E/CN.4/2003/24
page 10
promotion and protection of and respect for diversity, is translated into concrete measures,
worked out democratically in the spheres of law, education, information and communication and
transposed into the social arena where discrimination occurs (employment, housing and health).
18.
In this new strategy, the intellectual means of combating racism, xenophobia and
discrimination could be structured around history, education and trade:
History is the theatre, the enclosure where cultures, civilizations and peoples have
constructed their own identity and their relations with others. This is the terrain which
engenders all misunderstandings and antagonisms, friendships and enmities, and where
attention should be concentrated in the context of the dialogue between cultures and
civilizations. It is the sphere of memory, the long memory of history, that makes it
possible to go back to the true source of the processes, mechanisms and expressions of
dialogue or conflict. This means an urgent review by individual peoples and by all
peoples together of the writings, content and teachings of history, as a fundamental factor
for dialogue;
In the long term, teaching and education are the true roads to transforming minds and the
means of building knowledge, know-how and values. It is here too that the image and
perception of the other are transmitted and here that they take root. Here then must the
ethics of pluralism and dialogue be etched deeply. Intercultural education is a process of
catharsis which forces peoples and cultures to look critically at themselves, to call their
certainties into question and spring open the barriers that shut them in. Communication,
by means of which the image of self and of the other is formed and transmitted, must also
be intercultural so as to be able to express in concrete terms the need for exchange and
dialogue within the meaning of Sean McBride’s beautiful formula, “Many voices, one
world”;
Trade also constitutes a primary means of dialogue; at all times and on all continents it
has been a vector of encounters, dissemination and cultural, artistic and spiritual
interaction. Going beyond the seductive but erroneous theories of antagonism between
culture and commerce, the value of dialogue must be stamped on the exchange which is
at the heart of trade. It is in this context that the insidious emergence of a new language
of discrimination must urgently be revealed, with its explicit or implicit theories
explaining underdevelopment by the existence and importance in the societies concerned
of archaic and backward values and mindsets which are contrary to “modernity”;
Growth and development should therefore no longer be consistent with some market
logic or model, but should express the multifaceted forms of living and being. In the
final analysis, the issue of dialogue between cultures and civilizations should be an
essential factor in negotiation on world trade and the economy. Cultural ethics would
therefore have the capacity to assuage the negative aspects of market forces;
In the context of this strategy, particular attention will be given to the productive areas of
encounters and interactions, such as tourism, immigration and sport, which may nurture
or block racism, discrimination and xenophobia and encourage dialogue between
cultures.