UNESCO Non-Alligned Countries Meet

There is a report in Diario Granma, in Spanish (Havana, March 25, 2009), on a recent meeting of the Non Aligned Nations of UNESCO. The follow is extracted from that article:

The participants in the meeting reaffirmed the priorities given to South-South cooperation on education, cultural diversity and human rights. The meeting also identified as important UNESCO fields of action:

• New information and communications technologies
• The effects of the global economic crisis on education
• the defense of linguistic diversity and
• the support of the Palestinian peopls.
  

In the plenary meeting, chaired by the Héctor Hernández Pardo (Cuban Ambassador to UNESCO and president of the Group, Farouk Hosni was presented as the candidate of the Arab nations in the October election for the new Director General of UNESCO.

UNESCO and 15 to 24 Year Olds

The question often comes up as to how UNESCO serves youths. There is a facet of the UNESCO website that describes the Organization's approach to youth, but there doesn't seem to be a separate Youth Portal specifically designed to be lively and directed to the interests of young adults.

I would guess that UNESCO's most important function with respect to youth is encouraging countries to develop youth-friendly policies and services. This is a prototypical function for an intergovernmental organization.

In this respect, the Infoyouth Network was created by UNESCO to provide an overview of youth policies and programs throughout the world.

The Infoyouth network operates in conjunction with the National Commissions for UNESCO, youth organisations, governmental and non governmental institutions and information and data research agencies and bodies. The Steering Committee, made up of representatives from UNESCO, the French National Commission for UNESCO, the Youth and Community Education Unit of the French Ministry for Youth and Sports and the National Institute for Youth and Community Education ensures a regular follow-up of all Infoyouth projects.

UNESCO also engages in partnerships with young people’s networks and organizations both to solicit information from them and to help them develop projects and programs in the areas of UNESCO’s competence.

Recall that UNESCO has a relatively small staff and budget as compared with the challenges it faces at the lead agency in the intergovernmental United Nations system in education, science, culture and communications and information. As such its direct services to youths must necessarily be limited. One important function however, is the Youth Forum UNESCO holds in conjunction with each of its General Conferences. The next Youth Forum will be this fall.

John Daly
(Opinions expressed above are mine and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

UNESCO and UPEACE agree to reinforce cooperation

On 18 February 2009, the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, and the Rector of the University of Peace, Mr John J. Maresca, met at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to discuss ways of strengthening cooperation between the two organizations.

Headquartered in Costa Rica, the University for Peace (UPEACE) was established in December 1980 as a Treaty Organization by the United Nations General Assembly. Its mission is: “to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations.”

The Director-General indicated that UNESCO would rapidly examine practical opportunities for collaboration based on these common competencies and interests.

50th anniversary of Nubia Campaign

Abu Simbel
Restauration of the statues of the Great Temple
Nanadovic©UNESCO

In 1954 it was decided to build the Aswan High Dam. The huge lake created by the dam would eventually cover the Upper Nile Valley from Aswan in Egypt to the Dal Cataract in Sudan - a historically and archaeologically rich area, known as Nubia.

In 1959 the Egyptian and the Sudanese Governments requested UNESCO to help their countries protect and rescue the historic sites endangered by the lake. UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia. This appeal resulted in the excavation and recording of hundreds of sites, the recovery of thousands of objects, and the salvage and relocation of a number of important temples to higher ground, the most famous of them the temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae. The campaign ended on 10 March 1980 as a complete and spectacular success.

“A moving demonstration of the miracles that can be achieved by international cooperation.”
Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

The success of the Campaign inspired the development and adoption in 1972 of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention. The Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979.

Recently, UNESCO, Egypt and Sudan began the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Nubia Campaign with a meeting in Egypt.

Video.

Class Exercise: ExBrd Working Group on Old City of Jerusalem

Last night in our UNESCO Seminar we did a role playing exercise based on a real negotiation that took place in May, 2007 in the context of a Special Session of the Executive Board of UNESCO.

The Old City of Jerusalem has been inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List since 1981. There is a ramp leading from the square in which the Wailing Wall (perhaps the most sacred place in Judaism) is located to the mount above where the Al Aqsa Mosque (which includes the Dome of the Rock), one of the holiest sites in Islam.

A retaining wall supporting the ramp failed and the Israeli authorities began archaelogical works prior to restoring the ramp. The communication between Israeli and Palestinian archaeological authorities has long been broken, and Palestinians were concerned as to the scope and purpose of those works, which they felt should have been under Arab auspices; the site of course holds remains of more than 1000 years of Muslim rule and occupation. The World Heritage Center was also experiencing difficulties communicating with the Israeli authorities.

Arab delegates asked for the Special Session of the Executive Board to review the situation. A subcommittee of the Executive Board was formed to draft a resolution on the matter, to be considered by the entire 58 member Board. The subcommittee consisted of Delegates from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Norway, the Palestinian Authority, and the United States as well as the Deputy Director General of UNESCO. In our role playing exercise, students took the roles of these participants.

A team consisting of the Director a staffer from the World Heritage Center, the Director-General of ICCROM and the President of ICOMOS had previously visited Jerusalem and investigated the situation; their report was made available to the subcommittee.

The purpose of the exercise was to help the students understand the complexity of such a negotiation and the many levels at which it take place.

Of course, a common concern among all the Delegates was the preservation of a site which is of huge cultural importance to billions of people, and which is must be managed to accommodate millions of visitors.

Underlying the negotiation of course was a concern for the potential for violent confrontations in Jerusalem. The Al Aqsa Intifada was ignited at the very location under discussion. And of course, the negotiation was conducted in the context of the overall Peace Process in which Norway and the United States have played key roles.

The participants in the Working Group were unanimous in their statements that the issue should not be dealt with as a political issue, yet of course the Delegates were all diplomats of ambassadorial rank, and the venue was not the specialized agencies dealing with monuments and heritage sites, nor the World Heritage Center, but rather the governing body of UNESCO itself.

Students discussed the fact that each participant in the negotiation faced domestic constituencies that were very concerned with the condition of the sites and the political contexts. Israel's government was facing upcoming elections and the Palestinian authority was soon to dissolve in civil war; a large portion of the Jordanian population describes itself as Palestinian.

The media was characterized as influential in the negotiations even if not present. While U.S. media were silent on the situation, it was extensively covered in Israeli, Palestinian and Arab media. While the actual conduct of the negotiation would not be revealed, the results would be publicized in the countries of several of the delegates.

Moreover, Delegates were likely to be concerned with groups of nations, as the European Delegate might have been concerned with representing the views of European powers, and the Arab nations with representing other Arab and Islamic nations.

It was recognized that much of the work of the committee would be done outside of the meeting room, that the Delegates were likely to have received instructions from their governments, and that there were possibilities of incentives or sanctions being imposed on governments as a result of the negotiations, and that there were possibilities of incentives being offered or sanctions being threatened in the process of the negotiations. Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority are all heavily dependent on European and American support.

While the secretariats of UNESCO and other involved organizations were concerned with the integrity of the organizational processes, they must also have been concerned with the potential benefits and threats implied by the negotiation to their own organizations. The key organizational members were the heads of their respective organizations, rather than lower level technical staff.

And of course the Delegates were individuals, with their own ideological positions. One at least was probably chosen both as a neutral party and because of the respect he had earned as a skilled and experienced diplomat. Two of the Secretariat members have since been mentioned as attractive candidates in this year's election of a new UNESCO Director General. And of course, while all were internationally experienced, each Delegate came from his/her own cultural background -- Arab, Israeli, Scandinavian, Texan, etc. and might have understood the negotiations in part from that cultural background.

We reviewed the actual Resolution that had been approved

• which documented the previous agreements that set the stage for the current resolution
• recognized the universal cultural importance of the site
  
• acknowledged the work of the team that had done the site visit
• referred future work on the issue to the World Heritage Center
• called upon Israel to provide more information and coordinate with Islamic authorities on the works, and
• thanked the Secretariat for its work

The students agreed that this resolution probably represented a result which did not fully achieve the objectives of any party, but which all parties could accept. It clearly represented a substantive and informative product of detailed negotiation. The United States diplomats thought the negotiation very successful, but we had little insight as to the satisfaction of other Delegates in the outcome.

The seven students and two coordinators had a lively, two hour discussion greatly facilitated by the fact that all of the students had prepared for the class. A fairly extensive set of case study materials had been made available for their review prior to the class, but most had gone beyond those materials.

UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development

The UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development – Moving into the Second Half of the UN Decade will be held in Bonn, Germany, from 31 March to 2 April 2009.

Five years into the Decade, the conference will follow four objectives: to highlight the relevance of ESD to all of education; to promote international exchange on ESD, especially between the North and the South; to carry out a stock-taking of the implementation of the UN Decade and to develop strategies for the way ahead.

700 persons from 150 countries have registered for the Conference.

Go to the Conference website!

Looking Outward and Forward: UNESCO World Conference on Education and Sustainable Development

Halfway points of any endeavor are wonderful times to reflect and to revitalize: The World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development held in Bonn, Germany, promises to do just that. Held five years into the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, the conference will emphasize best practices and cooperation for education for sustainable development (ESD).

The conference, held March 31 through April 2, will bring together over 700 people from 150 countries and will have four main objectives. The overarching theme is to underscore how crucial ESD is to education at all levels. Related to that is a second objective of reviewing what has been done so far in ESD and what lessons can be taken from previous experiences.

Two other themes look to the possibilities ahead. The conference seeks to promote international exchange of ideas regarding ESD, particularly between North and South, and to share best practices and ideas regarding ESD on a global level. It additionally hopes to spark conversation and plans to develop strategies for the best paths to take for future development.

These objectives will be infused into all elements of the program, which include high-level segments, plenary and workshop sessions, exhibitions of 25 ESD projects, project-based workshops, and special events. An official program can be found here.

This conference is the second in a series of educational conferences UNESCO is holding on global education. Each conference strives to foster dialogue regarding best practices for educational priorities, and the potential to transform educational systems by sharing best practices and learning from each other is enormous. The opportunity to participate in such global dialogues, therefore, must not be wasted.