The topics before the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in Post-Conflict Areas as well as Harnessing Emerging Technologies for the Achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. The Republic of Senegal identifies the need to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage within the post-conflict areas as they harness the modern technologies to ensure that sustainable development goals are achieved within the time scheduled. Senegal looks forward to discussing both of these topics at the upcoming conference.
Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in Post-Conflict Areas
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), over the past few years, preservation of heritage has increasingly gained attention within its African member states. However, it's essential to identify and inventory the very diverse and rich living culture. This act requires the involvement of communities fully. As a result, some programs were hurled as being the first step globally to preserve the intangible cultural heritage in West Africa. What UNESCO does is the promotion and protection of the intangible cultural heritage. They include the living expressions or the traditions which people inherited from their forefathers or the ancestors and which they pass on to their descendants.
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To play this role effectively, UNESCO relies on the mechanisms that were established during the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage convention of 2003. All the member states of the UNESCO Dakar Office approved the agreement as a result of the efficient advocacy and information work that the Dakar Office carried out. What the office does is to pay close attention to the advancement of inventories. Hence, with support from the UNESCO experts, the office usually organizes awareness-raising, inventory, or the training development procedures workshops that involve the local communities as well as by granting of international assistance.
Hence, the elements of intangible cultural heritage of the member states that were covered by the Dakar office such as the expressions and practices of joking relationships within Niger, the coming forth of the puppets and masks in Markala in Mali as well as the Xooy, the traditional music or the forecast ceremony between the Serer in Senegal have been emblazoned on the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Dakar office helps in support of the accomplishment of needs assessments, which is aimed at responding to the needs of institutional capacity building as well as for the implementation and the elaboration of safeguarding plans.
Senegal is in the process of ratifying the 2001 convention by UNESCO concerning the protection of underwater heritage, which comprises the sunken transatlantic commercial vessels, slave ships, warships, fishing boats, among others. So far, about 1000 sites of interest have been spotted on the seabed. The convention allows for a legal framework that all the Member States to protect their historically and culturally significant vestiges of the past.
In going forward, the best thing to do in Senegal is to ensure that as a Member State of the UNESCO, it initiates and put into action all laws and policies made by the organization to protect the cultural heritage so that the future generations will see and know of their history. The best option is creating awareness among the individuals in Senegal, trying to show them the importance of cultural heritage and putting greater efforts to protect their cultures.
Harnessing Emerging Technologies for the Achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)
In 2015, all the 192 Member States of the United Nations came together and committed themselves to the tackling of seventeen ambitious global Sustainable development goals through 2030. Despite the grown momentum and ambition to tackle these goals, still, there is much that needs to be done. The reason is that the real challenge is that it is never easy to achieve progress with the complex systematic global issues such as biodiversity loss and climate change. The modern world is in the fourth industrial revolution, an era whereby rapid advancements in worldwide connectivity and new technologies. Artificial intelligence today is part of people's everyday lives customizing and optimizing what people learn, see, and choose.
In a report by the United Nations Secretary-general in a substantive session in the economic and social council in 2018, he stated that the developing technologies such as renewable technologies, artificial intelligence, robotics as well as the biotechnology holds greater promises to the development of human well-being. On the other hand, the technologies hold the ability to generate more violence and inequality hence having greater implications and effects on human rights protections. In the report, the secretary-general stated that it is, therefore, important to ensure that the technologies do not impact negatively on the main development areas that it supports. He, therefore, launched an internal strategy that is to be used to strengthen the organization’s capacity to use and engage with the new technologies so that they could deliver their roles and improve their support to all their Member States.
Senegal is in the process of transitioning towards the broad digital technologies’ distribution. According to the digital adoption index which is built within the context of the WDR 2016 which was made to measure the worldwide distribution of digital technologies ranked Senegal higher among 179 countries in a state of digital technology adoption in 2016 by both the government and in a business where it was headed by Kenya and Rwanda. It is, therefore, important to ensure the addition of incentives to ensure the stimulation of broad technology adoption by enterprises and individuals in Senegal.
This means that emerging technologies are playing a significant role in ensuring the achievement of most of the 17 set sustainable development goals. Senegal being a member state of the United Nations aims hard to ensure that it has achieved the sustainable development goals by 2030, and this can be so by harnessing the emerging technologies in any way possible. It is therefore essential to ensure that Senegal stays updated with the emerging technologies and try any way possible to ensure they adopt them and implement these technologies so that they can keep up with other member states of the United Nations.
