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By Fidel Valdez Ramos, Former
President of the Philippines
Conclusion
[Speech of the former president,
who is chairman of both the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation (RPDEV)
and the Boao forum for Asia (BFA), at the Asian Media Information
& Communication Center’s 17th Annual International Conference,
Manila Hotel, July 15, 2008.]
(In the first part, former
President Ramos described how the countries of the Asia-Pacific
region have been falling behind in achieving the UN-set millennium
development goals. He also showed that aside from the region’s
divide in income, health and opportunity, there is also “Knowledge
or Digital” divide.)
Overcoming the Knowledge Divide
to attain the MDGs. A country’s attainment of its Millennium
Development Goals depends to a large extent on its access to
knowledge and information. Knowledge empowers people; it enables
them to make informed choices and decisions.
For instance, many new health
protocols and discoveries can now deal efficiently with health
problems endemic in poor countries. Unfortunately, impoverished
societies and individuals do not yet have access to this crucial
body of information.
Lack of access can be attributed
to communication-related issues and concerns such as lack of
awareness and/or knowledge; lack of ICT and media infrastructures;
inadequate technology transfer; unfocused promotion and
commercialization strategies; and inhibitive protection of
Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) controlled by large transnational
corporations.
Theoretically, people now have
technologically unlimited options in applying communication media to
human concerns that impact on development—in areas such as health,
nutrition, education, literacy, welfare, environment, livelihood and
so forth.
UNICEF, for instance, has
acknowledged that the surge in communication capacity has now made
it possible to access knowledge and technology on child survival,
reproductive health, environmental protection, and other parameters
of sustainable development to the worlds disadvantage peoples. As
early as 1988, UNICEF estimated that if, at that time, such
technologies and knowledge were shared with the world’s poorest of
the poor, then the world could reduce, by at least half, the
insidious carnage of 250,000 child-deaths each week.
Action agenda toward attaining
the MDGs
In the light of all these, what
then should be the action agenda for communicators in the
Asia-Pacific?
First, we need a broader and
deeper spectrum of truly creative communication strategies. “More
of the same” will no longer suffice.
Second, we must come up with more
imaginative, easily-understood packaging for MDG
messages—packaging that will make this crucial messages easily
available to the poorest of the poor in order to foster self-help
and self reliance.
Third, we have to facilitate
participatory processes in our MDG communication programs. These
should be empowering for ordinary people who are the most numerous
among the stakeholders so that they can take part in the planning
and decision-making for their better future. Development should
focus on sustainable changed that benefits marginalized people
whom development has left behind.
And finally, but not the least,
we should deal with the politico-economic problems affecting the use
of ICT to attain our MDGs. The most obvious is the inequity in
access to ICT hardware. Government and civil society, particularly
the philanthropic sectors, should work together more intimately to
set up more public access facilities such as community
electronic-centers and internet access-desks in our barangay halls.
We should also deal more
effectively with the issue of IPRs. In this regard, government and
international organizations such as the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) should promote the equitable use of public
domain information and “a more democratic commons.”
Atty. Adrian S. Cristobal Jr.,
Director-General of the Intellectual Property Office of the
Philippines (IPO-Phil), makes this cogent observation: “A number
of Philippine biodiversity and genetic resources have been lost to
foreign patenting without the corresponding benefit-sharing for our
country. Our country is losing billions of pesos in potential income
to illegal bio-prospectors and bio-pirates of bio-diversity and
genetic resources.”
Author Roberto Verzola of the
University of the Philippines reports that developed economies use
IPRs as a legal mechanism to limit or to prevent information
sharing. The rich countries generally regard IPR as a “monopoly
right” intended to prevent profits. He laments that: “Advance
countries think nothing of pirating our best scientists, engineers,
technicians, and other professionals. They also pirate our genetic
resources. Their scientist roam the world pirating biodiversity
resources like micro-organisms, plants and animals, and even human
DNA. They then claim monopoly ownership over the genetic information
they extract, patent them, and sell them back to us at high
prices.”
In the light of these unforeseen
consequences of new technologies, AMIC should really venture beyond
massage development and technical processes into a truly innovative
configuration and application of ICT to the attainment of our
Millennium Development Goals—on schedule.
There are politico-economic
issues at the global and regional levels that the international
community must resolve if leaders sincerely wish to facilitate the
free flow of knowledge and information that will benefit the poorest
of the poor.
Summing up
In closing, let me challenge
communication practitioners in the Asia Pacific to commit themselves
to a deeper partnership with the leaders and policy- makers in the
region and in our respective countries. Together, practitioners and
policy- makers should work to ensure that media information, and
knowledge through the ever- unfolding areas of ICTs are made to
converge towards the center of gravity of all our development
efforts.
Only by forging such intimate
partnership can our countries hope to achieve our MDGs. Only through
such as synergistic national, original, and development for
generations to come.
In simple terms, all of the above
are what we in the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation (RPDEV)
call our caring, sharing and daring for each other—and for our
common interests. Caring and sharing are easy enough for Filipinos
to do, because we as Filipinos to do, because we as a people are
naturally friendly, hospitable, compassionate, helpful, generous,
and even forgiving.
But daring really means to give
more than to take; to sacrifice for the common good; to take united
action to overcome challenges; daring means to perform, reform and
transform, and to help others to have better lives. Daring means
standing up for the younger generations and the limited, fragile
environment that should still be able to support life even after we
are long gone. Daring means the exercise of consistent political
will. Daring means not just physical courage, but also intestinal
fortitude. Daring means caring and sharing. Caring, sharing and
daring, in fact, are among the key commitments that have worked for
us in times of challenge, calamity and crisis in the past. These
virtues—if manifested in media and in our professions and embedded
in our governance—will enable us to win a better future.
Kaya ba natin ito??? (Can we do
this???)
Thank you and Mabuhay—Best
wishes to all!!!
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