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Summary: This report looks at many different
policy approaches to multicultural
nations and communities, from
bilingual education and affirmative
action plans to innovative systems
of proportional representation and
federalism. The authors argue that
all people have the right to maintain
their ethnic, linguistic, and religious
identities. They further contend that the adoption of policies that recognise
and protect these identities is the only sustainable approach to
development in diverse societies. Economic globalisation cannot
succeed unless cultural freedoms are also respected and
protected, they say—and xenophobic resistance to cultural
diversity should be addressed and overcome.
“If the world is to reach the Millennium Development Goals and
ultimately eradicate poverty, it must first successfully confront the
challenge of how to build inclusive, culturally diverse
societies,” Malloch Brown writes in his foreword to the report.
The report was overseen by UNDP Human Development Report
Director Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the lead author, and opens with an
agenda-setting introductory chapter by Amartya Sen, the winner
of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics and one of the originators
of UNDP’s Human Development Reports.
“Rather than glorify unreasoned endorsement of inherited
traditions, or warn the world about the alleged inevitability of the
clash of civilizations, the human development perspective
demands that attention go to the importance of freedom in
cultural spheres and to ways of defending and expanding the
cultural freedoms that people can enjoy,” Sen writes.
The report also features special contributions by:
- The former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, reminding
us that the campaign against apartheid was a fight against all
discrimination: “Once we won power,” Mandela writes, “we chose
to regard the diversity of colours and languages that had once
been used to divide us as a source of strength.”
- The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Iranian lawyer and human
rights activist Shirin Ebadi, arguing that “all cultures embrace
certain common principles” despite ethnic or religious differences.Owner: UNDPpdf: hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_complete.pdf