Promoting cultural development

UNESCO cooperates with governments, multilateral and bilateral development agencies, including UNDP, to promote the systematic incorporation of socio-cultural components into the design and evaluation of development projects. One of the proposed activities of the recently established Association of Caribbean States (ACS) is to promote the region's culture to its peoples by promoting Caribbean Basin Studies, interchanges in the areas of sport, tourism and culture, and wider and more in-depth public dissemination of information on Caribbean Basin cultural reality.

The United Nations Decade for Cultural Development (1988-1997), with UNESCO as the lead agency, has four aims: (1) acknowledging the cultural dimension in development; (2) asserting and enhancing cultural identities; (3) broadening participation in cultural life; and (4) promoting international cultural cooperation.

In order to sensitize leading politicians and thinkers to the central importance of culture in development matters, the World Commission on Culture and Development was established in 1992. Its report Our Creative Diversity constitutes the first world report on the close ties between culture and development. It examines such issues as the need for a new global ethic, the importance of cultural cross-fertilization, the implications of changes in communication technologies and the role of women and young people in culture. One of its recommendations is the establishment, under the aegis of the United Nations Volunteers, of a Cultural Heritage taskforce. Through the World Heritage Committee, the taskforce monitors implementation of the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and adds sites considered worthy of protection to the World Heritage List.