Education for All on the Global Stage

UNESCO will spotlight Education for All during a number of events during the last quarter of 2008. UNESCO will participate in one of the eight roundtables at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, Ghana (2-4 September). UNESCO will also participate in the thematic roundtable on health and education at the High-Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals on the 25th of September.

The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009 -- focusing on governance, financing and management of education -- is to be launched during the International Conference on Education (25-28 November, Switzerland).

The annual meeting of the High Level Group on EFA -- to be attended by heads of state, education ministers, bilateral, multilateral and civil society organizations -- is to be held 16-18 December in Norway.

The next four months also count a series of regional preparatory conferences leading up to the May 2009 CONFINTEA VI conference on adult learning. These conferences are being held in Latin America and the Caribbean (10–13 September, Mexico); the Asia-Pacific (6 – 8 October, Republic of Korea); sub-Saharan Africa (5–7 November, Kenya); and for the Europe-North America region, in Hungary (3–5 December).

Read about UNESCO’s ongoing core initiatives in education:

TTISSA: Teacher Training Initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa
A 10-year UNESCO initiative to improve teacher-training capacities in 46 sub-Saharan countries.

LIFE: The Literacy Initiative for Empowerment
A 10-year UNESCO initiative targeting the 35 countries with 85% of the world's illiterate population.

EDUCAIDS: The Global Initiative on Education and HIV/AIDS
EDUCAIDS
A UNESCO-led initiative carried out with 10 UN agencies to help governments provide a comprehensive response in the area of HIV/AIDS education.

Consult UNESCO’s action in education worldwide, country by country

Globalization and Language

UNU/UNESCO International Conference · 27 & 28 August, 2008

United Nations University Headquarters Tokyo, Japan

The UN University and UNESCO are offering the 2008 international conference on:

Globalization and Languages: Building on Our Rich Heritage

UNESCO launches two education-related websites

The Educational content and curriculum website was launched by the International Bureau of Education. Country Dossiers illustrate the Bureau’s recent activities in different parts of the world. The site is trilingual with a number of additional pages translated in Chinese, Russian and Arabic. It accommodates for slow internet connections and includes a larger text option for the visually impaired.

The Latin American and Caribbean education website from UNESCO’s Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean provides users with detailed information on a wide range of educational topics, in both Spanish and English. The site includes detailed information of initiatives and networking efforts undertaken by the Regional Bureau, as well as news, events, documents and recommended publications. Bibliographic searches can also be run on UNESCO publications.

" Historic Preservation and America in the World"

Donovan Rypkema, a Washington consultant on historical preservation with both domestic and international experience, has posted a very interesting and thought provoking essay on his Heritage Strategies Blog.

He starts with the observation:

(N)o objective observer and no one who has traveled to foreign countries in recent years can escape three realities: 1) among both America's friends and America's opponents regard for the United States has fallen dramatically in recent years; 2) the regaining of the respect and the reestablishment of the leadership of the United States will take concentrated effort over a long period of time - perhaps a generation or more; and 3) essential to that effort will be the reengagement of the American government with international institutions, most of which were created through the leadership of the United States.

He then goes on to suggest twenty reasons why historic preservation not only can play an important role in a reenergized public diplomacy, but needs to play that role. Finally, he suggests ten steps that the United States Government could take in the international promotion of historic preservation.

"When was the last time that virtually every country in the world was on the same side of the same issue - India and Pakistan, Israel and the PLO, Africa and Europe, North America and South America? It was n the condemnation of the wanton destruction of the Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan by the Taliban - a historic preservation issue.

Conversely, in recent years perhaps the best example of the impact of symbolic healing was the restoration of the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina funded by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the World Monuments Fund."
Donovan Rypkema

Editorial Comment: The UNESCO led efforts to save Abu Simbel is the most famous example of a global effort of historic preservation. The support by Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation of UNESCO's World Heritage Center is perhaps America's best example of a public-private partnership in soft diplomacy. JAD

Veronika, UNESCO Arkhangelsk Project

My name is Veronika, and I’m 9 years old. I live in Krasnoborsk with my babouchka (grandmother), Maria Alexandrovna Iourileva. When I was born, my mother was very young.

She was 16 and didn’t know how to look after me. She left when I was 5 months old, and I stayed alone with my father. He didn’t know how to look after me either, he’s an alcoholic. Then, it was my father’s mother who took me in. She has a small pension (2.700 rubles a month, around 100 US$) as she worked for 38 years in an orphanage. She had a very tough life. She is ashamed of her daughter, and she left her husband as he was an alcoholic too. She never would have thought that her family could be this unhappy.

In my grandmother’s small house, she’s 57 years old, there is also my great grandmother who is 86 and very ill. My grandmother is very kind and gives me all that she can. With the UNESCO project, I go to the arts and crafts section of the cultural center three times a week, and I take part in all activities like skiing and theater.

My grandmother has a very beautiful voice. She sings in the veterans’ choir. She says that singing, and I think so too, helps us survive and keep hope. She encourages me in everything, she is proud of my successes and she gives me a lot of love.

International Literacy Day

International Literacy Day

8 September

Literacy is a cause for celebration since there are now close to four billion literate people in the world. However, literacy for all – children, youth and adults - is still an unaccomplished goal and an ever moving target. A combination of ambitious goals, insufficient and parallel efforts, inadequate resources and strategies, and continued underestimation of the magnitude and complexity of the task accounts for this unmet goal. Lessons learnt over recent decades show that meeting the goal of universal literacy calls not only for more effective efforts but also for renewed political will and for doing things differently at all levels - locally, nationally and internationally.

First Lady Laura Bush is UNESCO's Honorary Ambassador for the Decade of Literacy. Her designation came in recognition of her dedication to learning and the promotion of reading, her commitment to universal education and literacy, her work on behalf of libraries and the sharing of knowledge, and her outstanding efforts in support of teachers and the teaching profession.

UNESCO Literacy websites

• Literacy
  
• UN Literacy Decade (2003-2012)
• UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014)
• Literacy for All
• Education for All
• Literacy Exchange - World Resources on Literacy
• EDUCAIDS - The Global Initiative on Education and HIV/AIDS

Read the UNESCO Director General's message
on International Literacy Day! (PDF file)

The International Day of Peace

The United Nations' International Day of Peace - marked every year on September 21 - is a global holiday when individuals, communities, nations and governments highlight efforts to end conflict and promote peace.

We the World, a non-governmental organization, provides a website with more than 700 associated events celebrating peace efforts during an eleven day period from September 11 to September 21, in support of the United Nations event.

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men

that the defences of peace must be constructed.”

The UNESCO Constitution

UNESCO was created in the aftermath of World War II as an integral part of the United Nations peace keeping system. UNESCO's function was the long-term effort to build the defenses of peace in the minds of men through the promotion of education, science and culture. The promotion of peace has always been central to its program.

Promotion of the Culture of Peace is one of UNESCO's special themes, cross cutting all of its sectoral programs. Among its actions are a number of prizes recognizing efforts to promote peace:

• UNESCO Prize for Peace Education

This prize, awarded biennially, supports activities designed to increase awareness and mobilize consciences in the cause of peace.

• The Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize

The Prize, established in 1989, is intended to honor living individuals, and active public or private bodies or institutions that have made a significant contribution to promoting, seeking, safeguarding or maintaining peace.

• UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize

The UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize pays tribute to the initiatives of municipalities which have succeeded in strengthening social cohesion, improving living conditions in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and developing genuine urban harmony.

A New UNESCO Publication

The International Peace Commission, which grew out ot the Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize process, held its first meeting in UNESCO Headquarters, hosted by the Secretary General. The International Commission for Peace Research also grew out of the Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize.

The book Water and Peace for the People will be launched on 11 September at 6 p.m. at UNESCO Headquarters.

What if the countries in the Middle East had no choice but to get along in order to share the region’s meagre water resources? This is the starting premise of Jon Martin Trondalen’s book “Water and Peace for the People”, which will be launched on 11 September at UNESCO.

In an international climate of tension, conflicts related to water in the Middle East are more than ever in deadlock. “Water and Peace for the People”, released by UNESCO Publishing, offers a practical guide that suggests concrete ways to resolve these crises.

© Jon Martin Trondalen
Culvert for an irrigation from the
Euphrates River, South of Bagdad