30 September 2022
Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities Attends the Opening of the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – MONDIACULT 2022, Mexico
The Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, represented by Ms. Shouq Al Alawi, Director of the Handicrafts Directorate at the Culture Authority, participated in the inauguration of the 2022 UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development “Mondiacult”, held in Mexico for three days (28- 30 September 2022). This major event is held under the patronage of His Excellency Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of the United Mexican States, Mrs. Audrey Azoulay, Director General of UNESCO, representatives of the 193 Member States of UNESCO, along with a large number of Ministers of Culture, governmental and international organizations and UN agencies. During the event, representatives from around the world will seek to find new ways to better incorporate the needs of culture into policy-making and investigate how culture can contribute to stimulate sustainability and creation of new global road map for cultural policies, which will lead to the adoption of a Final Declaration at the end of the conference.
The Conference shed light on four main themes, whereby its final declaration text defines a set of cultural rights that need to be taken into account in public policies, ranging from the social and economic rights of artists, to artistic freedom, the right of indigenous communities to safeguard and transmit their ancestral knowledge, and the protection and promotion of cultural and natural heritage. It also calls for substantial regulation of the digital sector, notably of the major platforms, for the benefit of online cultural diversity, artists’ intellectual property rights and fair access to content for all. Governments also commit to intensify the fight against illicit trafficking in cultural goods with increased international cooperation. They call on art market operators not to offer for sale objects whose provenance is not proven.
Indeed, UNESCO had previously called on member states and the international community to look at the role of cultural policies in tackling global challenges as well as map current cultural trends, including the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic for arts and culture. One of the main aims of the conference is to pave the way for the full integration of culture as a global public good as part of the last decade of action for the implementation of the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This World Conference provides new momentum for the global policy dialogue on culture for sustainable development, spearheaded by UNESCO in line with its cultural mandate to advance the free exchange of ideas and knowledge by encouraging cooperation among countries as enshrined in its Constitution. The last Decade of Action for the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030, agreed upon by the international community as a common aspirational roadmap, UNESCO has convened its Member States and the global community to embark jointly on a continuous reflection on cultural policies to tackle global challenges and outline immediate and future priorities.
Worth to mention that the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development – MONDIACULT 2022 was convened by UNESCO forty years after the first Mondiacult World Conference on Cultural Policies held in Mexico City (Mexico) in 1982, and 24 years after the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies for Development held in Stockholm (Sweden) in 1998.
