Introduction

On this site you will find five chapters from the report ‘Our Creative Diversity’, compiled by the World Commission for Culture and Development. This commission, founded by UNESCO and the UN, started its work in 1993. Its assignment was to give an impression of the relation existing between culture and development. On this site you can read about the commission's findings concerning global ethics, pluralism, media and cultural policies. The chapter ‘Our Creative Diversity’ serves as an introductory chapter. Each chapter starts with a short introduction followed by a summary of the text from the report.

Adriaan van de Staay wrote a review about the report. Reactions from five Dutch publicists are compiled in the section ‘comments’. At the conference The Power of Culture, which took place in November 1996, there were several panel discussions about the themes. The members of the general panel discussion were Adriaan van Dis, Lourdes Arizpe, Anil Ramdas, Nasr Abu Zaid and Raymond van den Boogaard.