World Heritage Site Videos

UNESCO's World Heritage Program has certified 851 properties which have outstanding universal value and therefore form part of the mankind's cultural and natural heritage. A large number of short videos of World Heritage sites has been edited and adapted especially by UNESCO for online access.

Click here to go to the website
where you can see them all.

Click on the corresponding link to see a video (Via Windows Media) of:

• The Pyramids of Egypt
• The Taj Mahal
• The Roman Colosseum

School Science and Technology education

Just published

UNESCO Resources on School Science and Technology education on CD-Rom

UNESCO has just released a new CD-ROM with a collection of UNESCO documents on science and technology education at the secondary school level. These ocuments include:

• “Guidelines for Policy-making in Secondary School Science and Technology Education”
• “Girls and Science : A training module on motivating girls to embark on science and technology careers”
• “Technology-based training of marginalized girls”
• “Partnerships for relevant science and technology education” and
• “Technology education guide”.

Contact: j.heiss@unesco.org

Literacy, Knowledge and Development

Literacy, Knowledge and Development

This just published report (in Spanish as well as English) is subtitled “South-South Policy Dialogue on Quality Education for Adults and Young People”. It contains the presentations made at the conference of that name held in Mexico City in 2005. The articles concern literacy policies as well as basic education and competence recognition.

While Brazil, India, South Africa and Mexico are singled out as “locomotives of development in the field”, information is also provided on programmes in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Arab States as a whole.

The Bush administration has emphasized literacy in its dealings with UNESCO, and held a major conference on literacy in conjunction with the UN Summit in 2006.

Partnership for Jordan's World Heritage Sites

The World Heritage Alliance for Sustainable Tourism (WHA) – a membership-based initiative launched in 2005 by the United Nations Foundation and Expedia, Inc. – announced recently a partnership between the Alliance and the Jordanian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities designed to preserve and protect Jordan’s designated UNESCO World Heritage sites while promoting responsible tourism to the country.

USAID/Siyaha and will implement a program to assist in strengthening the management of Jordan's World Heritage sites, most notably Petra, and launch a public awareness campaign about these sites. In Petra, support will also include a combination of grants to community-based organization and local businesses, training, and development of local tourism projects and activities consistent with World Heritage and sustainable tourism principles. Efforts will also integrate USAID/Siyaha’s work with the Petra National Trust to create a Petra zoning plan.

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Click here to see a two minute long video about Petra.

The UN Foundation will also support the mission of USAID/Siyaha in various ways, including using its outreach tools to educate travellers and the private sector about the cultural and natural values of Jordanian World Heritage sites.

(Thank to Annie Belt for passing on this information.)

Eighth Meeting of the Working Group on Education for All (14 - 16 November 2007)

The Eighth Meeting of the Working Group on EFA came at the crucial midway point along the time-line to 2015. Despite significant advances over the past seven years, it is clear that progress must be accelerated if the six EFA Goals and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to be reached by 2015. It is in this perspective that the sequence of key annual EFA events has been reorganized, and adjustments made to the linkages between them as well as to working methods and expected outcomes.

Read more about the meeting.

An appeal to stop illicit trafficking of Iraqi cultural property

The International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of Iraqi Cultural Heritage, which met at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 13 and 14 November, ended with an appeal to the international community to help stop illicit excavations, pillaging and trafficking of Iraqi cultural property.

The Committee brings together some 20 international experts on Iraqi cultural heritage and is chaired by Iraq’s Senior Deputy Minister of Culture, Jaber Mohammad Abbas Al-Jaberi. It recommended, among other measures: to facilitate an international prohibition on trade in or transfer of ancient Iraqi cultural property in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 of 22 May 2003; and to encourage all countries to keep the recovered items in established safe havens, under the auspices of UNESCO and/or Iraqi diplomatic missions, in view of their restitution to Iraq when the adequate conditions are met.

Read more about the Committee meeting.

April 10-12, 2007 was the fourth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone organized a candlelight vigil to end the looting and destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq, and around the world. The following (five minute long) video was produced as part of that effort, with a talk by the Director of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, and images of the vigil at the State University of New York's Stony Brook campus:

Meeting on underwater cultural heritage

Six years after its adoption by UNESCO in November 2001, the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage will be the theme of an information meeting on 23 November at Organization Headquarters. The event will bring together site managers and experts in underwater archaeology from all over the world to review current issues in this emerging discipline.

Read more on the meeting.