UNESCO Intersectoral Platforms

In the 2008-2009 biennium, UNESCO is implementing a dozen "intersectoral platforms" that focus on key global challenges. The platforms promote an interdisciplinary approach through the combined action of UNESCO's five major programs: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, communication and information.

The programs are:

1. Science education
2. HIV and AIDS
3. Education for sustainable development
4. Contribution to the implementation of the Mauritius Strategy for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
5. Fostering ICT-enhanced learning
6. Strengthening national research systems
7. Languages and multilingualism
8. Contributing to the dialogue among civilizations and cultures and a culture of peace
9. Support to countries in post-conflict and disaster situations
10. Priority Africa: coordinating and monitoring the plan of action to benefit Africa
11. UNESCO action to address climate change
12. Foresight and anticipation

Click here to see a Power Point Presentation
by a senior UNESCO official on the program!

Decentralization in the Education Program

While UNESCO's Education Program is centered in UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, a great deal of its work is decentralized into a network of Institutes and Centers, as well as country field offices and cluster offices providing education related services to a cluster of nations. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics provides statistical support for the education programs as well as the other UNESCO programs.

The Centers and Institutes of the Education Program are:

• The International Bureau of Education (IBE)
  
• The UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA)
  
• The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)
• The International Center for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (UNEVOC)
  
• The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning
• The Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE)
  
• The European Center for Higher Education (CEPES)
• The International Center for Girls' and Women's Education in Africa (CIEFFA)
  
• The International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC)
  

Other Centers or Institutes under the auspices of UNESCO

• International Research and Training Centre for Rural education, Boading, China
• Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding, Inchon, Republic of Korea
• Guidance, Counseling and Youth Development Centre for Africa, Lilongwe, Malawi
• Regional Centre for Book Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bogotá, Colombia
  

The Cluster and Regional Offices for Education

• Dakar (Africa)
  
• Beirut (Arab States)
  
• Bangkok (Asia and Pacific)
• Santiago Chile (Latin America and the Caribbean)
  

The Intangible Heritage Network

This network's website is dedicated to the involvement of non-governmental organizations and civil society in topics related with the intangible cultural heritage. The network's founders feel that "the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage represents an important achievement concerning the recognition and advancement of cultural rights. Moreover, it has involved State Parties undersigning it in a consistent exercise towards the identification and study of their intangible cultural heritage."

YOu might want to check out this site with interesting photos posted by the Intangible Heritage Network.

Online Volunteer Needed

One or more online volunteers sought to help post materials on this blog. The volunteer would scan the UNESCO websites to identify materials from UNESCO's educational and/or cultural programs worth spotlighting, such as news, new events or publications, or interesting programs. The blog is widely read internationally, but is especially focused on materials of interest to people in the United States.

Several neophyte bloggers have learned to post on the site in less than one hour. An effort of an hour or two per week on the average should do the job, and would be greatly appreciated.

If you are interested, please send an email to me with your biography or a brief description of your background and interests.

john.daly@gmail.com

UNESCO Courier: Claude Lévi-Strauss

A recent issue of the UNESCO Courier is devoted to remembrance of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the great Anthropologist who published often in The Courier, was very close to UNESCO during his life, and was even in his 90's an active participant in the celebrations of UNESCO's 60th anniversary in 2005.

Go to the Issue!

Quotations:

“The efforts of science should not only enable mankind to surpass itself; they must also help those who lag behind to catch up.”

“No doubt we take comfort in the dream that equality and fraternity will one day reign among men, without compromising their diversity.”

“Nothing indicates racial prejudices are diminishing and indications are not lacking to suggest that after brief local respites, they surge up again elsewhere with renewed intensity. Which is why UNESCO feels the need periodically to take up again a struggle whose outcome is uncertain, to say the least.”

“But who better than UNESCO can draw the attention of scientists and technicians to the fact (which they so often tend to overlook) that the purposes of science are not only to solve scientific problems but to find answers to social problems as well.”

UNESCO roundtable on the development, culture and identity of indigenous peoples

Image © Ayodele Banjo

A roundtable titled “Indigenous Peoples: Development with Culture and Identity” is to take place 15 September at UNESCO Headquarters*. It is to lay the ground for reflection on this theme which will also be discussed at the 9th session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) to be held in New York in 2010. Participants are to focus on the contribution of indigenous approaches to sustainable development in the age of globalization. They will also seek to reinforce cooperation among indigenous peoples, governments and the United Nations system as a whole.

The event will be opened by the UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. Participants will include Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Igorot, Philippines), Margaret Lokawua (Karamoja, Uganda) and Carlos Mamani Condorí (Aymará, Bolivia), respectively chair and members of the UNPFII. John Scott of the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity; Julian Burger, Coordinator, Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Unit, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); Anaisabel Prera, Guatemala’s Ambassador to France and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO; and Darriann Riber of the Danish International Development Agency will also be participating.

An estimated 350 million indigenous peoples live in over 70 countries and speak more than 5,000 languages: such is the importance of indigenous people today. Their cultures express the powerful links between humanity and nature, between tradition and modernity, offering a holistic view of the world. They could become a source of renewal for the future. Despite their major contribution to cultural diversity and to sustainable development, many of them are marginalized and deprived of basic human rights.

Read more!

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