Federico Mayor Zaragoza was chosen as Director General of UNESCO in 1987 and headed the organisation until 1999. Under his guidance the organisation created the Culture of Peace Programme, the work of which was organised into four main aspects: education for peace, human rights and democracy; the fight against exclusion and poverty; the defence of cultural pluralism and intercultural dialogue; and the prevention of conflict and consolidation of peace. In March 2000 the Foundation for a Culture of Peace was founded, of which he is President. Amongst other activities based on national and international cooperation is the creation of the World Forum of Civil Society “UBUNTU”, a network to combining statements, stances and proposals, which since 2001 has centred on International Institutional Reform. In addition to numerous scientific publications and four poetry collections he has published various essay collections: A New World (The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making) (1999), The Gordian Knots (1999), Tomorrow is always too late (1987), The New Page (1994), Memory of the Future (1994), Peace tomorrow? (1995), Science and Power (1995), UNESCO: an ideal in action (1996), The Word and the Sword (2002), The Power of Words (2005), Time for Action (2008). He has just published a short book entitled Crime of Silence: The Moment has come. It is Time for Action (2011).

Contact: Fundación Cultura de Paz C/ Velázquez, 14 – 3º D 28001 Madrid, España. info@fund-culturadepaz.org

  Versión para Imprimir - Printable  Version

 

  Mayor Zaragoza COMMENT COMENTA.pdf

INTRODUCTION

The origin of this important Resolution lies in the Constitution of UNESCO itself, adopted in November 1945, a few months after the United Nations began its activities in San Francisco, California.  I would like to highlight the paragraph with which the Charter begins: “We the peoples… have determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.  It is worth emphasising that the mission of the United Nations System is to avoid war, that is, to construct peace, as the main legacy for future generations.  And this great mission should be fulfilled by “the peoples”, via their democratic representatives, but it is clear that in the minds of the founders of the UN it corresponds to humanity to be in control of the common destiny.

The Constitution of UNESCO, in its first article, indicates that educated human beings should be “free and responsible”, guided by the democratic principles so well stated in the Preamble: “Justice, liberty, equality and solidarity”.  The constitutional text specifies “intellectual and moral” solidarity.

From that moment on, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, world governance would revolve around a key word: share, share with others, distribute resources and wealth adequately.  And to this effect, the great debate on development began in the General Assembly: in the nineteen-sixties, it was concluded that development should be integrated, that it should include not only economic but social and cultural development; in the seventies, when the General Assembly approved this excellent Recommendation, it agreed unanimously that it must also be endogenous, which meant that individual and collective capacities should be developed for the use of natural resources and the strengthening of scientific and technological capacities.  In October of the year 1974, the General Assembly had adopted an important decision: the most prosperous countries would contribute to the development of the most needy with 0.7% of their GDP. 

And, later, in the eighties, the Commission chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland underlined that, in a finite world, the resources used should be replaced to the extent possible (sustainable development) and finally, in 1989, the Deputy Administrator of UNICEF wrote a book entitled “Development with a human face”, with which he concluded this whole process by indicating that all human beings are protagonists and beneficiaries of development.

 

WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL POINTS OF THE 1974 RECOMMENDATION? 

They can be summarised as follows:

The Recommendation is formulated “to achieve through education the aims set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, the Constitution of UNESCO, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions…”.

- UNESCO should “educate all for the advancement of justice, freedom, human rights and peace”.

- After revealing the asymmetries and the distances between the principles and values promoted and the real situation, the adoption is recommended – via the legislation and actions considered most appropriate by States – of provisions that will allow the principles set forth in the Recommendation to be put into practice.

- The text should be disseminated in such a way as to be brought to the attention of authorities, departments and regional bodies responsible for education at all levels, student movements, associations of teachers and pupils etc.

- I consider it interesting to highlight the following: “The word education implies the entire process of social life by means of which individuals and social groups learn to develop consciously… the whole of their personal capacities”.

-“The terms international understanding, cooperation and peace are to be considered as an indivisible whole… and they are gathered together in the expression “international education”.

- Education should be “infused” with the aim of obtaining… the “full development of the human personality”…  It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace”.

- Among other very specific guidelines to achieve the fulfilment of these principles, I would like to emphasise the “ability to communicate with others”…   Solidarity has not been effective because until very recently the free expression of one’s own reflections was very difficult.  Today, thanks to the new communications technologies, the possibility of remote participation opens – is already opening – unwonted new panoramas on a planetary scale.

- “Combining learning, training, information and action etc. to further the appropriate intellectual and emotional development”.

- The Resolution contains the national policies, planning and administration that should be formulated, as well as the “particular aspects” for its efficient implementation: ethical and civic aspects; cultural aspects; knowledge of the great problems faced by mankind… subsequently considering aspects regarding the different levels of education (basic education, secondary teaching, higher education, vocational training)… It dedicates a chapter to the training of trainers…  And it ends with international cooperation.

 

WHAT REAL FOLLOW-UP HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THIS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATION?

Like so many other excellent documents that could have guided such profound changes that they would surely have led to the avoidance of many of the great challenges of the current situation, but they were not taken into account by those who, in those same years, had decided to exert a hegemonic power for world governance.

Indeed, at the end of the arms race, upon the collapse of a system which, based on equality, had forgotten freedom… and the end of racial apartheid in South Africa… and the civil wars in El Salvador and Mozambique…. when we were able to envisage the beginning of a new era, the ambition of the most prosperous countries, led by the United States of America and the United Kingdom, ruined so many accumulated hopes.

Indeed, aid was replaced by loans; cooperation by exploitation; the United Nations by plutocratic oligarchic groups (G-6, G-7, G-8) and, worse than this, the values which had been fought for so ardently, by the market.  The result is obvious. The urgent need now is to re-found a representative United Nations, where it is “the peoples” and not only the States that represent humanity; where the economy is based on sustainable global development and not on speculation, delocalisation and war; International Law should put an end to the total impunity of those who engage in the trafficking of drugs, arms, capital, patents and people (¡!) that takes place in the supranational arena; and democratic principles should once again guide political action …

It will then be the moment to apply, deservedly, the excellent Recommendation of 1974.  And those of the International Congress on Education for Human Rights and Democracy, which took place in Montreal in 1993.  A large number of the guidelines of this meeting of teachers and educators were incorporated in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, at the end of the World Conference on Human Rights which took place in June 1993 in the Austrian capital.

Despite being marginalised, the United Nations never stopped insisting, underlining, preparing, adapting guidelines for the education of citizens: in 1995, the UNESCO Declaration on Tolerance, on the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, established some extraordinarily important guidelines regarding coexistence and respect for the equal dignity of all human beings.

In the year 1998, the dialogue between civilisations was promoted in the United Nations.  In 1999, the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace referred to the educational characteristics that may contribute to the great transition from a culture of imposition, dominion, violence and war to a culture of dialogue, conciliation, alliance and peace.  The supreme transition of the strength of the word.

In the year 2000, the excellent Earth Charter, which should be used in all centres of education, ends by emphasising the importance, at the dawn of the century and the millennium, of a new beginning of civilisation on a world scale, based, precisely, on the essential principles established so aptly in 1974 by the Recommendation I have mentioned.