The one world foundationwas awarded the Dr. Karl Renner Prize 2003 - read the honorific speech by Dr. Paul Leyen at the award ceremony on 28 May 2003.


Ladies and Gentlemen!

Two years ago, in March 2001, 17 people were found dead in a container aboard a ferry, after having suffocated and frozen to death while travelling across the English Channel. The container was tightly sealed, all the oxygen had been used up within a few hours. The people inside, most of them young men, were from Sri Lanka. In high-gloss brochures featuring "exotic travel destinations" we find lovely photographs of a peaceful island called Sri Lanka under the heading "Pearl of the Indian Ocean". A destination with sandy beaches and turquoise-blue water, lush vegetation, fascinating temples, cheerful people dressed in bright colors. What in heaven's name could have made these young people leave their paradise, give all their earthly savings to a human smuggling ring and then to simply perish - worse than cattle in an illegal animal transport? The simple answer is: NO FUTURE!

Sri Lanka is located off the global communication paths. It has no geo-strategic importance, no oil fields, no significant mineral resources, no real industry to speak of, and way too few energy resources. Still existing post-colonial structures mean that profits from tea or spice production mainly flow in the hands of businesses and corporations in London or Amsterdam. Sri Lanka is as large as Austria and has almost three times as many inhabitants - 2 million people throng in the capital. Colombo in the meantime reminds me of Manila, which to me incorporates the worst things one associates with a 3rd world metropolis - the perennial layer of smog hanging over the city, heaps of garbage with people living in the midst of garbage, slums on the periphery, gated ghettos for the privileged.

Once one leaves behind Colombo the island is breathtakingly beautiful and has all that is needed for a flourishing tourism infrastructure. It should easily be able to compete with destinations like the Caribbean, Mauritius or the Seychelles. If it weren't for the fact that the country failed to become part of the globalized world of the 21st century due to a murderous civil war that has been waged for twenty years. Twenty years that have left more than 60,000 dead, many more wounded, maimed; broken families, people driven from their homes, impoverished; mine fields, shattered and bullet-scarred villages, abandoned fields - all the poverty generally left behind by wars.

In the book The World's Most Dangerous Places, Sri Lanka has been listed for twenty years as a high-risk country, along with 33 other countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Chechnya and Somalia. This, together with reports of bombings, attacks, exploding airplanes, a guerrilla war being waged in the jungle, which news agencies have broadcast to the world, explains why up until 2002 the country had no tourism to speak of and thus no income from this sector. No peace, no security, no jobs, no industry, no tourism, no income, no education - in sum: no future, no perspective. This explains the flight from paradise and the death of 17 young men in the heart of the rich EU.

Change of place. Mid-1980's: Kathrin Messner and Josef Ortner had set themselves the goal of making art accessible to the broad public. "museum in progress" need not be described in further detail, it is an institution which can no longer be erased from Europe's cultural life. It has often created a stir, triggered debates and motivated reflection. With the establishment of "one world foundation" in 1985, they launched a social project to invest European capital and know-how in the so-called 3rd world and to promote a dialogue between very different cultural circles. Messner and Ortner did not just want to have an impact there, but to share their know-how - acquired in privileged Europe - with an under-privileged society. That they decided on Sri Lanka certainly shows a lot of courage.

The foundation began buying up pieces of land in a village about 70 kilometers to the south of Colombo, built school buildings and erected a private guesthouse. Schooling for 500 children as well as the construction of two further small schools were made possible by the income from the guest house which has nine rooms and adjoining ayurveda center. The school program: classes for preschoolers, English and vocational training, a tailoring course and computer training on meanwhile 12 terminals. There is huge interest in these courses and the success can be seen: to date all graduates have been able to find employment. And allow to me add: With the prize money five teachers can be employed for about a year's time.

In 2001, while travelling through Sri Lanka, I discovered this ambitious project and saw that while the children were receiving an excellent education their health was in part desolate - hardly any wonder given the practically non-extant medical care services! I don't need to add much more. All of a sudden I was part of the "one world foundation" and asked to set up a medical unit. No sooner said than done! Treatment rooms were built and furnished, medical infrastructure brought from Europe, samples of almost all bodily fluids of the children were smuggled to Vienna and examined there. On the basis of the findings it was possible to bring over the most important medication - sponsored, I might add, by Viennese pharmaceutical companies. Since then Prof. Stemberger and other doctors have been working together to provide a targeted treatment for the children, mainly for infectious diseases.

Kathrin Messner has time and again stressed that this project is not solely about developmental aid. Rather, it is an investment in the future (and if it's developmental aid then it is more directed to Europeans underdeveloped inter-cultural terms!)."one world foundation" is the prototype of a socially responsible involvement in tourism. We are keenly aware of the fact that we live in a world that continues to grow together and we know that travel has become almost a basic need for people in the industrial nations.

We also know that tourism is problematic in the so-called 3rd world countries. In reality we see developing countries being co-opted in a neo-colonial way by multi-corporations with their worldwide hotel chains. The profits flow, just like in the past, to the Promised Land of the West. As an alternative to this we advocate a concept that helps both sides and is founded in mutual understanding. Travelling is educating - in a dual sense. Our guests broaden their horizons, learn to show tolerance toward the Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka and at the same time help our hosts - the local population - to improve their level of education so as to be better able to survive in the global competition imposed upon them. Thus travel can become a process of give and take, a fair exchange. Messner and Ortner are currently back in Sri Lanka where they continue to work on their project. Shuttling back and forth between the West and the East, they are modest and active in the background, as is so often the case.

The countries of the 3rd world are not poor by the will of God (otherwise destitute Haiti would be rich and not the neighbouring, secular Bahamas!), it's also not the will of nature (otherwise the climatically and geographically neighbouring countries of Australia and Papua New Guinea would have to show the same level of development). No, the answer to this question can be found in history books. For more than four centuries the Christian Occident has systematically and without any scruple plundered and enslaved these countries, financing its industrial revolutions with the stolen resources and facilitating the transition from a farming society to a society of industry and services. Generations of our ancestors took part in this pillaging and we, the prosperous descendants, are left with this confounded moral obligation to at least replace the booty with initiatives - and not with alms.

In this context - xenophobic slogans strike me not just as inappropriate and cynical. They are also stupid since they reveal their speakers to be ignorant, to have no understanding of global connections. To build dams and protective walls, while failing to look where the flood comes from or what has caused it is foolish and does not solve any problems. If our children are to have a chance and a perspective then I believe this world certainly needs less Rumsfelds, Saddams, Cheneys and Sharons, less Austrian extras on the stage of xenophobia, but rather more Messners and Ortners.

On behalf of the one world foundation, on behalf of Kathrin Messner and Joseph Ortner, I thank you for this award and for your patience. Thank you.