Address of Dr. Arūnas Gelūnas, Minister of Culture of Lithuania General Policy Debate UNESCO General Conference – 36th session 27 October 2011 President of the General Conference, Director General of UNESCO, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me start by expressing (my) congratulations to the newly elected President of the General Conference Mrs. Katalin Bogyay and to thank the former President of the General Conference Dr. Davidson Hepburn for his leadership.

It is a great honour for me to represent Lithuania and to address you all on this day of 2011. This year is special for Lithuania, since we are celebrating this very month the 20th anniversary of our membership to UNESCO – the world’s leading organisation in promoting dialogue between civilisations, cultures and people. Two decades ago, Lithuania came back to the world’s family of independent states, and it was of crucial importance to our nation to become part of and to contribute to the mission of UNESCO.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A rapidly changing world provides us with more and more arguments that any achievements in whatever sphere of the modern world cannot be taken for granted. The word ‘crises’ appears as one of the central notions we have to deal with these days. So it is only natural that the Leader’s Forum debate posed us a question “How does UNESCO Contribute to Building a Culture of Peace and to Sustainable Development?“ Through join efforts of the world community, UNESCO is more than ever able to contribute to endorsing common values that make the power of ideas work to implement relevant changes. This common objective needs precise and coordinated action both at the international and national level.

When we hear declarations of today’s leaders about the failure to establish multicultural dialogue among different ethnic groups, we especially strongly support UNESCO efforts to stay in close cooperation with civil society.

1 Governmental efforts are not sufficient to achieve consistency of different interest groups, involvement of citizens in decision making processes, and promotion of responsibility among nations for the future of the world.

UNESCO is one of the international organizations that have a structure open to citizens. National Commissions are the place, where representatives of governmental bodies and of civil society work hand in hand to fulfil their common objectives. It is upon to them to ensure that UNESCO would be much closer to citizens. We support the delegation of greater responsibility to the national commissions, for example, when working on UNESCO-linked logos, etc.

The UNESCO initiatives that we work with at the national level provide us with significant results. For instance, some time ago UNESCO launched the initiative “Libraries as Gateways to Information Highways” which inspired Lithuanian authorities. Consequently, in cooperation with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Lithuania succeeded in initiating the national project “Libraries for the Future”. And today the result is that even in the smallest villages of our country librarians have become information technology consultants and teachers for those who want to use e-services.

Moreover, Lithuania’s experience in the management of libraries has been used in other countries. A public opinion survey on libraries, which was conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe this year, was based on the methodology developed in our country. Though the world has made tremendous progress in IT, we have to work even more on infrastructure, content and competency development, in order to ensure access to information resources and services for everyone.

After the twenty years of Lithuania’s membership, the name of UNESCO in our country is strongly associated with the word ‘heritage’. That is not only because Lithuania is a state party of a great number of conventions or because ir has heritage sites inscribed on the UNESCO heritage lists.

We associate ourselves as well with the efforts of this organization to work on raising awareness on the treasures (which) humanity is responsible for. Sometimes, in the process of safeguarding monuments which date back thousands of years, we need to take immediate action. That is why Lithuania welcomes UNESCO’s activity as we have witnessed it these days in Libya, where experts from both inside and outside of the country were invited to urgently examine the preservation of national cultural heritage.

With regard to the protection of the diversity of cultural expression, the promotion of youth and civic engagement is indeed of central concern. The digitisation continues to bring about real revolution in the

2 domain of access to culture heritage and this process has a crucial impact on the democratisation of society. As a consequence, we are more than ever entitled to emphasize our core values and principles.

With reference to achieved results, I would also like to stress the importance of the necessity to mobilize all relevant stakeholders at different levels to promote sustainable development of cultural tourism, especially at the World Heritage sites. Lithuania is part of the network of Baltic and Nordic countries around the Baltic Sea, which have been cooperating in the area of coast and underwater heritage protection for more than 10 years.

Education is one of the pillars of UNESCO’s mandate. As such, I would like to seize this opportunity to congratulate the Director General for her actions, which gave a new meaning to UNESCO’s leadership in education, as we have witnessed on July in Geneva, at the High Level Segment of the Economic and Social Council Ministerial Review.

Lithuania values highly the possibilities UNESCO is offering in terms of international cooperation in the fields of education and science. The seal of the network of UNESCO - associated schools is highly appreciated throughout the in the country. Lithuanian scientists support and adhere to UNESCO's position on the necessity of strong ethical principals in science, and have high expectations as regards its efforts to promote international cooperation in the fundamental sciences.

.Ladies and Gentlemen, It is true that the current global context is a huge challenge for all of us. But it is also true that this very context provides us with an opportunity to take up appropriate measures in order to make our organization more effective. I believe everybody would agree that we need to take the way which would lead us to a reformed UNESCO, that is to say, a UNESCO prepared to constructively face today’s challenges. Let me express my country’s support for such actions.

Thank you very much for your attention.

3