World Day for Cultural Diversity

Cultural diversity
is a Common Heritage of Humanity and stimulates creativity

The World Day for Cultural Diversity, Dialogue and Development was declared in 2002 by the United Nations General Assembly following the adoption of the ‘Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity’ by UNESCO in recognition of the need to increase the potential of culture as a means to achieve prosperity, sustainable development and global peaceful coexistence.

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“…cultural diversity is as necessary for humanity as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense it is a common heritage of humanity and must be recognised and affirmed for the benefit of the present and future generations.” (Art.1 of the 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity).

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Multiculturality is a very important factor for human progress and must be preserved because it is a guarantee of the vitality of society: without cultural diversity, the world would be static, aseptic, sterile or, even worse, full of violence and wars.

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Today, traditions, customs, styles and people are increasingly contaminated: we need to recover the full moral and civic value of cultural pluralism to foster ‘the development of the creative capacities that nourish public life’. (art.2)

Let us celebrate this precious world day with a little insight into the Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity, we will draw from it a small compass for travelling in these stormy times.

The Declaration is divided into four sections – four cardinal points – each consisting of three articles, corresponding to the different values affirmed:

“Identity, Diversity and Pluralism”;
“Cultural Diversity and Human Rights”;
“Cultural Diversity and Creativity’;
“Cultural Diversity and International Solidarity”

“When Einstein, to the passport question, answers ‘racial-human’, he does not ignore differences, he omits them within a broader horizon that includes and exceeds them. This is the landscape that must be opened up: both to those who turn difference into discrimination and to those who, in order to avoid discrimination, deny difference.”

(Giuseppe Pontiggia, writer, author of Born Twice)