UCLA and USC Archaeologists Brokering Israeli Palestinian Accord

Lynn Swartz Dodd and Ran Boytner

UCLA Today Online has a story about Lynn Swartz Dodd from USC and Ran Boytner from UCLA who have worked for the last five years to negotiate an agreement between Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists as to the disposition of ancient artifacts from excavations in the region when a future Palestinian state is established.

The two scholars "enlisted six of the region's most prominent working archaeologists and ultimately involved 10 institutions from around the world. To bankroll their activities, the team raised more than $150,000 in funds from a range of public and private donors, including USC, UCLA and the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by the U.S. Congress."

"The negotiating team presented their case to 200 Israeli archaeologists on April 8 at a four-hour conference at the Van Leer Institute, a Jerusalem nonprofit dedicated to enhancing and deepening Israeli democracy." Included in the proposed solution is

More than tripling of the footprint of that part of Jerusalem that would qualify for special protections as a UNESCO World Heritage Site to include the city's boundaries during the 10th century, or roughly the era of the Crusades. Currently, such status extends to a one-third-square-mile area that includes the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the walls of Jerusalem's more than 2,000-year-old Old City.

"Palestinian archaeologists have already expressed support for the document's provisions, which are now on file with the Israeli and Palestinian governments, the U.S. Department of State and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is now the official envoy of the Middle East diplomatic "quartet" — the four outside entities (the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia) involved in mediating the peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Musing: Emergency Education

Two students in my class last night presented a synopsis of their project on UNESCO's role in emergency education. They emphasized education for refugees, noting that there are an estimated 20 million refugees in countries other than their own, and some 30 million refugees within their own countries, and that these world estimates may be too low. My colleague, Frank Method, mentioned that a large portion of the world's children who are not able to exercise their rights to primary education are refugees. We will not achieve "Education for All" unless we educate refugees, and refugee kids have a right to education in their own languages.

There are of course other emergencies such as natural disasters which also require special handling of educational resources. But let me continue the student focus on refugee education.

There are many agencies that are involved, such as UNRWA, UNICEF, development banks, NGOs and bilateral agencies, as well as the national governments that have the central responsibilities for efforts in their own countries and for their own citizens. However, UNESCO has the lead responsibility within the United Nations system for education, communication and information and thus should play an important role in refugee education. Unfortunately, UNESCO's staff and financial resources are very limited in the face of UNESCO's huge responsibilities within the UN and international system.

The students pointed out that most of the concern for emergency education is focused on primary school, but that UNESCO correctly sees education as a lifelong process, and indeed there is a great need for providing appropriate secondary, tertiary, and informal education services for refugees. The refugees need to be prepared both to return to their homes and places of origin and deal with the problems there, and to cope with their current situation as refugess.

Frank pointed out that UNESCO's function in refugee education was not simply to teach the kids, but nation building. Refugee education should help to overcome the circumstances that caused the regugees to seek refuge in the first place. They will include building a culture of peace, supporting respect for cultural diversity, and facing the problems of rebuilding economies and promoting participatory governance.

In thinking about the breadth of this challenge, it would seem to involve all of UNESCO, and not just its educational sector. UNESCO's social and human sciences sector emphasizes the management of social transitions and migration, and would seem to have the capacity to bring social science knowledge to bear in the service of refugee education, even as refugee education could prove an important tool in the management of some social transitions and migration problems. The communication and education program would seem a natural complement to the education program in providing information to refugees and helping them to change their behavior. The culture program would seem to be critical in helping refugees to preserve their cultural heritage, while adjusting to the challenges presented by living in a different culture. (Indeed, even internal refugees often face cultural differences as they move from one region of their country to another.) The natural science programs could help educators prepare refugees to confront the environmental challenges that they often face, and indeed its new focus on innovation for economic development may prove quite valuable to refugee communities.

Thus, UNESCO might well be advised to consider a cross-sectoral program of support for the knowledge needs of refugees and victims of other national emergencies. Such an initiative should merit the support of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO, and indeed the United States might lead in helping UNESCO find resources for such an effort.

From the Candidates Positions on Foreign Policy

Hillary Clinton

America is stronger when we lead the world through alliances and build our foreign policy on a strong foundation of bipartisan consensus. As president, Hillary will lead by the words of the Declaration of Independence, which pledged "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

We know we need global coalitions to tackle global problems like climate change, poverty, AIDS, and terrorism. And to keep our country safe, we need to start engaging our enemies again. During the Cold War, with missiles pointed at us, we never stopped talking to the Soviet Union. That didn't mean we agreed with them or approved of them. But it did mean we came to understand them -- and that was crucial to confronting the threats they posed.

Hillary knows that America must remain a preeminent leader for peace and freedom, willing to work in concert with other nations and institutions to reach common goals. Hillary has put forth an aggressive plan to support public schools in developing countries in an effort to achieve universal primary education for the 77 million children around the world who aren't in school because they are too poor.

John McCain

The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman's day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.

In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today's world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation........

Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them......

There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren.

Barack Obama

In the wake of the Second World War, it was America that largely built a system of international institutions that carried us through the Cold War. Leaders like Harry Truman and George Marshall knew that instead of constraining our power, these institutions magnified it.

Today it’s become fashionable to disparage the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international organizations. In fact, reform of these bodies is urgently needed if they are to keep pace with the fast-moving threats we face. Such real reform will not come, however, by dismissing the value of these institutions, or by bullying other countries to ratify changes we have drafted in isolation. Real reform will come because we convince others that they too have a stake in change – that such reforms will make their world, and not just ours, more secure......

As President, I will double our annual investments in meeting these challenges to billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed towards these strategic goals.

For the last twenty years, U.S. foreign aid funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation. Doubling our foreign assistance spending by 2012 will help meet the challenge laid out by Tony Blair at the 2005 G-8 conference at Gleneagles, and it will help push the rest of the developed world to invest in security and opportunity. As we have seen recently with large increases in funding for our AIDS programs, we have the capacity to make sure this funding makes a real difference.

Part of this new funding will also establish a two billion dollar Global Education Fund that calls on the world to join together in eliminating the global education deficit, similar to what the 9/11 commission proposed. Because we cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy.

The World Heritage Alliance

Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence, UNESCOs Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet) Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project, was launched in 1998. It aims to break the silence surrounding the Transatlantic Slave Trade, while forging new triangular links between over 120 ASPnet schools in 22 countries in Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe.

The website is intended to help teachers and educators to Break the Silence that continues to surround the story of the enslavement of Africa that began over 500 years ago. It is designed to provide teachers with a variety of resources and ideas about how to teach the subject holistically, accurately and truthfully.

UNESCO's Slave Trade Archives

UNESCO Hewlett Packard Partnership in Education

At the end of last year, UNESCO announced a new partnership agreement with Hewlett Packard to strengthen their collaboration around existing education projects. Through the partnership, UNESCO and HP will work together on several projects in the area of education, especially to support UNESCO’s priority of “Education for All". This includes an evaluation on the extension of the existing brain drain project to additional regions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

UNESCO and HP started to collaborate five years ago in South East Europe to help key universities connect to global research networks. In 2006 the project was extended to Africa. The project fights brain drain by providing universities with an advanced technology called grid computing, which allows top quality researchers to play a key role in international research and contribute to economic development in their home countries.

“UNESCO’s education priorities are very much in line with the goals of HP’s education strategy. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, HP has supported more than 200 education projects in over 20 countries, reaching over 50,000 young people in 2007. On a worldwide level, HP contributed grants to more than 850 schools in 36 countries, worth €30 million between 2004 and 2007,” said Gabriele Zedlmayer, vice president, Global Citizenship HP Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Read more about the initiative.

UNESCO and L’Oréal: Raising AIDS Awareness

Beauty transcends national borders, and a trip to the hairdresser is a ritual in almost every country in the world. When UNESCO was looking for a private sector partner to help educate a mostly female global audience about HIV and AIDS, it turned to L’Oréal Professional Products. In 2005, through the initiative of Lady Owen-Jones, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for HIV/AIDS Prevention Education, the two organizations created Hairdressers Against AIDS, aimed at raising awareness of HIV by sensitizing hairdressers about HIV and encouraging them to talk about personal risk with their customers.

Knowing that hair salons are excellent locations for information sharing and exchange, UNESCO saw a golden opportunity in partnering with L’Oréal–an opportunity to ensure that the company’s network of 190 training centres and 1.2 million professionals are reached with reliable information on HIV and AIDS. Hairdressers in L’Oreal’s 400 000 partner salons around the world take courses at the training centres in more than 50 countries. The UNESCO training module–integrated into L’Oréal’s professional training system–provides simple, factual and accurate information on HIV. Hairdressers who graduate from the training programme UNESCO designed with L'Oréal relay their knowledge to clients in salons in every corner of the world.

Read more about this initiative in

Partnerships with the Private Sector: A Collection of Case Studies from UNAIDS

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