Culture: Global Public Good (The UNESCO Courier no. 3; July-September 2022)

Culture is what defines us in space and time – our past and present roots, our prospects. Culture is an inexhaustible and renewable resource, which adapts to changing contexts and which speaks to humans first and foremost through their capacity to imagine, create and innovate. Culture is our most powerful global public good. In the words of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, culture has a role “as a desirable end in itself, as giving meaning to our existence”. Today, more than ever, we need to find meaning, we need universality, we need culture in all its diversity.