UNESCO - Freedom and Development

Denmark was a member of the IPDC management board from 1989 to 1998. Torben Krogh was chairman of the board from 1992 to 1998. At UNESCO's General Conference in November 1999 Denmark was once again selected to the IPDC board taking effect from March 2000. With annual donations of DKR 3 million Denmark remains the largest individual sponsor of the IPDC. Other regular donors include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Japan, Switzerland and India.

The development of communication over development communication has captured most of UNESCO's attention so far.

By Torben Krogh

The penultimate letter in the abbreviation UNESCO has, since the establishment of this UN special agency, stood for the term “culture”, immediately following “education” and “science”.

Already in the 1950s, however, the C was attributed another informal meaning. UNESCO became the organisation through which membership countries found it most relevant to discuss and co-operate on “communication”. In this instance the term covers both mass media, libraries, archives, and during recent years the new information technology. The purely technical aspect of this area, however, continues to be dealt with by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union).

Economically, communication has always been the smallest of UNESCO's four main areas of concern. Politically, however, it has been the most important for a long time, at least if one measures this in terms of the controversies that these central areas have created between membership countries.

When the United States and Great Britain resigned from UNESCO in 1984 and 1985, respectively, they referred first and foremost to passages within the field of media politics that they described as completely unacceptable. The so-called New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) was on the agenda. The media organisations of the Western world (editors and publishers as well as journalists) were fierce opponents of the basic ideas of the NWICO which were advocated by an alliance of Third World countries and the Soviet bloc of that time.

The topics discussed included state control of international news broadcast and the use of mass media for specific, politically defined purposes.

However, nothing more than mere talk and discussion was accomplished. In fact, UNESCO never became the centre of a particular resolution that could articulate and authoritatively lay down what the NWICO was all about. Therefore the American and British reference to the media field was more about political convenience than a true reason for resignation.

There were other, primarily domestic political reasons why the American President Ronald Reagan and the English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided to pull their countries out of UNESCO. The UN-hostile right wing needed a concession since, of course, none of them would ever dream of deserting the mighty UN and their place in the Security Council.

Prior to UNESCO's General Conference in 1989, Denmark led an attempt to make the organisation reject, clearly and unambiguously, any reference to the NWICO.

The term that had never been clearly defined should no longer be present in the texts that the membership countries passed as a foundation for the programmes of the following years. This attempt was successful after long and intense efforts of negotiation.

New Communication Strategy

That which has since been known as UNESCO's new communication strategy was approved. Since then it has been the foundation of the work of the organisation in the media field.

The core of this strategy is to link a clear support to free and independent media with a pragmatic effort to contribute to the development of such media in societies where both freedom and pluralism have seen difficult times in the past.

Thus, UNESCO's media strategy came to exist of two main tracks that can be depicted in the shortest possible form as “freedom and development”.

Despite the fact that a sharp political confrontation in 1989 had to settle this it would be incorrect to assert that a fundamentally new orientation was brought about. In fact it was exactly the previous debate on the NWICO that led to the creation of the special programme that has taken care of a large part of UNESCO's practical development work in the media field since 1980, The International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC). It was established through a resolution that was passed at the General Conference in 1980. This was to be the new mechanism that would be able to mobilise new economic contributions for specific media projects in the developing countries. It was to have its own administration, chosen by UNESCO's General Conference, and its own secretariat.

IPDC

The idea for this programme originally came from the United States, represented in the media field at the General Conference by the Dean of Columbia University's School of Journalism, Professor Elie Abel. But while the resolution was passed, Ronald Reagan won the presidential election in November 1980 in which he challenged Jimmy Carter. Consequently, the United States never came to play the role to which the country was assigned. And that meant the economic frame of the IPDC became far more modest than had been expected. During the first few years, Norway tried to fill that role with voluntary donations of one million dollars per year, but nobody else followed that example.

Some countries, including Denmark, completely refrained from making donations. For that reason the level of funding was established at less than three million dollars in annual, voluntary donations. That, of course, had important implications in terms of the tasks that the IPDC were able to accept.

Within this frame, however, one must say that this special programme has been one of the success stories of UNESCO. With the exception of a few large projects that were financed directly by countries like Germany, Denmark and France, projects of economically modest proportions have been the ones receiving support. However, the limitations have meant that clear priorities have been developed in the selection and creation of the projects that are conducted with funding from the IPDC's “special account”.

Today one can find journalist training centres, press and media institutes, community radios, local newspapers, video production companies, news agencies and professional networks alive and well. These would not have been established, or at least they would be operating under more difficult terms, had it not been for the project support of the IPDC.

In other words, relatively few funds have been used in achieving significant effects. That is important to emphasise when keeping in mind that Denmark, having been completely absent, started allocating funds to the IPDC in 1989. The first few years the amount was 300,000 dollars a year, but from 1992 this amount was raised to twice that size, which is where it has remained since.

That happened after the author of this article was elected chairman of the board of the IPDC in January 1992, a position to which I was re-elected for two more terms so that my total time as chairman of Denmark was six years.

Through the 1990s the IPDC have outlined both their objectives and their strategy in more detail. Fewer projects have been approved to ensure satisfactory funding of each project. Projects involving private media can be approved and supported even though no application from the government of the country in question has been submitted, a highly unusual practice in an interstate organisation like UNESCO. And the collaboration with professional organisations within the media field as well as the leading press freedom groups has been intensified.

Development Communication

Over the years it has been discussed whether the IPDC should also be involved in “development communication” and not just “communication development”. This discussion was a particularly big issue in the beginning of the 1990s. If more funds had been available, this discussion would undoubtedly have resulted in the IPDC moving into this area as well.

This was a clear realisation of the fact that many large, so-called integrated development projects had fared worse than expected, precisely because donors and receivers had neglected the significance of an effective communication component. But the resources were – and are – not sufficient to move outside the core area itself. And that is, as the name of the IPDC indicates, to be a programme for the development of communication (that is, the media) in the large parts of the world in which even modest support can make a significant difference.

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Torben Krogh is a journalist and a former chairman of UNESCO's International Programme for the Development of Communication, IPDC's management board for six years. He has also developed and analysed several of Danida's media projects.

Above document provided as background for The Drum Beat #57

DANIDA, the Danish International Development Agency, supports communication for development. There is currently a policy revision taking place. These articles and activities indicate pathways for future activities relatingto communication for development. Not all activities are supported by DANIDA.

Inge Estvad (journalist, est@image.dk), Finn Rasmussen (Communication Adviser, IBIS Ecuador, frasmussen@andinanet.net) and Thomas Tufte, Ph.D. (Professor, Roskilde University ttufte@ruc.dk) gathered the material that provides comprehensive insight into the policies and programmes selected.