World Cultural Conference MONDACULT 2025: No future without culture

The World Conference on Cultural Policy and Sustainable Development (MONDIACULT 2025) hosted by UNESCO took place from September 29 to October 1 in Barcelona, Spain. The Vietnamese delegation attending the Conference was led by Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung. Also participating in the delegation were Dr. Nguyen Phuong Hoa - Director of the Department of International Cooperation, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Phuong - Director of the Vietnam Institute of Culture, Arts, Sports and Tourism and Ms. Nguyen Thi Van Anh, Ambassador, Head of the Permanent Delegation of Vietnam to UNESCO.

There is no future without culture

At the world cultural conference MONDACULT 2025, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez emphasized the strategic importance and pivotal role of culture in global sustainable development, in which culture has been, is and will participate in solving many global difficulties and challenges such as climate change, war, conflict, and is a bridge to bring dialogue, peace and friendship between nations and peoples.

Culture, with the active and effective support of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and current scientific and technological advances, will create conditions for humanity to continue to expect and dream towards higher development goals, contributing to realizing global efforts towards ensuring human dignity, creative freedom, freedom of expression, promoting cultural and human values, becoming valuable assets for future generations.

Sharing the speech of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, on behalf of UNESCO Director-General, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture Ernesto Renato Ottone affirmed that MONDACULT 2025 is one of the most important forums in the world on culture, affirming that culture directly contributes to the process of healing the wounds of war and conflict in the world, protecting, preserving and promoting precious spiritual assets and cultural heritages of humanity for future generations. Cultural rights need to be further affirmed, included in global development policies with an important role as basic human rights.

With the central message: “There is no future without culture”, MONDACULT 2025 affirms that culture is a fundamental human right, a global public good and an indispensable pillar for building a just, peaceful, inclusive and sustainable society. In particular, the Ministers of Culture attending the Conference also called for making culture a stand-alone goal in the United Nations development framework after 2030, instead of just an integrated factor as before.

MONDACULT 2025 identifies six key areas for global cultural policy in the coming period (cultural rights; culture and digital transformation; culture and education; cultural economy; culture and climate action; culture, heritage and crisis) and two new focus areas added compared to MONDACULT 2022 (culture and peace, culture and artificial intelligence), while emphasizing the development of a global cultural index framework to accurately measure the contribution of culture to development. This is considered an institutional step forward, linking culture directly to global security, technology and data issues.

Culture - An important pillar for sustainable development

At the Ministerial Discussion Session co-organized by UNESCO and the European Union (EU) with the theme "Culture, a catalyst for sustainable development: Promoting practice-based policies in the policy-making process", Minister Nguyen Van Hung affirmed that the Party and State of Vietnam always pay special attention to the cause of cultural and human development, putting culture on par with economics and politics, making culture the focus of national policies and strategies on development, implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

“In that process, Vietnam attaches importance to policy making, including cultural policies based on practical data, indicators and practical assessments to closely follow the needs and developments of the situation, better meeting Vietnam's increasingly deep international integration needs,” Minister Nguyen Van Hung emphasized.

Minister Nguyen Van Hung also shared Vietnam's experience in the case of Trang An World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Ninh Binh), in which, based on the practical situation, data, statistics on the heritage, scientific arguments, and in-depth research, Vietnam has built and issued appropriate policies, thereby making Trang An a typical example of Vietnam in sustainable development, smoothly combining the implementation of international commitments on preserving and conserving heritage values with quality tourism development, not chasing after quantity. At the same time, disadvantaged groups, especially women in particular and the community in general, are directly involved in this process, directly benefiting from the values of this process.

Also at the discussion session, the Ministers of the countries highly appreciated Vietnam for seriously implementing international commitments and successfully implementing models and initiatives such as Trang An. In particular, the Minister of Culture of Panama considered Trang An a typical example that the neighboring country will study and apply in practice, combining the conservation, preservation and promotion of heritage values with tourism development.

Also within the framework of the MONDACULT 2025 Conference, on the afternoon of October 1, Minister Nguyen Van Hung continued to participate in the discussion session on cultural economy.

Previously, on the afternoon of September 29, Dr. Nguyen Phuong Hoa, Director of the Department of International Cooperation, represented Vietnam in a discussion organized by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA) in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Culture, entitled “A sustainable path to orient the future of culture and art: Dialogue with public agencies”.

Source: https://cand.com.vn/Chuyen-dong-van-hoa/hoi-nghi-van-hoa-the-gioi-mondiacult-2025-khong-co-tuong-lai-neu-khong-co-van-hoa-i783398/