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DEVELOPMENT: Culture Key to Millennium Goals, Says UNDP Report

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jul 15 2004 (IPS) - Inclusive, culturally diverse societies are key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, according to the new Human Development Report released Thursday. The report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN’s global development network, says “cultural diversity must be embraced as a basic human right” to achieve the set of eight development goals.

The report ‘Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World’ says that when “cultural freedoms are fully exercised, pluralism can be a source of political harmony and economic vitality.”

The UNDP report says all people have the right to maintain their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities and insists that the adoption of policies to recognise such differences “is the only sustainable approach to development in diverse societies.”

Presenting the report to Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde of Belgium and media representatives Thursday (Jul. 15), UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown said economic globalisation cannot succeed unless cultural freedoms are respected and protected.

“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,” he said.

The goals agreed by heads of state in September 2000 aim to reduce poverty, improve access to basic services, bring disease under control and ensure universal primary education by 2015.

Brown urged consideration of all aspects of the goals. “We have to address poverty in the broader sense of the word. It is more than economics alone. Cultural choice covers all aspects of the development goals such as education and health. We know what needs to be done but the world has to get focused.”

Africa is currently the lowest in the human development index presented in the report.

The human development index shows that 20 countries have suffered development reversals since 1990. Thirteen of these are in sub-Saharan Africa. Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone are listed as countries with the lowest level of human development.

The report says HIV/AIDS has led to “stunning setbacks in income and life expectancy.” But in spite of reversals culture and identity are key to addressing such problems too, it says.

The report says human development is first and foremost about “allowing people to lead the kind of life they choose” and by providing them with the “tools and opportunities” to make choices.

“Unless people who are poor and marginalised – who are more often than not are members of religious or ethnic minorities or migrants – can influence political action at local and national levels, they are unlikely to get equitable access to jobs, schools, hospitals and other basic services,” the report says.

Claims for recognition and equality by diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic groups is one of the “most urgent issues” affecting international stability and human development in the 21st century, the report says.

More than 5,000 different ethnic groups live in some 200 countries. In two of every three countries there is at least one substantial ethnic group representing 10 percent of the population or more.

The UNDP report says, however, that modern society is allowing people to mobilise themselves.

> indigenous people in Latin America to ethnic minorities in the Balkans, to Shias, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq to ethnic groups in Africa, many people are now mobilising along ethnic, religious, racial and cultural lines as a result of advances of globalisation and communication, accelerated immigration and the spread of democracy,” the report says.

The UNDP says policies that accommodate “such diversity and foster multiculturalism” must be integrated into the development process to ensure growth, stability and sound democratic governance.

Verhofstadt said at the launch that the process would not be easy.

“Installing cultural liberty is not a one-off decision, but a lengthy and sometimes painful process,” he said. “Those who believe that it can be achieved in a single go are really far too optimistic. Such a process implies giving and taking, a spirit of compromise, creativity and sometimes highly technical solutions. It is a gradual and complex process.”

One way to assist this process, the report argues, is to allow immigrants to become full members of their adopted countries while they maintain ties to their countries of origin.