UNESCO has published several statements about issues of race.
The statements include: Statement on race (Paris, July 1950) Statement on the nature of race and race differences (Paris, June 1951) Proposals on the biological aspects of race (Moscow, August 1964) Statement on race and racial prejudice (Paris, September 1967)
Other statements include the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1963), the "Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice" (1978) and the "Declaration of Principles on Tolerance" (1995).
Statement on race (1950)
Statement on race is the first statement on race issued by UNESCO. It was issued on 18 July 1950 following World War II and Nazi racism, to clarify what was scientifically known about race, and as a moral condemnation of racism.
It was drafted by Ernest Beaglehole, psychologist and ethnologist; Juan Comas, anthropologist; Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto, sociologist; Franklin Frazier, sociologist specialised in race relations studies; Morris Ginsberg, founding chairperson of the British Sociological Association; Humayun Kabir, writer, philosopher, and twice Education Minister of India; Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the founders of ethnology and leading theorist of structural anthropology; and Ashley Montagu, anthropologist and author of The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, who was the rapporteur.
The text was then revised by Ashley Montagu following criticisms submitted by Hadley Cantril; Edwin Conklin; Gunnar Dahlberg; Theodosius Dobzhansky, author of Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937); L. C. Dunn; Donald J. Hager, professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Princeton; Julian Huxley, first director of UNESCO and one of the many key contributors to modern evolutionary synthesis; Otto Klineberg; Wilbert Moore; H. J. Muller; Gunnar Myrdal, author of An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944); Joseph Needham, a biochemist specialist of Chinese science; and geneticist Curt Stern.
The statement was criticized on several grounds and a revised statement was published in 1951, as well as a book detailing the criticisms in 1952. Further statements were published in 1964, 1967, and 1978.
UNESCO would start a campaign to spread the results of the report to a "vast public" such as by publishing pamphlets. It described Brazil as having an "exemplary situation" regarding race relations and that research should be undertaken in order to understand the causes of this "harmony".
Contents
The introduction states that it was inevitable that UNESCO should take a position in the controversy. The preamble to the UNESCO constitution states that it should combat racism. The constitution itself stated that "The great and terrible war that has now ended was a war made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races."
A 1948 UN Social and Economic Council resolution called upon UNESCO to consider the timeliness "of proposing and recommending the general adoption of a programme of dissemination of scientific facts designed to bring about the disappearance of that which is commonly called race prejudice." In 1949, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted three resolutions which committed it to "study and collect scientific materials concerning questions of race", "to give wide diffusion to the scientific material collected", and "to prepare an education campaign based on this information."
Furthermore, in doing this
The introduction stated "Knowledge of the truth does not always help change emotional attitudes that draw their real strength from the subconscious or from factors beside the real issue." But it could "however, prevent rationalizations of reprehensive acts or behaviour prompted by feelings that men will not easily avow openly."
UNESCO made a moral statement:
The statement argued that there was no evidence for intellectual or personality differences.
