A/CONF.189/PC.2/22 page 39 intolerant attitudes.145 In sum, the Internet can also be a valuable tool in fighting discrimination and a formidable defence against the use of the web for propaganda purposes in schools. 138. While education is a right aiming at personal fulfilment, it has an important social and, indeed, universal dimension, precisely because of the phenomenal development of the mass media and the closer geographical linkage between peoples. All action related thereto should take this aspect into account. The world that education must try to reflect should be one revealing the identity of mankind in all its diversity, a world in which meeting people different from oneself is not a source of tension but an enriching daily reality, a world in which every person and every culture have their place in the great jigsaw of the human family. However, it should never be forgotten that, as Federico Mayor put it so well, “an encounter with otherness is an encounter with ourselves. But the road that leads to the statement ‘we are the others’ is fraught with pitfalls.”146 Notes 1 Paragraph 1 (a) of the recommendation concerning education for international understanding, cooperation and peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms, adopted by the UNESCO General Conference at its eighteenth session, Paris, 19 November 1974. 2 Study on the implementation of article 7 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, document submitted by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to the second World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, held in 1983 (A/CONF.119/11, para. 55). 3 On the conceptual differences and similarities between “primary” and “basic” education, see E/CN.4/1999/49, para. 15. See also paragraph 9 of General Comment No. 13 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as referred to in paragraph 2 above. 4 Les minorités dans le monde, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1998, p. 159. 5 See paragraph 1 of General Comment No. 13. See also Patrice Meyer-Bisch, “The right to education in the context of cultural rights”, background paper submitted to the Day of General Discussion on the right to education organized by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (E/C.12/1998/17, para. 3). The Special Rapporteur on the right to education considers that, from the human rights viewpoint, education is an end in itself rather than merely a means for achieving other ends and rightly distinguishes between education (“a commodity which is traded against a price”) and the right to education (E/CN.4/1999/49, paras. 13 and 14). 6 See José L. Gomez del Prado, “Comparative analysis of the right to education, as enshrined in articles 13 and 14 of the Covenant and provisions contained in other … treaties and the machinery established … for monitoring its implementation”, background paper submitted to the Day of General Discussion referred to in note 5 (E/C.12/1998/23, para. 3).