UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Israel, Malta and Italy to work together on this and other issues concerning common heritage in the
Mediterranean. We would like UNESCO to contribute more to these efforts, notably by supporting projects
concerning sustainable development through use and preservation of traditional and oral heritage in this area. The
Budapest World Conference on Science has, and rightly so, focused on the inevitable role played by culture in
this respect, which comes as a logical continuation of the results of the Stockholm Conference on Culture and
Development.
In the framework of the International Hydrological Programme, Croatia hosted the 19th Conference of the
Danube Countries which took place in Osijek in May 1999. In September 1999, Croatia took an active part in the
Advanced Study Course in Ecohydrology organized by UNESCO and the University of Lodz (Poland). We
would also like to commend the National Commissions of Slovenia and the Czech Republic for hosting the
Central European Workshop on Basic Sciences which has raised important issues brought before the Budapest
Conference and would like to see further support from UNESCO for this activity.
In the framework of the subprogramme MOST - Management of Social Transformations – Croatian and
Ukrainian experts together undertook a study on problems in transition of post-communist societies which led to
an international conference in Dubrovnik in November 1998. MOST remains a project of interest to all the
societies in transition in Central and Eastern Europe and needs to have more impact on the programme policy in
UNESCO.
After the Declaration on the Human Genome and after UNESCO launched the World Commission on the
Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, the Croatian Commission for UNESCO established a
Committee for Bioethics which will be responsible for following this issue, which announces itself as one of the
main lines of action for UNESCO in the years to come.
Let me finish with a few words about how we see UNESCO in the next century. As could be seen even
from this brief recapitulation of the participation of a single Member State in UNESCO activities, their scope is
extremely large. And if we are to judge future development by the tempo of changes that happened over the past
20 years, there will soon be more areas requiring thought and action, perhaps more than a single organization can
handle.
It would therefore seem that these tasks call for a more coherent and stringent structure of the
Organization. It needs to focus on crucial problems in order to become more effective. Resources are limited,
and the more UNESCO oversteps its set framework, the less effective its individual programmes are bound to
become.
In selecting the most important fields of action UNESCO should be guided primarily by its original
mandate: to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education,
science and culture. UNESCO cannot and should not be responsible for peace in the world. Keeping to its
mandate is the precondition for success.
UNESCO should also reinforce its role as a global intellectual forum and as a technical agency. We
believe that both functions are equally important, and that only a combination of these functions can be truly
productive. Since in Croatia we had to build a state starting almost from scratch, very often technical assistance
was needed in terms of models, expertise and know-how in all UNESCO’s fields of competence. I presume that
other Member States could very well use such aid to their respective administrations too. As a matter of fact, this
function of transferring experience and solutions could be of paramount importance in view of the efforts to
reduce the gap between the developed and the developing world.
To sum up, we believe that in the world of rapid changes we need a streamlined organization which can
quickly respond to new demands; an organization simple in structure and with a transparent and efficient
management. We need an organization that will take us where we want and bring us closer to each other in
aspects we consider most important; an organization at the service of the family of nations that we are.
Madam President of the General Conference,
Mr Director-General,
Honourable Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We shall not meet again before the third millennium is already on its way. Let us hope that what we are
saying and doing, at the end of a century which has brought ravages of wars and human slaughter all over the
world, but has also helped us to come together in an unprecedented way in history and to give birth to
organizations such as UNESCO, will secure peace and stability for the world of tomorrow.
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