of creating a more uniform world, eroding the incredible diversity that is the real source of human creativity, economic and social development, and opening the way for new forms of repression, exclusion and poverty.”

ENDS

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