Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
The challenges facing education, the arts, culture and media for survi val into the post pandemic planet inspires this recollection on the encounter and reencounter with education luminary Sir Ken Robinson.
The presentation on the prospects for the creative economy, revisioning accounting and representation still holds as we address the challenges of the post pandemic planet. For more visit https://krisrampersad.com/ah-drinking-babash-in-dis-fo-rum-creative-masks-of-satire/
Requests Semianrs Workshops Webinars Courses all Ages, All Sectors, All Industries at The Academy at the GloCaL Knowledge Pot https://krisrampersad.com
Look who dropped in on #Unesco Executive Board #194exbd. Forest Whitaker is a UNESCO Ambassador for Peace and was happy to engage in discussions on potential of Caribbean creative sector at a soiree of delegation of Japan at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris...
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In photo Vice President of the UNESCO Programmes and External Relations Commission of the UNESCO Executive Board Dr Kris Rampersad of Trinidad and Tobago's share a photo-op with UNESCO Ambassador for Peace Hollywood Actor/Producer Forest Whitaker.
Vice President of the UNESCO Programmes and External Relations Commission of the UNESCO Executive Board, Dr Kris Rampersad of Trinidad and Tobago's share a photo-op with UNESCO Ambassador for Peace Hollywood Actor/Producer Forest Whitaker.
Inaugural Address at 194th session of
UNESCO Executive Board, Paris, France
Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative on UNESCO
Executive Board 2013-2017 at the 194th Session of the UNESCO Executive, Paris,
April 2014
Dr
Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the UNESCO
Executive
Board (centre) co-chairs with the UK a joint sessionof the
Finance and
Administration and Programmes and External Affairs Committee
during the 194th session of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris.
Photo
Courtesy Kris Rampersad. All Rights Reserved
Greetings on behalf of the
Government and People of Trinidad and Tobago who welcome, admire, respect and
support the Director General’s initiatives to reform and restructure UNESCO and
her intensive drive to use soft diplomacy which we believe is crucial to significantly
impact the post-2015 agenda as we transition from priorities of the Millennium
Development Goals and consolidate the gains of them through more focussed
Sustainable Development Goals.
Trinidad and Tobago pledges its commitment to
engaging in this process of futuring the operations of UNESCO to remain
relevant and responsive to a global environment of dynamic and effervescent
change. It is an environment that is demanding greater inclusivity. It is placing
increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity,
gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools
placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies
towards eroding these superficial barriers.
In this context, we believe that the work of
UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the
institution best positioned to consolidate the gains of the past towards
carving responsive and relevant paths to progress that address the needs of
generations to come. Foremost among these seems to be combating the ennui and
disenchantment at failed and failing macro political, institutional and
bureaucratic formulas, systems and structures in favour of more glocally
(global-local) focussed initiatives that emphasis and value empowerment of individuals,
communities and civil society to explore their full potential.
Certainly there is much more that needs to be done
to particularly better utilise new technologies in making our work here at
UNESCO more effective and more relevant.
We reiterate the call made by the Trinidad and
Tobago Minister of Education to the Director General at the last General
Assembly, that UNESCO, along with its focus on other disadvantaged groups as
women and children in general, take a lead role in championing actions
throughout the United Nations system that would directly impact and bring in to
the mainstream the estimated 30 percent of the global population of special
needs children who are still severely marginalised and handicapped by current
existing systems in education, culture, science and information.
We support our colleagues speaking on behalf of
strengthening the culture initiatives having regard to the direct benefits this
is having from the work done in our societies where for many the main sources
of income and survival reside in leveraging their talents and skills as the
counter to the haemorrhaging of national resources, by exploitative, corrupt
and ineffective systems and practices. We endorse the culture-centred development drive that
recognises not just intercultural linkages but also cross sectoral links.
At the same time, we particularly commend the
drive to synergise and harmonise sustainable actions in biocultural diversity
and acknowledgement of the intrinsic interplay between physical, mental and
emotional cultural spaces and the potential to either erode, or energise these through
use of scientific understanding and technologies.
In this regard, we believe compilations as the
2013 Creative Economy Report could achieve greater depth were it to more fully
explore the cross-sectoral cost-benefit analysis of the co-relation between the
creative and cultural sectors and other out-of- the-box-areas - as the economic
value of social and culturally inclusive practices on political stability for
instance – an area of analysis that is sadly lacking and could provide the
data, if not ammunition, needed by UNESCO in pursuit of its motto of building
peace in the minds of men and women.
As such, we look forward to deepening of UNESCO’s
intersectoral increasing drive to promote multisectoral partnerships, and
collaborative mechanisms through cross institutional and cross regional
platforms, including with other institutions of the United Nations.
It is in these contemporary areas of UNESCO’s
focus, including its now developing perspective on Big Ocean Sustainable States
(Boss) – the informal rebrand of SIDS - Small
Island Developing States posited at the last General Conference - that we in
the Caribbean believe we can draw the greatest strength, given our evolution
from a history of fragmentation, violence, migration and marginalisation.
The Caribbean Sea at once connects and separates
us from all the regions of the world. It presents to the UNESCO community beyond
the hard politics of power and dominance, a living example for survival and
resilience that endures despite and through a history of genocide of
indigeneous peoples, slavery, forced indentureship, and migration.
Such resilience is represented in the survival of
religious and cultural practices, habits and beliefs: the vibrant celebrations
that range from pre-Columbian festivities of the Mayans, Incas, Tainos and
others to the evolving festivities of migrated peoples: the Garifuna and Rastafari
from oppressed African heritage; and others transposed from the East – the resilient
Ramleela, Chinese Dragon festivities, and their evolving fusions in our
cuisine, music, dance, drama, our Carnivals and steelpan, reggae, zouk and
chutney. All of these present significance to UNESCO ideals of peoples, who
beyond conflict and tensions, are finding ways to celebrate their migrations,
cultural contact and shared occupation of our natural environment.
Yet, our space is at the same time, severely
endangered by the risks of climate change and sea level rise, deforestation, poor
land use practices and pollution and other development challenges.
We believe that the UNESCO mechanisms in science,
education, information and culture can be more effectively used to bridge these
divides, and to help us to further explore, capture and harness these
experiences for the benefit of building peace in the minds of men and women
Even
as we admire the creative initiatives of the Director General to balance a
shrinking budget in challenging financial times, we pledge to work with her for
further rationalisation, while we particularly look forward to better
engagement and more equitable treatment of the countries of the Caribbean. We form
part of the Latin American and Caribbean UNESCO region, and represent almost 40
percent of the votes from this region, but not an equivalent allocation of UNESCO
resources. In its programme of restructuring, we would also
suggest that UNESCO look at ways of redressing of imbalances in its institutional
structure and mechanisms of field and national offices in our region where of
12 offices in the region, only one – located in Kingston - serves the 13 member
and four associated members of CARICOM.
We assure you of our commitment and support to the
Director General’s goal of making UNESCO more relevant and more effective.
I thank you
Dr
Kris Rampersad, UNESCO Executive BoardApril
2014
val into the post pandemic planet inspires this recollection on the encounter and reencounter with education luminary Sir Ken Robinson.
