The right to peace” “” “

In an era bombarded from all sides by messages – not least those of the media – it is possible that some of them, even of exceptional importance, may tend to be smothered and disappear, superimposed by novelties that are not always equally constructive and significant. This is one of the reflections that occurred to the present writer in the course of the 31st General Conference of UNESCO being held in the organization’s headquarters in Paris from the second half of October to the first days of November. At the end of the 1980s, in these very same conference rooms, the request was repeatedly made by some States, then called third-world countries and later developing countries, to have access to the new technologies with a view to benefiting from greater information and even creating a “New World Order of Information and Communication”. The proposal was an unusual one for the time. It was obstructed for various reasons by the United States, who used it as a pretext to abandon the Organization for good. It was believed by the developing countries at the time that access to the new information technologies would guarantee them every form of progress: including the economic and social progress that had barely been glimpsed in the 1960s, the years of decolonization, and that was struggling to get off the ground and, perhaps, would never be achieved. All this had clearly been a mere illusion. Today, in these very same rooms, with the absence of the USA, the tones seem more muted after the tragic events of 11 September, as if there were a new sense of awareness: there is talk of peace, of poverty, of the lack of water resources. But anyone who imagines all this were a mere technical or scientific exercise would be mistaken: the most repeated words, perhaps excessively so, are “peace” and “morality”, to be applied to water, to space, to biomedicine, to food resources. It is a kind of morality that, overcoming every formalism at the theoretical and juridical level, ought to be at the basis of every norm. And the norm ought then to be applied so that, finally, each people, each person, each group may finally possess their own rights and be able to exercise them. This is a language very different from that of the 1980s: it is more cautious, attentive, rigorous, and indubitably less rhetorical. What is promised is only what can, it is hoped, be delivered, without emphasis. Everybody, in a private capacity, may think, perhaps, of what would have happened if more emphasis had been given also in the past to the “right to peace”, advocated by UNESCO as an individual right: if instead of being devoted exclusively to a theoretical discussion – however interesting -, this right had been combined with the immediate and concrete need to satisfy the elementary needs of the poorer peoples, in other words the fight against poverty, against illiteracy, diseases, in a word, underdevelopment. Today, finally, it is clear to everyone, even outside the headquarters of the international Organizations, at the world level – such as UNO and UNESCO – and at the regional level – such as the Council of Europe and the European Union -, that the culture of peace, applied to the reality of the world, imposes sacrifices on everyone, new models, limits to the egocentrism of States, individuals and groups. The culture and the practice of peace enjoin the prevention of conflicts, and that in turn requires the creation of situations of not excessive economic disparity between peoples and individuals. Re-meditating the message for peace launched by the Pope in 1999, ” the secret of true peace lies in respect for human rights”, it may be said that this message, in the present contingency, has revealed its value and significance. War in fact determines the suspension of the exercise of all rights: civil, political, economic, social and cultural, while poverty interrupts or even denies the exercise of economic, social and cultural rights. Today, at last, everyone recognizes that only the interconnection of rights – that naturally include also those for the protection of the environment and for sustainable development – may guarantee a decent life to individuals and groups – and be a means for the prevention of conflicts. Re-meditating peace, in real terms, may therefore imply limitations and sacrifices. But these are of little consequence in comparison with the loss of innocent lives, the destruction of civilizations: wounds that it would be difficult to heal and that, in this globalized world, now indiscriminately strike all peoples and all individuals.