Finale académique des débats citoyens en anglais

The relationship between art and power is as old as organized society itself. From the monumental sculptures of Pharaonic Egypt and the propaganda murals of Imperial Rome to the religious commissions of the Renaissance papacy, rulers have long mobilized artists to legitimize authority, project ideology, and shape collective memory. The 20th century intensified this dynamic: the Soviet Union codified Socialist Realism, Nazi Germany staged the 1937 'Degenerate Art' exhibition to delegitimize modernism, and during the Cold War the United States covertly promoted Abstract Expressionism abroad through the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom as a symbol of Western freedom. In parallel, artists from Picasso's 'Guernica' to the protest songs of the civil rights era have used creative work to challenge state violence and demand accountability. In the contemporary period the contest has migrated to new arenas. China's global network of Confucius Institutes, Russia's state-funded media and film industries, the Gulf states' museum diplomacy (the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Qatar's acquisitions, Saudi Arabia's AlUla and Diriyah cultural projects), and the worldwide reach of K-pop backed by South Korean cultural policy all illustrate the use of art as soft power. At the same time, debates over the restitution of colonial-era artifacts — the Benin Bronzes, the Parthenon Marbles, objects held in the Quai Branly and the British Museum — have reframed cultural heritage as a question of historical justice. Censorship of artists in Iran, Belarus, and elsewhere, and the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, underscore the stakes when regimes treat art as a threat. Today the issue sits at the intersection of UNESCO's cultural heritage conventions, national soft-power strategies, and the rights of individual artists to free expression. Delegates must weigh how states should regulate, fund, and export culture; how the international community should respond to cultural destruction and looting; and whether art can remain an autonomous space of critique when it is so deeply entangled with political and economic power.

The tension between scientific progress and ethical responsibility has shaped modern history. The Manhattan Project and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 made clear that breakthroughs in fundamental science can be weaponized at civilizational scale, prompting the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957 and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. Subsequent decades brought new dilemmas: the 1975 Asilomar Conference on recombinant DNA established a model of scientific self-regulation; the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 exposed the risks of complex technologies; and the 2018 announcement by He Jiankui of gene-edited babies in China triggered a global outcry and a WHO advisory committee on human genome editing. The contemporary frontier is broader and faster-moving. Artificial intelligence has prompted the EU AI Act (2024), the Bletchley Park and Seoul AI Safety Summits, and a US executive order on AI safety, while raising questions about autonomous weapons currently debated at the UN CCW Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. CRISPR gene editing, synthetic biology, neurotechnology, geoengineering, and quantum computing each pose dual-use challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic reopened debates over gain-of-function research, vaccine equity, and the governance of laboratories handling dangerous pathogens. Meanwhile, climate-related innovations — from solar radiation management to carbon capture — raise the question of who is entitled to alter planetary systems, and on whose behalf. The core dispute is how to preserve the freedom and openness that drive scientific discovery while ensuring accountability, equitable access, and protection against catastrophic misuse. UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and its 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights offer normative frameworks, but enforcement remains weak and unevenly distributed between technologically advanced states and the Global South. Delegates must consider how to balance innovation, national competitiveness, corporate power, and the precautionary principle, and whether new international institutions are needed for emerging technologies.