UNESCO Deputy Director: Pope’s visit is timely for our world

By Isabella H. de Carvalho

In 1980, Pope John Paul II delivered a historic address at UNESCO, the United Nations agency dedicated to building peace and security through education, science and culture.

46 years later, as the world continues to be fraught with conflicts and polarizations, multilateral institutions face a crisis and the rapid development of artificial intelligence causes concern, another Pope will walk the halls of the United Nations agency in Paris and address the international community and UNESCO’s partners and collaborators.

Pope Leo XIV will visit the agency on the first day of his Apostolic Journey to France, from September 25 to 28.

Åsa Regnér, UNESCO’s Deputy Director-General, spoke to Vatican News about the importance of the Pope’s visit and how multilateral bodies can keep working to build peace and confront the major challenges facing our societies. 

Åsa Regnér, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO   (UNESCO/Christelle ALIX)

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What is the significance of the Pope’s visit and what do you expect from his address?

We’re very grateful to His Holiness that he accepted to come to UNESCO. We think it is a very timely visit. UNESCO was established in 1945 to keep the intellectual space open: to keep freedom of speech, of thinking, of science, of facts, human rights… It was established to create an intellectual space that is free from political influence or where science and facts can flow freely, in order for citizens in the member states to make decisions on their own, in relation to their lives and their societies.

Now we are in a very different time compared to then. The Pope is a leading world figure and somebody who expresses his views on ethics and equality between people and has a strong peace message – which was at the foundation of UNESCO’s mandate and still is. At the same time, we have a lot of compounding global issues going on at the same time right now.

There’s climate change, we have deep inequalities in the world, we have more armed conflicts going on than ever before, which are also more protracted and, in fact, more brutal because there is a disrespect for international law that we haven’t really seen before.

We also have technologies very rapidly evolving and even those who helped develop them are alerting us that this progress might be too quick to safeguard human dignity, rights and autonomy.

Advertisement

The Pope has really spoken out on these ethical dilemmas of if human beings are not seen as those who have the right to decide over technology and how human beings should also have a role to safeguard equality, everybody’s right to decision making, to dignity etc.

So, the visit is very strategic in general because of the importance of the Pope in the world, but it is also extremely timely right now because of this context.

Q: On the day of the Pope’s visit UNESCO has organized the Forum for Youth in the Era of AI to reflect with young people on the contemporary challenges brought about by artificial intelligence. This event also draws inspiration from Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. How has UNESCO received the Pope’s text and what points have been useful for your work?

It is very important for the world and – obviously when His Holiness the Pope expresses himself it always gets a lot of attention – but I think that this publication was even more widespread and it really spoke to young people.

That is something that we want to work with in the morning before His Holiness visits UNESCO. We will have a curated discussion with young women and men and that will then also feed into the meeting later with the Pope.

I think that His Holiness the Pope, even though the document came out only months ago, was early. Look at the alerts that came out in recent weeks from some of the leaders inside the tech companies. The Pope really hit a nerve and he addressed issues that people are interested in.

Åsa Regnér, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO   (UNESCO/Christelle ALIX)

We had a previous discussion with young people together with our host country, France. The French Foreign Minister was here and met with young people who presented a survey we had facilitated.

They said that on the use of social media and AI they often hear how they are tech savvy and so they can be left to work on this. The young people said ‘no, don’t leave us.  We can make decisions for ourselves but we need to dialogue about this and, whether the older generation understands this or not, it is just too big to think of it as something happening just to our generation. We need the more experienced generation to accompany us and also take responsibility.’

The young people had a lot of input, they also had many thoughts in relation to peace, to equality both based on income, on race, on gender, within and between countries and regions. So, I look forward to hearing more on Friday morning before the Pope’s visit.

Q: UNESCO and the Holy See have both been working to promote human dignity amidst rapid technological developments. How do you believe this can be achieved today, especially in a world that tends to move in the opposite direction?

UNESCO has different tools for doing this, and we work on AI specifically throughout the organization. We have a science sector and also a sector for communications and information and they are all in different ways working on AI or new technologies and human dignity and rights.

We for example just issued a report about AI and gender, both a description of what we do and what we know and the networks we have. We have a network called Women for Ethical Use of AI that I recently met. They are prominent women researchers in this field, who feel that there is a gender difference in terms of who is around the table when decisions are made on new technology, but also how social media can be both beneficial and harmful in different ways to women and men.

In 2021 already UNESCO issued guidelines on the ethical use of AI to member states and they were also adopted by the member states. I was recently in Saudi Arabia as it was hosting a big UNESCO global conference on AI and ethics. What UNESCO also does or did after the issuance of those guidelines was to propose a process for member states where they can assess themselves through a checklist or assessment.

These processes have been applied in 78 countries and many of them met now in Saudi to discuss with each other: what did you find, what do you do in the field of medical services or research, how has your ethical AI process affected reforms in education, etc.

Advertisement

UNESCO can lead an intellectual discussion around this based on latest research but also give practical tools for those who should be held accountable by the citizens.

I also want to mention that I think that some of the tech companies nowadays are huge and sometimes more powerful even than individual member states or national states and obviously they also need to be held accountable in different ways. UNESCO can only propose this information and these processes and then member states have to decide for themselves whether they want to legislate or regulate. Some of them have chosen to do so on the basis of UNESCO’s tools.

Q: Pope Leo has often spoken about the crisis of multilateralism in our current world but also about how the United Nations is an essential instrument for promoting a civilization of love. As a multilateral institution what do you think about this moment of crisis and how can UNESCO and other UN bodies work to keep promoting peace and helping those most in need?

That is our bread and butter, it is a discussion that we have daily and almost hourly over here. The United Nations will pick its new leader [Secretary-General, editor’s note], this fall so we should have somebody who will come in on the 1st of January 2027.

There is a crisis in multilateralism for sure; there is also a financial crisis, there is a trust crisis, I think there is a crisis in terms of the Security Council not being able to agree on as many issues that they should in order to actually reach peace agreements and start negotiations.

At the same time the UN is there. It is the only global organization that actually exists where all member states are in fact members and it also has a huge humanitarian task which is carried out in more countries than ever, and during longer times unfortunately because that is what the world needs right now.

It is still working on development and on supporting governments on strengthening their capacities and systems for people who need it the most. UNESCO is obviously part of that whole family.

I think it is important that the United Nations come back to bring a clear influence on peace negotiations, peace building, peace keeping in the sense that it was built for back in the day. The demands on the new Secretary General are enormous but there are capable people who want to take on this task. When he or she is elected it is important that we all support them and that we work towards the common goal of more peace in the world and to uphold the UN Charter, as well as the UNESCO Charter.

Q: In the late 1980s the world was moving toward the end of totalitarian regimes, and education was already being presented as a path to mutual understanding and respect for differences. Today, the world is becoming more divided than ever, and multilateralism is giving way to the use of force. How can peaceful dialogue be restored to center stage? What role can UNESCO play?

That’s the million-dollar question obviously, but I do believe in building on dialogue, building on facts involving the private sector, civil society, people who organize themselves because they have opinions and they do want to do more in solidarity.

In our case this means also dialoguing with researchers, scientists, librarians, teachers, philanthropy, the private sector, everybody who wants a better world together with member states. That is still the key. We do see allies in all the groups I mentioned and who do want a way forward.

I believe that dialogue and convenings like the one we’ll have on Friday and discussion that is based on facts and free speech is what we need to do. I don’t really see any other way.

Advertisement

We have to also call out the fact that there is a risk that when power and resources are concentrated with too few at the expense of the many that is not a good thing. How can we help to support equality, quality education for all, hope and try to rebuild trust again? Only when you have trust can you build societies that actually work for the good for everyone. That’s not a small task.