Mexico City.- With the adoption of a “historic statement” to include Culture as one of the Objectives for the Sustainable Development (SDG) of the Agenda 2030 of the UN, and the recognition of Culture as a global public good, ended this Friday afternoon the Conference of the UNESCO on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development (Mondiacult) 2022.
The Final Declaration was approved by acclamation after ten months of multilateral negotiations led by UNESCO. The adopted text proposes that Culture be included in the United Nations Future Summit from 2024 and that every four years, starting in 2025, a World Forum on Cultural Policies convened by the world body be held. The governments also promised to intensify the fight against illicit trafficking in cultural property.
“A very clear consensus has emerged from practically all the ministers who have taken the floor to recognize that it is a huge problem and to take measures that, among other things, consist of continuing to support and ratify the instruments that already exist, such as the Unidroit agreement” , Spanish Ignacio Tirado, general secretary of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Unidroit), told REFORMA.
This agreement establishes the restitution of stolen or illicitly exported cultural property. Mexico it is one of the countries that have ratified it. The auctions of archaeological pieces that are heritage of the Nation they are a sensitive issue for the country and, in this regard, Tirado stated that the more UN members ratify the Unidroit and related agreements, “the more difficult it will be for countries to auction goods that should never be auctioned.”
The adoption of the declaration was preceded by the final report of the rapporteur of the summit, Hilmar Farid, Director General of the Ministry of Culture, Research and Technology of Indonesia, who offered a thorough summary of the points raised in the 18 thematic tables held over three days in four axes: “Renewed and reinforced cultural policies”, “Culture for sustainable development”, “Heritage and cultural diversity in crisis” and “The future of the creative economy”.
As part of his personal reflections, the Indonesian called on the ministers to redouble their efforts to provide more evidence of the sector’s contribution to the social, economic and environmental sustainability, as well as to defend the role of culture as an element for a international diplomacy renewed.
On the last day of the Conference, of which Mexico was host for the second time in 40 years, the closing was sealed with the multimedia and choral show The ear and the snail, created by Tito Rivas, and the Carlos Chávez School Orchestra and the Community Symphony Choir, under the direction of Eduardo García Barrios, who performed the fourth movement of the Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Then the ministers and deputy ministers who held sessions for two days in the Los Pinos Cultural Complex were invited to a revelry in the lobby of the National Auditorium, once the spirit of harmony was recovered, after the rough episode between the Russian Minister of Culture Sergey Obryvalin and the 48 countries that briefly left the meeting in protest against the Russian occupation in Ukraine.
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Mondiacult was attended by ministers or deputy ministers from 136 countries, an attendance figure that exceeds any meeting organized by UNESCO so far. But the meeting does not end here: in the fall, the Executive Council of the world body plans to follow up on the Final Declaration, according to its executive president, Serbian Tamara Rastovac.
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