CULTURE
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Themes
Message from Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the International Day for Tolerance, 16 November 2007
On 16 November 1995, the Member States of UNESCO adopted a Declaration of Principles on Tolerance and declared 16 November as International Day for Tolerance. As the authors of the declaration noted, ours is "an age marked by the globalization of the economy and by rapidly increasing mobility, communication, integration and interdependence, large-scale migrations and displacement of populations, urbanization and changing social patterns. Since every part of the world is characterized by diversity, escalating intolerance and strife potentially menaces every region. It is not confined to any country, but is a global threat."
If anything, the conditions described at that time have exacerbated greatly since: the imperative to tolerance is an increasingly urgent one that requires a proactive approach that goes far beyond acceptance to mutual understanding. Certainly, universal human rights and freedoms depend upon legal mechanisms, but these will be respected only if we tolerate one another in the fullest possible sense of that term, which is to say that we respect and appreciate the variety of our cultures, our forms of expression and the different ways of being human. More (pdf)
- 15-10-2007