Wednesday, December 5, 2007

10 December 2005 - Human Rights Day


Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December to mark the anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Also in celebration of Human Rights Day:

International Human Rights Day

Symposium and Working Meeting

Rights and Responsibilities: Scientific Associations and International Human Rights Norms

Hosted by

AAAS Science and Human Rights Program

Monday, 10 December 2007
2:00 pm - 5:15 pm
AAAS Headquarters,
1200 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC

"U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test"

Read the article by Maria Glod in The Washington Post, December 5, 2007.

Glod writes:
The disappointing performance of U.S. teenagers in math and science on an international exam, in scores released yesterday, has sparked calls for improvement in public schools to help the country keep pace in the global economy.

The scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many industrialized countries. The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. The U.S. students were further behind in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries.

Design of an Emblem for Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention


Design of an Emblem for Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention

UNESCO is now announcing a competition for the design of an emblem that best reflects the purposes and spirit of the Convention to give greater visibility to intangible heritage and its safeguarding.

UNESCO invites entries from professional and amateur graphic designers, artists, and practitioners of intangible cultural heritage from all its Member States. Each participant may submit a single design, including a black and white and a colour version.

The deadline for submissions to reach UNESCO is 15 February 2008.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Index Translationum

The Index Translationum is a list of books translated in the world, i.e. an international bibliography of translations. The Index Translationum was created in 1932. It celebrates this year its 75th anniversary.


The Index' database contains cumulative bibliographical information on books translated and published in about one hundred of the UNESCO Member States since 1979 and totalling more than 1.700,000 entries in all disciplines: literature, social and human sciences, natural and exact sciences, art, history and so forth.

Among the most translated authors are found, in no particular order, Walt Disney Productions, Agatha Christie, Jules Verne, Lenin and Shakespeare. Consulting the available data, it can be noted that the most translated languages in the world are English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. In the other direction, Japanese is among the languages most translated into; it is listed in fifth position after German, Spanish, French and English, before Dutch and Portuguese. Finally, Germany, Spain, France and Japan are the countries that translate the most.

Annotated bibliography on education and conflict

A man removes a bloodied schoolbook at a school gate in a mostly Sunni area of western Baghdad
Source: Firas Durri: Enthusiast (blog)


Annotated bibliography on education and conflict
Background paper prepared for the
Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2008
Rüdiger Blumör, Nora v. Buttlar
UNESCO, 2007. (PDF, 97 pages)
Publ: 2007; 2008/ED/EFA/MRT/PI/77.


This bibliography contains a selection of publications that deal with the topic of education and conflict, in the form of political and/or violent/ armed conflict. Publications looking at conflict/conflict management in education (e.g. in schools) have not been included.

New Issue of the UNESCO Courier

© UNESCO/Michel Ravassard
UNESCO campaign «Send my friend to school» (2005). Work by Tara Badcock (Australia)


1990 : The Education for All (EFA) campaign is launched in Jomtien (Thailand). The international community pledges to provide quality basic education to all children, youths and adults.

2000 :In Dakar, Senegal, more than 160 governments set six goals to be reached no later than 2015. The goals concern early childhood education, primary school, life skills, adult literacy, gender parity and quality education.

2007:“We are halfway there and we have good reason to be optimistic,” says, in this issue of the UNESCO Courier, Nicholas Burnett, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education and director of the just-launched 2008 EFA Global Monitoring Report. Troublesome areas remain nonetheless, notably early childhood education, gender parity and adult literacy.

EFA Report has now been issued

EDUCATION FOR ALL BY 2015:
WILL WE MAKE IT?

Just released!

The Report in 10 questions

There is a very helpful three minute video with the key results from the report. It features Nicholas Burnett, director of the staff that prepared the 2008 report and now the new assistant director-general for education of UNESCO.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)