Tourism: the enhancement of respect - World Tourism Organization's development of a Code of Ethics

UN Chronicle, June-August, 2001 by Francesco Frangialli

On 1 October 1999, the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), held in Santiago, Chile, approved the "Global Code of Ethics for Tourism". This article explains how the Code was created, the principles contained in it, and how it will be implemented. Since the adoption of the famous Manila Declaration in 1980 under the auspices of WTO, a great many instruments--charters, codes and declarations--have marked the trajectory of world tourism. The purpose of the new Code, as stated in the preamble, is to combine a series of objects and ideas into a complex whole and enhance them by drawing on "new considerations relative to the development of our societies and thus provide a frame of reference for stakeholders in world tourism at the dawn of the next century and millennium".

Some will doubtless regard, if not with derision, at least with scepticism, the ambition to establish both a frame of reference and a game rule common to all tourism countries and development partners. But the facts speak for themselves: the new Code has fulfilled a real ambition, and one cannot remain indifferent to the fact that it has been unanimously adopted by the 107 countries which took part in the General Assembly--out of the 130 that make up the Organization--irrespective of the differences in culture, development levels, political systems and religion that may separate them. Four considerations denote the ambition and scope of this fundamental text.

First, its preparation, which was characterized by a huge concerted effort. The decision to prepare a new instrument committing the international tourism community was taken at the WTO General Assembly meeting in Istanbul in 1997. A special committee was formed for this purpose, where countries as different as Portugal and Malaysia, Brazil and Egypt, and Iran and the Holy See, were represented. But beyond the initial contributions of this committee, the underlying version of the Code was in fact inspired by the first draft drawn up by the Organization's legal adviser, Professor Alain Pellet, and a small team comprised of the WTO Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General Dawid de Villiers, a former Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in South Africa, and the Chief of Quality of Tourism Development, Henryk Handszuh.

The process continued during the first half of 1999, involving broad consultations with the World Tourism Organization's six Regional Commissions and the Executive Council and external industry partners, labour organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In March, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, at its meeting in New York and having been duly informed of these endeavours, expressed a lively interest in the steps being taken to this end. Between May and July, a great many Member States further enhanced the draft with their direct contributions, which naturally denoted differing degrees of sensitivity between those in favour of what one might term a certain "right to interfere in tourism" and those with a more long-standing tradition of accepting the prerogatives of sovereign States.

The final draft, prepared by the Secretary-General and team at the beginning of last summer, tried to integrate as far as possible all these contributions in the text, while at the same time preserving its unanimity of inspiration and coherence. So much fresh blood was infused into the text that the number of pages doubled with respect to the original version!

The aim to seek as broad an exchange of views as possible seems to have been met insofar as the General Assembly debate in the autumn of 1999, albeit informal, did not challenge the main thrust of the text. With the passing of time, consultations and the preparation and drafting of the text were concluded relatively quickly, in less than a year, considering the scope of the exercise and the scale of the final result.

The second feature of the Code concerns the basic principles that underpin it and its concerted effort to combine a series of objects and ideas into a complex whole. The Code obviously maintains the continuity of the major declarations that have marked, under the aegis of the United Nations system, the development of international society and the progress human rights have made since the end of the Second World War: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948; the International Covenants of 1966 on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and on Civil and Political Rights; the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972; the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1990; the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development of 1992; the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity of 1992; along with the multiple instruments adopted under the aegis of the International Labour Organization.

But the aim of this Code is, if not to round off, at least to break new ground with regard to these texts, which, prestigious as they may be, are generally limited to guaranteeing individual rights, defending certain groups and protecting the natural environment and the heritage.