International Symposionon The Cultural Self-comprehension of Nations

(Innsbruck, 27-29July 1974)

RESOLUTION

The International Symposion of the I.P.O. on the "Cultural Self-Comprehensionof Nations," held in Innsbruck (Austria) from 27th to 29th of July 1974 under the joint auspices of Léopold Sédar Senghor, President of the Republic of Senegal, and Rudolf Kirchschläger, President of the Republic of Austria,

RECOGNIZING the value of the aims and concerns embodied in the I.P.O.Statute, among which are: the right of cultural self-realization of allnational cultures; the promotion of tolerance towards other cultures; andthe support of all cultural entities that have not been given opportunityfor free development so far;

CONVINCED of the necessity of efforts to understand better and betterother cultures in view of a self-comprehension which is a prerequisiteof any global development of the individual and of the group;

ASSUMING that in the modern perilous era the main task and the missionof any cultural foreign policy must be the quest for peace;

DETERMINED to implement with concrete actions, directly and throughgovernmental channels all over the world, the aims and the concerns sodefined;

INSTANTLY ASKS UNESCO, and the international organizations, governmentaland non-governmental, and member States thereof, to organize systematicand global comparative research on the different cultures of the world,in view of obtaining clear guidelines for future action;

URGES the member States of UNESCO to make all possible efforts for amore intensive training of diplomats in the field of international culturalco-operation especially through the channels of UNESCO itself, and to developthe cultural aspects of their foreign policy;

INVITES the regional organizations especially those working in the frameworkof the UN family, to set up or to sponsor the creation of regional Institutesof Culture in other geographic areas of the world, in view to spread acoherent and non-nationalistic knowledge of the cultures of the planet;

IS AWARE of the importance of any initiative aiming to reduce the tensionsin the world, especially in those areas where racism in all its forms givesrise to discrimination, exploitation, and denial of the most fundamentalhuman rights;

AND DECLARES its intention not to lose the results of the works of theSymposium, inviting I.P.O. to keep in touch with UNESCO as well as withall participants, in view of permanent and coordinated actions in all partsof the world.