On Growth Two

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47. Mahdi Elmandjra

Mahdi Elmandjra was born March 13, 1933, in Rabat, Morocco. After graduating from the Lyautey High School in Casablanca, he went to the Putney School in Vermont and to Cornell and the London School of Economics. He then obtained a doctorate in law at the University of Paris. He began his career as a diplomat in the Foreign Service of Morocco and became an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1961 he joined UNESCO in Paris, where at present he is assistant director-general for preprogramming.

No one has analyzed the management of the United Nations as critically and thoroughly as you did in your book, The United Nations System: An Analysis. Are you satisfied with the way the UN operates at this point in time?

I do not think that anyone who believes in the perfectibility of institutions can ever be fully satisfied. There is, no doubt, great room for major improvements in the UN system, but these cannot come about without important changes in national attitudes toward international organizations. In the meantime, the UN system is a mere reflection of the prevailing trends in international relations, which are dictated by national options. One of the main values of the UN system is that it represents a world forum where views can be exchanged with the hope that, through dialogue, one can prevent major crises as well as contribute to the molding of an ‘international public opinion’ dedicated to the universal aims of the UN Charter.

But take, for instance, the special session in April, 1974, called by President Hourari Boumédiene to deal with problems concerning natural resources.

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Eighty-eight government leaders traveled to New York, delivered their speeches, and left. Some considered this a disaster and an insult to the intentions and aims of the conference.

No one expected from this extraordinary session of the General Assembly that after two weeks of speeches there would follow some sort of miraculous transformation in the entire international system. But the fact that this extraordinary session even took place is most significant. It has clearly demonstrated the awareness in the developing countries, as well as in the developed world, of a deep crisis in the present structure of the world system. We will have to take time to reflect upon those eighty-eight speeches, while - and this is often not sufficiently stressed - no doubt behind the scenes a lot of useful contacts have taken place which are not publicized at all. In my opinion, this conference has forced and will force a lot of people to think within new and different frames of reference.

You are stressing the importance of ‘invisible diplomacy.’

I think, and this was reflected in some of the speeches delivered by representatives of the developed world, that more people now accept the need for some change in the existing structures of the world economic system and more particularly in the type of international relations that still prevail.

As a journalist I have attended some twelve sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The numbers of words uttered in the halls of that building ran into the billions. Is there no way of speeding up these proceedings? The world is in a hurry; the problems faced by mankind are magnifying.

A lot of thought is given to these problems. But international assemblies are often considered places where certain national viewpoints are directed to national as well as to international public opinion. It is like when any national politician speaks as a member of Parliament with a clear eye on his constituency at home. But still, all this serves to prepare the ground for various decisions. Some of them are being taken by the technical committees of the General Assembly, while others are being worked out by silent diplomacy, as I said earlier. But I would be prepared to say that the conference on raw materials, which took place in New York in April, 1974, represents a major evolution in the type of international relations that the world so far has known.

Do you view the Stockholm Conference on the Environment, in 1972, and

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the great conferences of 1974 - the Population Conference in Bucharest and the Food Conference in Rome - as falling in the same category?

I think we are witnessing what is being called ‘the globalization of problems.’ In other words, there is an increasing number of problems which nowadays have acquired a universal dimension. They can only be effectively met and handled through international arrangements. Problems of the environment, world population, the seas and oceans, food and energy; even problems concerning human ‘settlements,’ as we call them today, all these questions cannot be resolved by the allocation of large sums of money within the framework of national decisions. Everyone now seems aware of this. A transformation is occurring in the concept of national sovereignty. People are admitting that they have to rely on new forms of international regulation.

Aurelio Peccei calls this a new concept of the sovereign state in relation to global interdependence.

The new concept of interdependence as eloquently expressed by the Club of Rome and Aurelio Peccei is too often mistakenly interpreted. Some take it to mean that it should signal a radical transformation toward an immediate world government. This is not what it meant at all. What interdependence means really is simply that at the national level there is an awareness and recognition that certain types of problems require a more intensive form of international cooperation and that therefore these questions could be delegated, perhaps even in part, to international forms of decision making. This has now become indispensable, as a matter of fact, even as a condition for the survival of the nation-states. National sovereignty would eventually become meaningless without this delegation and acceptance of certain powers at a global level.

One could say that we are watching at present a kind of mutation in the very concept of national sovereignty, whereby certain attributes of sovereignty on the national level that perhaps were still considered indispensable a few years ago are no longer felt as essential. This happens because it is realized that no nation is able to face some of the present world problems alone. Take any example. For instance, inflation. I think it is fully recognized nowadays that no single country can solve the problem of inflation on its own. Problems must be tackled internationally, globally. How this must be done, no one can supply a proper answer as yet, but at least there is this recognition that more and more problems need to be studied at the international level. Our solutions should be solutions with an international character, acceptable to all.

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Why is it then that when the world faces a military conflict, as in October, 1973, in the Middle East, within days the United Nations dispatches an emergency force of soldiers to the endangered area, but when there is a war situation in the African Sahel region, where hundreds of thousands of people are threatened with famine, the world is unable to effectively lend aid. ‘Transport problems,’ Addeke H. Boerma told me. But I know of one air force that had enough planes to contaminate one-third of South Vietnam with chemicals and send hundreds of planes to destroy even the smallest villages in North Vietnam.

I do not underestimate the importance of the Sahel problem. However, it again raises the question of the global interdependence of such problems. The food problem in these African countries is difficult to solve, because the necessary infrastructure in terms of transport is most inadequate.

Another angle is likewise of paramount importance, and I am not raising this question because I am connected with UNESCO. But, nevertheless, if there were a higher level of education in areas like the Sahel countries in Africa, it would be easier to develop efficient methods of aid, to get the local population involved in a larger scale in the distribution of food that is flown in. Also, if developments in science had progressed further, we would have had available more reliable weather-forecasts about climatological conditions, which in turn could have assisted in preventing such calamities. Which brings us back to the point I brought up before, that no single country alone is capable any longer of resolving these problems, since everything is becoming closely interrelated.

In some of your speeches you have stressed what you called ‘le nationalisme des disciplines scientifiques.’ Nationalism in science likewise seems absurd in this day and age.

What I meant by this ‘nationalistic’ approach to the sciences was that we should not limit our viewpoint to specific disciplines alone. I believe that the former boundaries between disciplines in science are gradually disappearing. In their interdependence, the present-day world problems we are dealing with require numerous specialists and technicians from all fields in order to find solutions. The need to recognize the complementarity of the inputs of the most varied scientific knowledge has become indispensable. That is what I meant by saying that we have got to work toward interdisciplinarity. Of course, no single scientist could be competent in a large field of sciences, but what is definitely needed is at least the recognition on the part of some scientists that their work is closely related to the work of other scientists in other fields. This already would be a big leap forward. In fact, most modern

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institutes are already basing most of their research on the inter-disciplinary approach.

It was an Algerian, Abdelkader Chanderli, who stressed in our interview for this volume the scandalous way in which technically advanced nations are holding on to their patents and technical know-how, thus creating another barrier toward faster development in the developing nations.

Certainly. The transfer of techniques and technology plays a major part in development. UNCTAD is dealing with these problems. And, indeed, there has been a great reluctance on the part of a number of advanced countries to share and make available some of their technological know-how. This is particularly unfortunate on two grounds: it is unfortunate in terms of economic development, as Mr. Chanderli has aptly explained to you. But there is also another obstacle, which concerns UNESCO in particular. This is the free flow of ideas. It could be easily maintained that the free flow of knowledge should be based on the same principle. One of the main principles of the constitution of UNESCO is the advancement of knowledge. Knowledge should be at the disposal of all humanity without limitations of any kind. This does not necessarily mean that through this sharing of knowledge one would not be prepared to recognize the rights of those who have produced the technological developments or hold the patents. It is a question of redistribution. One could devise ways by which the inventors would be appropriately compensated. But what is happening right now is that the price of such patents if often exorbitantly high and unreasonable. It often becomes a form of monopoly. In various fields straight monopolies exist. In my opinion monopolies of whatever kind are always an obstacle toward the development and welfare of human beings, be they on a national or an international level. This indeed is one of the important issues in the development problématique of the Third World. The developing nations should have complete access to the technological know-how of the advanced nations under reasonable conditions.

What about the field of education as related to communications?

When speaking of the area of communications, we have to distinguish three aspects. First, there is the area that could be called freedom of communications. There has got to be a minimum amount of free flow of ideas as laid down in the constitution of UNESCO, as well as in the Declaration of Human Rights. Our second question is the problem of the fair distribution of this flow of information. Just as there are certain inequalities and unbalances in the political, social, and economic fields in terms of

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distribution of power, you have the same thing in the area of communications. That is, the flow of communications itself is not balanced. I need hardly dwell on this situation, because many studies have shown that, for instance, in some of the developing countries up to eighty percent of television programs come from a limited number of countries. The concept of a free flow of information loses much of its significance when it deteriorates into a one-way process of communication. The flow of ideas should be more balanced.

The third point I want to raise is of an ethical nature and closely related to this problem of communications. It is the problem of responsibility and of professional consciousness. If one wanted to guarantee a maximum amount of freedom of information, or of a free flow of information, then the generators of that information would have to show a greater sense of responsibility and stop exploiting the media to certain particular ends. Here lies, of course, the perpetual dilemma between freedom and responsibility. This dilemma one finds not only in the field of communications, it is an eternal problem closely linked to the concept of democracy. In the democratic state, all citizens are free, but their freedom should by definition not encroach upon the freedom of the next citizen. Therefore, we are faced with another rather complex and integrated phenomenon when we discuss the process of a free flow of information itself.

Perhaps, against this background of the concept of bringing dignity to our communications systems, we should again consider the increased interdependence of all humanity - what Aurelio Peccei calls ‘the unity of mankind’ - and realize that our world society is in dire need of a new form of global solidarity.¹

The concept of global solidarity is a most basic one. It is the raison d'être for the existence of international organizations, because people supposedly realize that they have something in common and that certain problems should be approached and tackled in a spirit of cooperation and solidarity. Here lies a very decisive and important role for education. Not in a narrow sense alone, or in the classical sense, but education as a system of schooling as a whole. A new pedagogical approach should be created which would be reflected in all institutions, on the national and the international level. The urgency of certain world problems is forcing nations as well as individuals to develop this more global approach, which by definition requires a minimum amount of solidarity.

It seems that a gigantic global public relations job is needed, somewhat

1 See also, ‘The Moment of Truth Is Coming,’ a twelve-page article by Aurelio Peccei in the December, 1973, issue of the magazine Successo.

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like the MIT study, Limits to Growth, and its impact on public opinion.

Yes. We do need publicity, information, and cooperation from the media.

It's an educational job.

There is a need for much more of this kind of education in making people more aware of their own existence in relationship to others, both in terms of global problems and in terms of the interest of all humanity. Unless this is achieved, all efforts will be moving at cross purposes. Instead of alleviating the existing problems, we may be creating even more complex ones because of the complexity of human interrelations. Therefore, while we are speaking nowadays of globalization, interdependence, and the international system as a whole, one has to look simultaneously at the other end of the spectrum and also think in terms of other forms of organization which are taking place on a much smaller scale, at a microlevel, at times in a village or a very small group. Here again lies the interdependence between what I might call the macro approach - the international approach, the globalized approach - and the micro approach, which does not leave aside, or which does not underestimate the fact, that after all, we are dealing with the quality of life for man himself, with the individual.

What UNESCO should do now is issue a ‘little red book’ based on guidelines for each individual on this earth, including the Chinese, to live by.

I think such a book should be drawn up by all hundred and thirty plus members of the United Nations. The day we get all nations to agree on a single prescription of the kind you have in mind, I think we would have solved all the problems of mankind with one stroke. But, seriously, I do think it is encouraging that there is a greater awareness everywhere today of the need for greater human solidarity and of the ultimate interdependence of all problems. Man realizes he sits together with all others in one boat.

Don't you feel, however, that reality is outstripping hope?

No, I do not think so, because I feel that hope is an undeniable part of reality.