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Interventions by Australia > 32nd session

AUSTRALIAN INTERVENTION AT THE 32nd SESSION OF THE GENERAL CONFERENCE OF UNESCO
BY Professor Kenneth Wiltshire AO
Representative of Australia on the Executive Board of UNESCO
WEDNESDAY, 1 OCTOBER 2003

Mr President
Mr Director-General
Madame Chairperson of the Executive Board
Distinguished Delegates

May I firstly join with others in warmly congratulating you, Professor Omolewa on your election. As a teacher, scholar, and Ambassador, you bring a wealth of experience and deep commitment to the position. Over the next two years you have a major role in presenting UNESCO to the world, providing leadership to advance UNESCO’s responsibilities, and working with the Director-General to win for UNESCO the recognition that it deserves.

I am particularly pleased to speak on this day, which marks the re-entry of the United States of America to UNESCO. Australia welcomes their return, not just in a diplomatic sense, but because we look forward to harnessing the enormous wealth of professional expertise in the United States across all of UNESCO’s fields of competence.

From our own region, we are particularly happy that Timor Leste has joined UNESCO. Australia is helping to assist with the creation of a National Commission in this new nation whose needs are many in areas of UNESCO’s expertise.

This Conference takes place at a time of considerable uncertainty and instability in the world. The need for UNESCO’s leadership is more real than ever, and we welcome the Director-General’s efforts to prepare the vital work in post conflict situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and continuing efforts in the Middle East.

Mr President, the main focus of our attention at this Conference is, of course, the Biennial Programme and Budget, the famous 32 C/5, a wonderful collection of short stories, mainly non-fiction, and you can write your own happy ending.

Australia is pleased with the fundamentals of the C/5 because it follows well the Millennium Development Goals and truly reflects the important priorities of the Medium-Term Strategy, particularly Education for All, Water, and the Ethics of Science. It is good that UNESCO’s programmes are becoming more focused and concentrated on priorities where we can make a difference.

Mr President, perhaps because we come from Down-under, we can see all sides of UNESCO’s profile and at this General Conference there are three particular issues we will be highlighting:

The struggle against terrorism
The design of International Instruments
The weakest link of the reform process-the Decentralisation Policy.

Exactly two years ago, in this very Hall, we passed a Resolution – Resolution 39. The Director-General had inspired us to address the causes and breeding grounds of terrorism. Then UNESCO was given the leading role in the UN campaign against terrorism especially through education and intercultural understanding. But we have not risen to this challenge sufficiently.

Australia believes that a major focus must be on educational curricula and teacher-training material aimed at educating for peace, tolerance, shared values, and intercultural and inter-religious understanding. In collaboration with our UNESCO partners, particularly in the Asia and Pacific region, we are planning a regional workshop to begin this urgent task.

As the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said in launching the new APNIEVE Centre

“Values and education for understanding different cultures are going to be central to holding the world together for the next one hundred years and will be fundamental to education across the board”.

At this General Conference we will be debating several international instruments. Australia advocates a cautious approach in this domain because we believe that UNESCO’s international instruments, like its logo, must symbolize the highest quality. Many of our past instruments have become extremely important in standard-setting, in human rights, copyright, world heritage, recognition of higher education qualifications, to name a few. They were carefully drafted with full consultation.

Australia advocates the same professional approach to all such instruments and is contributing to this end in the areas of digital heritage and anti-doping in sport. The same must be done for the cultural arena, be it intangible heritage or cultural diversity, which are possibly the most sensitive areas of our mandate.

Australia believes in the protection of cultural diversity and intangible heritage; how could it be otherwise given the beautiful cultural mosaic of the Asia and Pacific region, and our own long tapestry of cultural experience from our rich indigenous heritage (possibly the world’s oldest) to our modern multi-cultural dynamic.

But UNESCO must be careful in choosing the appropriate way to preserve this cultural domain which, because of its very richness and beauty, is so difficult to define and compress into any legal lexicon.

The third issue to highlight is the confusion surrounding UNESCO’s decentralization policy and its implications for the Pacific, UNESCO’s largest cluster with seventeen Members, and an area around which it takes two weeks to fly.

In the rhythm of life on this planet, every day begins in the Pacific but, although the Pacific is the first place to see the sunrise, it is the last to see a fully resourced cluster office. Yet the needs of the Pacific are great in UNESCO’s fields of competence, as you will discover Mr Director-General when you visit next January. The Pacific welcome mat is already out for you.

Mr President, Australia voices these concerns and constructive suggestions because we believe in UNESCO. As a founding member and active representative on the UNESCO Executive Board, we are committed to the ideals of the Organization, and our involvement is a significant one, including:
15 World Heritage sites
12 MAB Biosphere Reserves
6 Centres associated with UNESCO [from Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Science Education, and Sustainable Development]
A dynamic and committed National Commission.

And we share with you, Mr Matsuura, a grand vision for UNESCO. Australia’s vision is for a UNESCO which has:
A strong visible mandate relevant to the world’s challenges
Intellectual and ethical leadership shaping the paradigms and policy frameworks which drive international debate and agendas
Strong partnerships from the highest levels, including a leading role in the United Nations, with key financial institutions, dynamic groupings such as NEPAD in Africa, and right through to the grass roots fabric of civil society and NGOs
Focused programmes based on UNESCO’s comparative advantages
Constant reform, founded on results based management and monitoring, not just for the sake of reform, because reform is a means and not an end, but reform to keep the mandate of UNESCO strong, relevant, and effective
Improved governance to ensure accountability and creative dynamism.

Mr Director-General, you have made progress in these areas and we thank you.

And we thank you also for the Youth Forum at this General Conference and the way you have recognized the importance of engaging, and listening to, young people as equal partners to keep this vision of UNESCO alive.

Each General Conference is a family reunion where we come to re-invent UNESCO, re-capture the spirit of UNESCO, to renew our commitment to its noble goals of peace and human development for every woman and every man on our planet.

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