On 26 January 2021, during his visit to France, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, met with the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay.
During their conversation, the Foreign Minister praised close cooperation between Latvia and UNESCO over the 30 years since Latvia joined the organisation, and he mentioned the Latvian President’s invitation for the Director-General to visit Latvia.
The Minister and the Director-General discussed the contributions of Latvia and UNESCO to the areas of media and information literacy, protection of media freedom, and fighting disinformation, as well as current UNESCO initiatives in science and culture, highlighting in particular the role of UNESCO in matters of security of journalists. The Minister emphasised that Latvia has been working actively for a long time on the Intergovenmental Council of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), offering expertise and making voluntary contributions of funding for the programme.
At the same time, Edgars Rinkēvičs mentioned that Latvia has been an active participant in UNESCO’s Friends of Ukraine Group and underlined the need to keep the topic of Ukraine’s territorial integrity high on the UNESCO agenda for areas within the organisation’s competence and purview.
Director-General Azoulay spoke with appreciation concerning the contribution from a former President of Latvia, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, to the work of UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education.
The officials welcomed the significant input by Latvian experts into the elaboration of the UNESCO Recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence, which builds on the principles of human rights, democracy, gender equality and ecosystem protection in the use of artificial intelligence.
Edgars Rinkēvičs recognised that the past year has been important in Latvia’s cooperation withe UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre – two applications from Latvia have been submitted seeking inscriptions on the World Heritage List: “Grobiņa archaeological ensemble” and “Kuldīga (Goldingen)”.