Cultural Liberty Essential for Human Development, Argues UNDP 2004 Report
Brussels, 15 July 2004—Cultural freedoms should be embraced as basic human rights and as necessities for the development of the increasingly diverse societies of the 21st century, argues the Human Development Report 2004 in a pioneering examination of identity politics around the world.
The report, Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World, was launched in public ceremonies here today with Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Mark Malloch Brown. Belgium, where the Flemish and Walloon populations have long struggled to forge a working compact, is cited by the report as an example offering valuable lessons for other multicultural states.
In a wide-ranging analysis of identity issues in scores of communities and nations, the Human Development Report 2004 looks at many different policy approaches to multicultural nations and communities, from bilingual education and affirmative action plans to innovative systems of proportional representation and federalism. The authors argue that all people have the right to maintain their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities. They further contend that the adoption of policies that recognize and protect these identities is the only sustainable approach to development in diverse societies. Economic globalization cannot succeed unless cultural freedoms are also respected and protected, they say — and xenophobic resistance to cultural diversity should be addressed and overcome.
“If the world is to reach the Millennium Development Goals and ultimately eradicate poverty, it must first successfully confront the challenge of how to build inclusive, culturally diverse societies,” Malloch Brown writes in his foreword to the report.
The report was overseen by UNDP Human Development Report Director Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the lead author, and opens with an agenda-setting introductory chapter by Amartya Sen, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics and one of the originators of UNDP’s Human Development Reports.
“Rather than glorify unreasoned endorsement of inherited traditions, or warn the world about the alleged inevitability of the clash of civilizations, the human development perspective demands that attention go to the importance of freedom in cultural spheres and to ways of defending and expanding the cultural freedoms that people can enjoy,” Sen writes.
The report also features special contributions by:
· The former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, reminding us that the campaign against apartheid was a fight against all discrimination: “Once we won power,” Mandela writes, “we chose to regard the diversity of colours and languages that had once been used to divide us as a source of strength.”
· The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Iranian lawyer and human rights activist
Shirin Ebadi, arguing that “all cultures embrace certain common principles”
despite ethnic or religious differences.
· The 1998 co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for forging peace in his native Northern Ireland, John Hume, noting how the European Union has successfully “transformed its wide range of traditions from a source of conflict into a source of unifying strength”;
· The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, stressing the complexities of linguistic identity in his country, which has accorded equal constitutional status to its two dominant languages, while also granting recognition to minority tongues: “We need to proceed carefully to ensure that making regional languages official contributes to national integration, rather than reinforcing the isolation of communities.”
The Human Development Report 2004 is already stirring debate in societies grappling with the complex issues of identity politics. Public forums are being held in response to the report in Sarajevo, Kuala Lumpur, Guatemala City, Abuja, Washington, DC, and other capitals enriched by a multi-ethnic citizenry.
Claims for recognition and equality by diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic groups comprise one of the most urgent issues affecting international stability and human development in the 21st century, the report contends. More than 5,000 different ethnic groups live in the approximately 200 countries in the world today. In two out of every three countries there is at least one substantial ethnic or religious minority group, representing 10 percent of the population or more. A seventh of the world’s population—about 900 million people—face some form of discrimination because of their ethnic, racial or religious identities, according to a study by the “Minorities at Risk” project of the University of Maryland, cited in the Human Development Report 2004.
Yet when cultural freedoms are fully exercised, this pluralism can be a source of political harmony and economic vitality, the authors stress, pointing to many empirical examples of such success, from immigration-enriched industrial powers like the Canada and United States to the indigenously multiethnic nations of Africa and Asia. “Cultural liberty is a simple but profoundly disturbing idea, contrary to what most states have practiced over the centuries, but for which there is a rising clamour in the 21st century,” said Fukuda-Parr.
Ethnic Tensions and Exclusions
Ethnic and religious groups excluded from or denigrated by the larger society are responding through political activism. Identity politics in these circumstances can polarize communities and entire nations, sowing hatred and threatening peace and development. From indigenous people in Latin America to religious minorities in Southeast Asia to ethnic minorities in the Balkans, to Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, to ethnic groups in Africa and immigrants in Western Europe, many people are now mobilizing along ethnic, religious and racial and cultural lines. This phenomenon is due to many converging factors, among them:
· The spread of democracy, which give excluded groups more political space and options for protest based on historical grievances.
· Advances of globalization and communication, which create new networks and alliances.
· The accelerated pace of international migration, which creates constituencies outside the home country supporting demands for cultural recognition.
Cultural liberty is as much a necessity for human development as democracy and economic opportunity, the report says. Policies that accommodate diversity and foster multiculturalism must be integrated into the development process to ensure growth, stability and sound democratic governance.
The Immigration Challenge
The closing decades of the 20th century witnessed one of the greatest migratory surges in world history. The number of immigrants in the European Union from Asia, Africa and the Americas jumped by about 75 percent between 1980 and 2000. North America witnessed an even greater influx, with the total number of foreign-born residents in the United States rising by 145 percent in the same period, from 14 million to 35 million. In Canada, the foreign-born make up about 44 percent of the current population of Toronto, its dominant city. And in some small countries like Singapore and some Persian Gulf States, guest workers and other immigrants comprise a third or more of the resident population.
What separates this phenomenon from migratory surges of centuries past is not just sheer numbers, but the transforming role of technology: Throughout the world, revolutions in telecommunications and transportation have made it possible for immigrants to maintain dual or even multiple cultural identities and interests simultaneously. Immigrants today can, want and should be able to stay involved with their countries of origin, without compromising their commitment or loyalty to their newly adopted homelands, the authors say. They argue that countries hosting immigrant populations need to accommodate diversity and introduce new policies of cultural recognition rather than rely on assimilation.
Culture as a Global Commodity
Cultural goods are different from other traded products because “they convey ideas, symbols and lifestyles and are an intrinsic part of the identity of the community that produces them,” say the authors, who favour exceptions for cultural goods in international trade agreements. Cultural diversity in the arts would radically decline if left to market forces alone, they say, to the ultimate detriment of world culture. The economic evidence is compelling:
· World trade in entertainment media—cinema, broadcasting, music, literature, the visual arts—has quadrupled over the past two decades, from US$95 billion yearly to an estimated $380 billion. About 80 percent of this cultural trade flow originates in only 13 countries, led by the United States.
· US productions alone now account for about 85 percent of film screened worldwide. The 10 top-grossing films of all time in markets outside of the United States were all US-made, led by the 1997 movie Titanic, which earned more than $1.2 billion in international markets.
But the authors also caution against the use of quotas or trade barriers to restrict imports of cultural goods, using the film industry as the most economically significant example. The report cites alternative models, such as in Argentina and Brazil, which provide financial incentives to domestic film production without imposing barriers against cultural imports. France spends about $400 million a year to support a film industry that produces more than180 feature films annually. In Egypt, a private-public partnership has helped the Egypt Film Society finance the construction of new film studios.
Multicultural Federalism
For societies with multiple, geographically concentrated ethnic or linguistic groups, the report recommends “asymmetric federalism” as a way to successfully manage a multicultural society. In such systems, the powers granted to subunits are not identical. Some regions have different areas of autonomy than others. Federal states can accommodate specific distinctions in their political, administrative and economic structures, as when states in Borneo joined the federation of Malaysia in 1963. Such special measures enable territorially concentrated groups to maintain their identities under the umbrella of a broader national authority, thereby reducing the potential for ethnic violence or demands for secession.
Almost every major democracy that is ethnically or linguistically diverse practices some form of asymmetric federalism: Belgium, Spain and the Swiss Federation are prominent examples. The success of federal arrangements depends on careful design and the political will to enhance the system’s democratic functioning. What matters is whether the arrangements accommodate important differences, yet buttress national loyalties.
Religious Freedom and Public Policy
States also have a responsibility to protect rights and secure freedoms for all their members and not discriminate on grounds of religion. Non-discriminatory states should protect religious freedom and individual choice:
· Everyone should have the right to criticize, revise or challenge the dominance of a particular interpretation of core beliefs.
· Clergy or other religious hierarchies should have the same status as other citizens.
· People of one religion must be allowed to be responsibly critical of the practices and beliefs of other religions.
· Individuals must be free not only to criticize the religion into which they are born, but also to reject it for another or to remain without one.
Affirmative Action—Adjusting for Collective Disadvantage
The report finds that affirmative action policies are necessary when the disadvantage is collective. India has one of the longest histories of any country in implementing affirmative action policies, known as “reservations.” This policy has changed the nature and composition of the Indian middle class. A sizeable portion of the middle class now consists of the second and third generation beneficiaries of “reservations.” Innovative adaptations of affirmative action policies could be used to redress the under-representation of indigenous peoples in Latin American legislatures and other government institutions, for example.
Affirmative action in the United States has increased the percentage of African-American lawyers, judges, physicians, engineers, and university professors. One dilemma now may be whether the children of this new elite should benefit from affirmative action policies. Recent arguments for affirmative action policies incorporating a ‘sunset’ clause recognize the need to periodically assess the impact on beneficiary groups in order to prevent such policies from becoming discriminatory and exclusionary.
Language Policy—Inclusion or Exclusion ?
Cultural identity is not a zero-sum game. Speakers of a mother tongue that is not the dominant or official language of a country—be it Basque in Spain, Zulu in South Africa, or Urdu in the UK, or Spanish in the US—can still participate fully in national culture and politics. “The state can be blind to religion, but it cannot be mute to language,” writes Fukuda-Parr, noting the wide variety of “official language” policies in multilingual countries.
Limitations on people’s ability to use their native language—and limited facility in speaking the dominant or official national language—can exclude people from education, political life and access to justice. Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 2,500 languages, but the ability of many people to use their language in education and in dealing with the state is particularly limited. In more than 30 countries in the region, the official language is different from the one most commonly used. Only 13 percent of the children who receive primary education do so in their native language.
Multilingual countries often need a three-language formula:
· A national or official state language.
· A lingua franca to facilitate communications among different groups (in some cases the official language serves this purpose).
· Official recognition of the mother tongue or of indigenous languages for those without full command of the official language or lingua franca.
Human Development Report 2004
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/
ABOUT THIS REPORT: Every year since 1990, the UNDP has commissioned the Human Development Report by an independent team of experts to explore major issues of global concern. A worldwide advisory network of leaders in academia, government and civil society contribute data, ideas, and best practices to support the analysis and proposals published in the Report. The concept of Human Development looks beyond per capita income, human resource development, and basic needs as a measure of human progress and also assesses such factors as human freedom, dignity and human agency, that is, the role of people in development. The Human Development Report 2004 argues that development is ultimately “a process of enlarging people’s choices,” not just raising national incomes. The Human Development Report 2004 is published in English by Oxford University Press.
ABOUT UNDP: UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of UNDP and our wide range of partners. For more info on UNDP: http://www.undp.org
Brussels, 15 July 2004—Cultural freedoms should be embraced as basic human rights and as necessities for the development of the increasingly diverse societies of the 21st century, argues the Human Development Report 2004 in a pioneering examination of identity politics around the world.
The report, Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World, was launched in public ceremonies here today with Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Mark Malloch Brown. Belgium, where the Flemish and Walloon populations have long struggled to forge a working compact, is cited by the report as an example offering valuable lessons for other multicultural states.
In a wide-ranging analysis of identity issues in scores of communities and nations, the Human Development Report 2004 looks at many different policy approaches to multicultural nations and communities, from bilingual education and affirmative action plans to innovative systems of proportional representation and federalism. The authors argue that all people have the right to maintain their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities. They further contend that the adoption of policies that recognize and protect these identities is the only sustainable approach to development in diverse societies. Economic globalization cannot succeed unless cultural freedoms are also respected and protected, they say — and xenophobic resistance to cultural diversity should be addressed and overcome.
“If the world is to reach the Millennium Development Goals and ultimately eradicate poverty, it must first successfully confront the challenge of how to build inclusive, culturally diverse societies,” Malloch Brown writes in his foreword to the report.
The report was overseen by UNDP Human Development Report Director Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the lead author, and opens with an agenda-setting introductory chapter by Amartya Sen, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics and one of the originators of UNDP’s Human Development Reports.
“Rather than glorify unreasoned endorsement of inherited traditions, or warn the world about the alleged inevitability of the clash of civilizations, the human development perspective demands that attention go to the importance of freedom in cultural spheres and to ways of defending and expanding the cultural freedoms that people can enjoy,” Sen writes.
The report also features special contributions by:
· The former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, reminding us that the campaign against apartheid was a fight against all discrimination: “Once we won power,” Mandela writes, “we chose to regard the diversity of colours and languages that had once been used to divide us as a source of strength.”
· The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Iranian lawyer and human rights activist
Shirin Ebadi, arguing that “all cultures embrace certain common principles”
despite ethnic or religious differences.
· The 1998 co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for forging peace in his native Northern Ireland, John Hume, noting how the European Union has successfully “transformed its wide range of traditions from a source of conflict into a source of unifying strength”;
· The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, stressing the complexities of linguistic identity in his country, which has accorded equal constitutional status to its two dominant languages, while also granting recognition to minority tongues: “We need to proceed carefully to ensure that making regional languages official contributes to national integration, rather than reinforcing the isolation of communities.”
The Human Development Report 2004 is already stirring debate in societies grappling with the complex issues of identity politics. Public forums are being held in response to the report in Sarajevo, Kuala Lumpur, Guatemala City, Abuja, Washington, DC, and other capitals enriched by a multi-ethnic citizenry.
Claims for recognition and equality by diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic groups comprise one of the most urgent issues affecting international stability and human development in the 21st century, the report contends. More than 5,000 different ethnic groups live in the approximately 200 countries in the world today. In two out of every three countries there is at least one substantial ethnic or religious minority group, representing 10 percent of the population or more. A seventh of the world’s population—about 900 million people—face some form of discrimination because of their ethnic, racial or religious identities, according to a study by the “Minorities at Risk” project of the University of Maryland, cited in the Human Development Report 2004.
Yet when cultural freedoms are fully exercised, this pluralism can be a source of political harmony and economic vitality, the authors stress, pointing to many empirical examples of such success, from immigration-enriched industrial powers like the Canada and United States to the indigenously multiethnic nations of Africa and Asia. “Cultural liberty is a simple but profoundly disturbing idea, contrary to what most states have practiced over the centuries, but for which there is a rising clamour in the 21st century,” said Fukuda-Parr.
Ethnic Tensions and Exclusions
Ethnic and religious groups excluded from or denigrated by the larger society are responding through political activism. Identity politics in these circumstances can polarize communities and entire nations, sowing hatred and threatening peace and development. From indigenous people in Latin America to religious minorities in Southeast Asia to ethnic minorities in the Balkans, to Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, to ethnic groups in Africa and immigrants in Western Europe, many people are now mobilizing along ethnic, religious and racial and cultural lines. This phenomenon is due to many converging factors, among them:
· The spread of democracy, which give excluded groups more political space and options for protest based on historical grievances.
· Advances of globalization and communication, which create new networks and alliances.
· The accelerated pace of international migration, which creates constituencies outside the home country supporting demands for cultural recognition.
Cultural liberty is as much a necessity for human development as democracy and economic opportunity, the report says. Policies that accommodate diversity and foster multiculturalism must be integrated into the development process to ensure growth, stability and sound democratic governance.
The Immigration Challenge
The closing decades of the 20th century witnessed one of the greatest migratory surges in world history. The number of immigrants in the European Union from Asia, Africa and the Americas jumped by about 75 percent between 1980 and 2000. North America witnessed an even greater influx, with the total number of foreign-born residents in the United States rising by 145 percent in the same period, from 14 million to 35 million. In Canada, the foreign-born make up about 44 percent of the current population of Toronto, its dominant city. And in some small countries like Singapore and some Persian Gulf States, guest workers and other immigrants comprise a third or more of the resident population.
What separates this phenomenon from migratory surges of centuries past is not just sheer numbers, but the transforming role of technology: Throughout the world, revolutions in telecommunications and transportation have made it possible for immigrants to maintain dual or even multiple cultural identities and interests simultaneously. Immigrants today can, want and should be able to stay involved with their countries of origin, without compromising their commitment or loyalty to their newly adopted homelands, the authors say. They argue that countries hosting immigrant populations need to accommodate diversity and introduce new policies of cultural recognition rather than rely on assimilation.
Culture as a Global Commodity
Cultural goods are different from other traded products because “they convey ideas, symbols and lifestyles and are an intrinsic part of the identity of the community that produces them,” say the authors, who favour exceptions for cultural goods in international trade agreements. Cultural diversity in the arts would radically decline if left to market forces alone, they say, to the ultimate detriment of world culture. The economic evidence is compelling:
· World trade in entertainment media—cinema, broadcasting, music, literature, the visual arts—has quadrupled over the past two decades, from US$95 billion yearly to an estimated $380 billion. About 80 percent of this cultural trade flow originates in only 13 countries, led by the United States.
· US productions alone now account for about 85 percent of film screened worldwide. The 10 top-grossing films of all time in markets outside of the United States were all US-made, led by the 1997 movie Titanic, which earned more than $1.2 billion in international markets.
But the authors also caution against the use of quotas or trade barriers to restrict imports of cultural goods, using the film industry as the most economically significant example. The report cites alternative models, such as in Argentina and Brazil, which provide financial incentives to domestic film production without imposing barriers against cultural imports. France spends about $400 million a year to support a film industry that produces more than180 feature films annually. In Egypt, a private-public partnership has helped the Egypt Film Society finance the construction of new film studios.
Multicultural Federalism
For societies with multiple, geographically concentrated ethnic or linguistic groups, the report recommends “asymmetric federalism” as a way to successfully manage a multicultural society. In such systems, the powers granted to subunits are not identical. Some regions have different areas of autonomy than others. Federal states can accommodate specific distinctions in their political, administrative and economic structures, as when states in Borneo joined the federation of Malaysia in 1963. Such special measures enable territorially concentrated groups to maintain their identities under the umbrella of a broader national authority, thereby reducing the potential for ethnic violence or demands for secession.
Almost every major democracy that is ethnically or linguistically diverse practices some form of asymmetric federalism: Belgium, Spain and the Swiss Federation are prominent examples. The success of federal arrangements depends on careful design and the political will to enhance the system’s democratic functioning. What matters is whether the arrangements accommodate important differences, yet buttress national loyalties.
Religious Freedom and Public Policy
States also have a responsibility to protect rights and secure freedoms for all their members and not discriminate on grounds of religion. Non-discriminatory states should protect religious freedom and individual choice:
· Everyone should have the right to criticize, revise or challenge the dominance of a particular interpretation of core beliefs.
· Clergy or other religious hierarchies should have the same status as other citizens.
· People of one religion must be allowed to be responsibly critical of the practices and beliefs of other religions.
· Individuals must be free not only to criticize the religion into which they are born, but also to reject it for another or to remain without one.
Affirmative Action—Adjusting for Collective Disadvantage
The report finds that affirmative action policies are necessary when the disadvantage is collective. India has one of the longest histories of any country in implementing affirmative action policies, known as “reservations.” This policy has changed the nature and composition of the Indian middle class. A sizeable portion of the middle class now consists of the second and third generation beneficiaries of “reservations.” Innovative adaptations of affirmative action policies could be used to redress the under-representation of indigenous peoples in Latin American legislatures and other government institutions, for example.
Affirmative action in the United States has increased the percentage of African-American lawyers, judges, physicians, engineers, and university professors. One dilemma now may be whether the children of this new elite should benefit from affirmative action policies. Recent arguments for affirmative action policies incorporating a ‘sunset’ clause recognize the need to periodically assess the impact on beneficiary groups in order to prevent such policies from becoming discriminatory and exclusionary.
Language Policy—Inclusion or Exclusion ?
Cultural identity is not a zero-sum game. Speakers of a mother tongue that is not the dominant or official language of a country—be it Basque in Spain, Zulu in South Africa, or Urdu in the UK, or Spanish in the US—can still participate fully in national culture and politics. “The state can be blind to religion, but it cannot be mute to language,” writes Fukuda-Parr, noting the wide variety of “official language” policies in multilingual countries.
Limitations on people’s ability to use their native language—and limited facility in speaking the dominant or official national language—can exclude people from education, political life and access to justice. Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 2,500 languages, but the ability of many people to use their language in education and in dealing with the state is particularly limited. In more than 30 countries in the region, the official language is different from the one most commonly used. Only 13 percent of the children who receive primary education do so in their native language.
Multilingual countries often need a three-language formula:
· A national or official state language.
· A lingua franca to facilitate communications among different groups (in some cases the official language serves this purpose).
· Official recognition of the mother tongue or of indigenous languages for those without full command of the official language or lingua franca.
Human Development Report 2004
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/
ABOUT THIS REPORT: Every year since 1990, the UNDP has commissioned the Human Development Report by an independent team of experts to explore major issues of global concern. A worldwide advisory network of leaders in academia, government and civil society contribute data, ideas, and best practices to support the analysis and proposals published in the Report. The concept of Human Development looks beyond per capita income, human resource development, and basic needs as a measure of human progress and also assesses such factors as human freedom, dignity and human agency, that is, the role of people in development. The Human Development Report 2004 argues that development is ultimately “a process of enlarging people’s choices,” not just raising national incomes. The Human Development Report 2004 is published in English by Oxford University Press.
ABOUT UNDP: UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of UNDP and our wide range of partners. For more info on UNDP: http://www.undp.org