UN report highlights the Earth Charter
Two months after the UN General Assembly's High Level Dialogue on Interreligious and Intercultural Understanding and Cooperation for Peace, the Presidency of the General Assembly published its official summary paper of the Interactive Hearing with Civil Society in which Steven Rockefeller participated on behalf of Earth Charter International (see special report posted below).
The report makes two references to the Earth Charter: In the summary of comments to the second panel where Steven Rockefeller participated as a respondent, and in the concluding section on "key recommendations". Rockefeller’s remarks are summarized as an appeal for “the promotion of global ethics as a unifying strategy in the midst of religious and cultural diversity”.
In the key recommendations, this line is taken up as the final and concluding point: The Earth Charter is depicted as an “interesting example” for the “development of a code of conduct based on global ethics”, which could be one of the objectives of an United Nations body for interreligious and intercultural cooperation.
The creation of such an UN body was one of the key recommendations of the official General Assembly resolution 61/221 that provided the official background for the High Level Dialogue and the Interactive Hearing with Civil Society. Another key objective suggested in the report would be the systematic collection and dissemination of case studies and best practices of successful grassroot dialogue experiences – an objective which ECI actively encourages and supports.
It is not the first time that an UN document refers to the Earth Charter as an important tool for promoting global ethics in an intercultural context: At the World Summit for Sustainable Development, UNEP and UNESCO convened a high-level roundtable on “Cultural Diversity and Biodiversity for Sustainable Development”. In its official background paper on diversity in nature and culture, UNEP concluded with a call for adopting a more holistic and comprehensive approach for sustainable development based on a new ethic of conservation and environmental stewardship:
“There should be the recognition that most of the problems of loss of biodiversity, weakening of cultural diversity and the poverty phenomenon, which have been dealt with separately, are in fact closely connected and relevant to sustainable development and therefore require a holistic and more comprehensive approach for action at all levels.
We also need to identify, and put into practice, ways and means to promote a new ethic of conservation and environmental stewardship, as emphasized in the UN Millennium Declaration. Promotion of the relevant existing instruments, such as the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Earth Charter, might be useful to initiate the process of a new ethic” (pages 14 – 15).
Together with the paper by UNEP and UNESCO, the summary of the interactive hearing can be seen as an important textual base for encouraging the use of the Earth Charter in further UN initiatives on interreligious and intercultural understanding that are being considered, such as the announcement of a “Decade of Dialogue” and the creation of a special UN body or focal unit for interreligious cooperation.
Links and Documents:
Summary of the Interactive Hearing
Steven Rockefeller's presentation at the Interactive Hearing
Cultural Diversity and Biodiversity for Sustainable Development
To find out more about the Interactive Hearing and read the notes of all speakers and participants, please visit http://www.un.org/ga/president/62/issues/hld-interreligious.shtml