Workshop Recommendations
Valuing Cultural Diversity

Recommendations to Civil Society:

• Promote international solidarity, which is a fundamental part of the world view of indigenous and afroamerican peoples, in order to reconcile globalization with social justice and growth with equity.
  
  
• Promote serious, critical and self-critical reflection on culture and its relationship to development; on the options and alternatives needed to generate a new form of development based on the cultural agenda of indigenous and afroamerican peoples.
  
  
• Adopt the principles of total community involvement, unity, mutual assistance, equilibrium and horizontality in development models in order to support and take into account the cultural reality of people, communities and populations.
  
  
• Open forums for intercultural dialogue with other segments of society and communities as a means of generating a wealth of ideas on the development process and finding innovative solutions.
  
  
• Pave the way for the creation of community-run institutions and financial systems.
  
  
• Promote the use of communication as a tool for reflection and training on development issues, and take advantage of the strength and eficiency of audio-visual media to reaffirm identity in order to promote personal and social development as well as exchanges between communities and populations.

Recommendations to Governments:

• Give priority to rethinking and redefining state and national systems to ensure that they are more inclusive.
  
  
• Ensure immediate ratification of UN Convention 169 as well as the Universal and American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, championed by the UN and OAS, as well as promote any related national laws.
  
  
• Take steps to promote the participation of indigenous and afroamerican peoples in equity issues.
  
  
• Use constructive policies to protect cultures that are currently disappearing.
  
  
• Recognize the common law rights of indigenous and afroamerican peoples.
  
  
• Impose restrictions on the unlimited increase in production and consumption, promoted by neoliberalism, and use technology in conjunction with nature to work in favour of and never against nature.
  
  
• Reform educational systems to ensure that they reflect the cultural characteristics of each country and ensure that bilingual education becomes official.
  
  
• Promote, through culturally pertinent educational systems, self-esteem among the indigenous and afroamerican population.
  
  
• Include culturally-pertinent communication in educational programmes and reform in order to promote self-esteem and cultural development.