*AMARC and Rio+20 Summit: the right to communicate is a necessary condition for sustainable development * We, community radio representatives, wish to highlight that 20 years after the international meeting during which the post-industrial model was challenged for the first time, are facing new conflicts that must be resolved by the fulfilment of the right […]
*AMARC and Rio+20 Summit: the right to communicate is a necessary
condition for sustainable development *
We, community radio representatives, wish to highlight that 20 years
after the international meeting during which the post-industrial model
was challenged for the first time, are facing new conflicts that must be
resolved by the fulfilment of the right to communicate and the pursuit
of the common good.
Global financial powers are affected by the crisis caused by capital
markets and its effects continue to be felt on entire societies caught
in dynamics of impoverishment, directly related to the implementation of
policies based in the excessive role played by the financial market in
the definition of economic development.
Freedom of expression is limited by the dominant economicist paradigms.
Telecommunications have become one of the strategic sectors of
speculative activity without limits for transnational investment and
vertical integration, affecting the media systems, through concentration
in a few hands leading to major setbacks to the democratic debate at the
global level, and questioning the notion of common good.
During the Rio+20 Summit, communicators, social movements and civil
society call for an in-depth review of transnational powers setting the
rules of the game that led to the disarray of neo-liberal globalization,
the exhaustion of the representative democracies, whose forms of
governability do not protect the vast majority in front of the excessive
power of a few factions that control the world order.
The paradigm of considering information as a commodity and not a
peoples’ right, the search for immediate profit, the defence of the
interests of the elite lead to a the sustainable development roadmap
marked by fatalities and disasters, whereas, the environmental crisis is
the result of a civilisational crisis that requires a paradigm shift.
A paradigm shift is indeed needed in which freedom of expression would
be a transversal dimension present at all levels of the debate, while in
the effective exercise of the right to communicate, the political
capacity of national communities to define social pacts that mobilize
development models based on the common good is at stake.
We call:
. To include in the final resolutions of Rio+20 that the right to
communicate is a necessary condition for sustainable development and the
protection of the environment;
. To establish clear objectives and specific terms for the adoption by
Member States of national legislations that allow the exercise of the
right to communicate in accordance with international standards of
freedom of expression and the orientation of the programme of the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP);
. To support local, regional, and global civil society, and to promote
the participation of all individuals and organizations interested in the
decision-making process that affect their lives and their living conditions;
. To protect and exercise the right to freedom of opinion, expression,
assembly and dissension to create new fair and equitable models of
sustainable development;
. That governments promote the existence, sustainability and the
development of community media that respond to the need of these people
marginalized in the strategies of sustainable development and that are
the most affected by the consequences of climate change;
. In the same way, we call the nations around the world to rethink the
current model of development, which is the main cause of the
consequences of climate change, replacing it with new economic,
political, social and ethical systems that improve wealth distribution
and that use natural resources in a rational and sustainable manner.
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC)
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