Irina Bokova, Director General, UNESCO

UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) is leading through innovation, to nurture the transformative power of education for human rights and dignity, for sustainability and global citizenship. The Institute is leading in consultations about global citizenship education by provoking debates and, in an innovative approach, by developing games on peace and sustainable development through an international competition. It is extremely impressive work.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” And this is what we mean when we speak about the transformative power of education.

We see the revolutionary impact of new information and communication technologies, shaping a new global public space, tying the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ more tightly together. All of this carries great hope, and I see this as the essence of a new humanism, drawing on the equal rights and dignity of every woman and man, in harmony with others and the world.

At the same time, inequalities are deepening. Some estimates show that 1% of the world’s population now controls between 40% to 50% of the world’s wealth.

All of this calls for new skills and equal access for men and women – and this starts with education. Real sustainability goes beyond the reach of states – it must be grounded in the rights and dignity of every woman and man, in their abilities, skills and behaviours, in their capacity to transform their lives, anticipate the future, make the most of change.

Sustainability requires changes in how we produce and consume. Fundamentally, it requires new ways of seeing the world, new ways of thinking about our responsibilities to each other and the planet, new ways of acting and behaving as global citizens. This is why education is the bedrock of sustainability, because it can shape the new values, skills, and knowledge we need for the century ahead.

This Institute has a vital role to play to integrate this vision into policies and social strategies.There has been great progress in terms of awareness and political commitment – but here again, we need to translate this into everyday skills, into sustainable behaviours. Sustainability cannot be built on technical or financial solutions alone. To build green economies, we need green societies.

Today, as UNESCO’s Education For All Global Monitoring Report shows, over 250 million children in the world leave school without being able to read a simple sentence. Something is not working in education systems and we need innovative solutions to change this, and I believe, this Institute can make a decisive contribution to make quality education a reality.

Education for Global Citizenship, one of the three pillars of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative, seeks to build competencies to translate that vision into action. It features among the education objectives that the international community is expected to endorse next September, when it adopts the Sustainable Development Goals.

UNESCO is bringing this message to the negotiations underway among states, on shaping an ambitious global sustainable development agenda to follow in 2015, with inclusive quality education and lifelong learning at its core.

Globalization has opened unprecedented opportunities for exchange, but, with increasing connections, has come heightened fear from many communities. Extremists, armed with pick-axes and shovels, set out to destroy Timbuktu’s ancient mosques and mausoleums. In Iraq, extremists are seeking to ’cleanse’ an entire society of its rich cultural diversity, persecuting minorities and destroying heritage.

The stakes are high.

We must respond to extremism, to narrow visions of history, values and humanity, guided by the vision of Mahatma Gandhi, who said clearly, “no culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.”

I recall the speech given by Professor Amartya Sen, when he said that what is called ‘western science’, in fact, draws on a long chain of intellectual relations, linking western mathematics and science to a wide range of distinctly non-western practitioners and traditions.

He took the example of the world’s oldest university, Nalanda, which flourished on pan-Asian cooperation, involving not only India, Indonesia and China, but also Korea, Japan, Thailand and other countries, about 1,500 years ago. I am convinced that knowledge about the depth of such interaction can help reduce tensions today.

This is why UNESCO has crafted normative instruments and programmes, to safeguard the common heritage of humanity and promote the diversity of cultural expressions – and this is why UNESCO is advocating for the post-2015 development agenda to recognise the enabling power of culture for poverty eradication, social inclusion, sustainability and tolerance.

I appeal for the development of intercultural skills across all society. This is the way to build stronger unity, not only within countries, but also across the world. Harnessing cultural diversity is essential to mobilise new ideas, to stimulate innovation and creativity.

I believe countries that invest today in cultural literacy, and intercultural skills will hold the keys to cooperation among societies and within them.

This does not happen by itself – it takes new forms of dialogue and skills, including linguistic skills, and therein lies the importance of this Institute: to support the process of designing effective policies and guidelines for the teachers, policy makers, as well as the ordinary citizens.

I am convinced the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development is a model platform for the innovation all societies need today, to foster new skills for new times. The future will be built here and on the benches of schools.

UNESCO will bring all of its experience to support this revolution of skills to nurture not only effective and competent workers, but inclusive and tolerant citizens.

Nearly 70 years ago, when the UNESCO constitution was first signed, it read:

“That a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace which could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world, and that the peace must therefore be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind.”

These words have not aged a day.

Sustainability must be built upon a firm commitment to put education and training at the centre of all public policies, to empower learners to transform their lives, and build a more sustainable world.

This is the vision this Institute is promoting, and in doing so, it contributes to rejuvenating the spirit of UNESCO, to renewing UNESCO to the needs of the world today, as we celebrate our 70th anniversary.

I can feel the immense hope that exists, that something is changing in the world, drawing on Mahatma Gandhi’s eternal legacy –

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”.