Sixty Years Hence:
Towards Lasting Peace and
Sustainable Development 

Dr. Alberto G. Romulo
Secretary of Foreign Affairs 

GENERAL POLICY DEBATE OF THE
34TH UNESCO GENERAL CONFERENCE 

Paris, 19 October 2007

THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE

Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates: 

Maraming salamat po. 

On behalf of the Philippine delegation, I offer our congratulations and express the confidence that under your able and wise leadership, we will achieve our objectives.

We welcome Montenegro and the return of Singapore, our partner in ASEAN. This brings all 10 members of ASEAN into UNESCO.  

UNESCO remains exceptionally suited as an instrument of change – and the change that we want to see, is where the defenses of peace, are firmly built in our hearts and minds. 

PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SIX DECADES

It is significant that as we embark on UNESCO’s second sixty-year cycle, we adopt the Medium-Term Strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.   

This Strategy embodies the interdisciplinary approach that is UNESCO’s unique strength. Combined with its global membership, this Strategy will make our Organization even more responsive to the needs of our peoples.  

A key focus of the MDGs is poverty alleviation. In her address before the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stated that poverty alleviation is the most important part of our efforts to transform the Philippines into a modernized nation.   

My country has made much progress in this direction.  Extreme poverty has been drastically cut from 20.4 percent in 1990 to 10.2 percent in 2006.   

But we know, like all other developing nations, we must do more.  

With UNESCO as our partner, we will achieve the MDGs – by working together on peace building, poverty eradication, sustainable development, and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information. 

QUALITY LIFELONG EDUCATION FOR ALL  IN DEFENSE OF PEACE

Education is the principal transformative tool to empower individuals, to liberate their intellects and to provide them skills.  Education is a basic human right. It is the wisest possible investment to securing our common future.

Our contribution is the Philippine-proposed Centre for Lifelong Learning for Education for Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia.  

Inspired by the U.N. Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, this future laboratory for the exchange of knowledge and best practices will strengthen regional capacity-building, from early childhood learning to higher education.   

The Center will also promote South-South and North-South-South triangular cooperation in developing country priorities, such as teacher training, basic sciences and math education.  

SCIENCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS 

In this spirit that we must strengthen UNESCO’s role as a catalyst and capacity builder in mobilizing science and technology in addressing today’s pressing challenges.  

Towards this end, UNESCO can assist in finding global solutions to climate change, one of the most complex of the critical issues confronting our age.  We share the concerns of small-island developing states, particularly on rising sea levels, in line with the Mauritius Declaration and Strategy.   

As one of the world’s richest biodiversity zones, the Philippines is prepared to share its experience in improving the sustainable management of natural resources, including access to fresh water. 

As a country astride the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and battered by severe typhoons, which may already signal the worsening effects of climate change, the Philippines aims to strengthen international cooperation in disaster prevention, mitigation and management.   

UNESCO’s emergency relief system, established in 2006, is crucial to this task. Through the International Oceanographic Commission, we also support the expansion of tsunami early warning systems to other vulnerable regions.  

At the same time, UNESCO must promote ethical principles for scientific and technological progress.  UNESCO should help guide science on emerging ethical challenges from a humanist and human rights perspective.  Bioethics, in particular, must fully incorporate respect for the sanctity of life. 

CULTURAL DIVERSITY FOR DIALOGUE  AND HERITAGE PRESERVATION  

In strengthening respect for the sanctity of life, culture can be an important tool.  Culture can bring communities together in our common search for lasting peace and sustainable development.   

On the sanctity of life, we look to the day when the death penalty will be a thing of the past. 

We have promoted Interfaith Dialogue in our own country, in our region and across the globe, to bring greater understanding between those with different cultures and beliefs.  In this quest, UNESCO has been our steadfast partner. 

Last month, at the UN in New York, I chaired the Second Ministerial Meeting on Interfaith Dialogue and Cooperation for Peace.  A few days after, Vice President Noli de Castro addressed the High-Level Dialogue on Interreligious and Intercultural Understanding and Cooperation for Peace.  In 2009, the Philippines will host a special meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement on interfaith dialogue. 

Our commitment springs from our own success in Muslim-Christian dialogue for peace and development in the southern Philippines – a dialogue that enjoys broad international support, including from the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Conference.  

We share UNESCO’s mandate on cultural diversity as our common heritage.  

Por ser un país que habla ciento setenta y uno idiomas y dialectos nativos, Filipinas bien sabe que la lengua es cultura.  Apoyamos por tanto la acción de la UNESCO para proteger la diversidad lingüística, incluyendo el medio del Internet, como una garantía de la diversidad cultural.  Esto ayudará a salvaguardar contra las amenazas los sistemas de conocimientos de nuestros pueblos indígenas, los cuales sirven de inestimables e intangibles patrimonios de toda la humanidad. 

<<As a country that speaks 171 native languages and dialects, the Philippines knows that language is culture. We support UNESCO’s action to protect linguistic diversity, including through the Internet, as a guarantee of cultural diversity. This will help safeguard the threatened knowledge systems of our indigenous peoples as a priceless intangible legacy of all humankind.>>  

PARTNERSHIP FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 

The need to propel development remains urgent. Barely seven years remain before the MDG target year of 2015. Despite undeniable achievements in science and technology, two-thirds of all humanity remains condemned to poverty, hunger and ignorance.    

The external debts of highly indebted poor countries – as well as of middle income countries like the Philippines – retard our ability to rise above such misery and want.   

Para tratar esto, Filipinas ha introducido en la UNESCO el tema de la deuda para el desarrollo, el cual tiene el apoyo de la Asamblea General de la ONU, a través del Grupo de Trabajo sobre el canje de deuda por capital social en la educación, cuya presidencia ejerce Argentina hábilmente.  Aplaudimos el apoyo entusiasta de España, nuestro amigo más antiguo en el Occidente, que encabeza la iniciativa entre los países acreedores.  La iniciativa asimismo ha sido respaldada por la sociedad civil internacional, lo cual es un reto a la propia propugnación de la UNESCO en nombre de los pobres y marginados del mundo. 

(To address this, the Philippines has introduced debt for development, which the UN General Assembly supports, into UNESCO through the Working Group on Debt Swaps for Education, ably presided over by Argentina. We applaud the wholehearted support of Spain, our oldest friend in the West, for leading the way among creditor nations. International civil society has also backed this initiative, which challenges UNESCO’s own advocacy on behalf of the world’s poor and marginalized.) 

Rogamos que la UNESCO nos apoye como un socio integro en la búsqueda de la creatividad en la financiación del desarrollo.  Para alcanzarlo, solicitamos a la Conferencia General a que apruebe la creación de un comité de expertos que proponga la financiación innovadora a favor del canje de deuda por capital social en la educación, y más adelante, en la ciencia, la cultura y la comunicación. 

(We ask UNESCO to stand with us as a full partner in pursuing creativity in development financing.   To achieve this, we request the General Conference to approve the creation of an expert committee, to propose innovative financing in favor of debt swaps for education, and later on, for science, culture, and communication.)   

LET US BE THE CHANGE WE SEEK 

Señor Presidente, mucho queda por cambiarse.  Mahatma Ghandi dijo una vez y cito textualmente, “We must become the change that we want to see.”  

(Mr. President, much remains to be changed. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “We must become the change we want to see.”) 

Solo se conseguirá el progreso humano cuando el desarrollo tendre una cara humana, donde el beneficio material se equipara con el mejoramiento moral, y donde los individuos y las comunidades se quedan enriquecidos y no alienados por el cambio.  

(Human progress can only be achieved when development has a human face, where material gain is matched by moral improvement, and where individuals and communities are enriched and not alienated by change.)   

Empecemos ahora a ser el cambio que tratamos de lograr, mientras preparamos la UNESCO para los próximos seis (6) decenios.  Gracias.  

(Let us start now, to be the change that we seek, as we prepare UNESCO for the next six decades.  Thank you. ) END