The MONDIACULT 2025, UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, is being held for the third time this year, following previous editions in Mexico in 1982 and 2022, under the theme “unleashing the power of culture to achieve sustainable development”.
The conference, to be inaugurated by UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay and the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, is expected to gather in Barcelona ministers of Culture from around the globe, as well as thousands of participants from civil society, the cultural sector, Non-Governmental Organizations, and international bodies, according to the information released by MONDIACULT 2025.
It will serve as “a decisive moment to reaffirm and enhance the role of culture as a driver of sustainable development and a response to crises,” stated UNESCO in a communiqué about the event.
In agreements signed at the previous edition in 2022, and the declaration issued from that meeting, 150 ministers worldwide declared culture a “global public good,” requested UNESCO to hold MONDIACULT every four years starting from 2025, and advocated the inclusion of culture in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a specific objective by 2030.
The Barcelona meeting, with Portugal represented by the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, begins with the presentation on Monday of the first “UNESCO Global Report on Cultural Policies – Culture: The Missing SDG”.
The report “provides the first overview of cultural policies and sets a vital benchmark” to measure future “progress made and reaffirm the status of culture as both a means and an end,” stated UNESCO in the same communiqué.
The conference focuses on the “six priority areas” defined by MONDIACULT (cultural rights; culture and digital transformation; culture and education; the cultural economy; culture and climate action; culture, heritage, and crises), to which two cross-cutting areas of growing global relevance were added for this edition: culture and artificial intelligence, and culture and peace.
In addition to the ministerial plenary and other intergovernmental meetings, the conference program includes thematic sessions and more than 70 parallel events.
“Cultural rights must be guaranteed for all and defended by everyone,” declared the UN agency, expressing anticipation for representatives from all 193 member states at the Barcelona event.
A final document will be approved at the conclusion of the proceedings, according to UNESCO.
“It will not only be about sharing ideas, but preparing what comes next, the future agenda,” stated UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture, Ernesto Ottone, during a presentation of the conference earlier this month.
