Video: UNESCO's Priorities for the XXI Century

Task Team Report: Realizing The Future We Want For All

In this report, the UN System Task Team lays out a vision for transformative change towards the future we want. The report was prepared to inform the open and inclusive consultations that are taking place in preparation for an ambitious development agenda beyond 2015..

Overview


Enormous progress has been made towards achieving the MDGs. Global poverty continues to decline, more children than ever are attending primary school, child deaths have dropped dramatically, access to safe drinking water has been greatly expanded, and targeted investments in fighting malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis have saved millions.

The MDGs are making a real difference in people’s lives and, with strong leadership and accountability, this progress can be expanded in most of the world’s countries by the target date of 2015.

After 2015, efforts to achieve a world of prosperity, equity, freedom, dignity and peace will continue unabated.

The UN is working with governments, civil society and other partners to build on the momentum generated by the MDGs and carry on with an ambitious post-2015 development agenda.

At the September 2010 MDG Summit, UN Member States initiated steps towards advancing the development agenda beyond 2015 and are now leading a process of open, inclusive consultations on the post-2015 agenda. Civil society organizations from all over the world have also begun to engage in the post-2015 process, while academia and other research institutions, including think tanks, are particularly active.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has established a UN System Task Team to coordinate preparations for beyond 2015 and to support the work of a High-level Panel that the Secretary-General will appoint to advise him on the post-2015 agenda. President Yudoyono of Indonesia, President Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister Cameron of the United Kingdom have accepted the Secertary-General's invitation to co-chair the High-level Panel.

The post-2015 agenda will reflect new development challenges and is linked to the outcome of “Rio+20” -- the UN Conference on Sustainable Development -- that took place in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

UNESCO contributed to the report. Check the UN website providing a number of resources related to the task force report.

Upcoming Meetings of the UNESCO Future Forum

Source of figure: Futures of Europeans

The UNESCO Future Forum series is part of the Foresight programme of UNESCO which aims at fostering the reflection on key future-oriented issues in the domains of the Organization.

• 9 June 2009
  
  “The Discoveries of Genomics: Towards a New Industrial Revolution” – session organized within the framework of the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal, Canada.
  
  
• 11 May 2009
  
  "The Future Forum on Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing", UNESCO Headquarters
  
  
• 7 May 2009
  
  “Investing out of the Crisis and Towards a Green Economy through Action in the Social Domains” – session organized within the framework of the World Civic Forum 2009 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

The Millennium Development Goals – bankable pledge or sub-prime asset?

The bad news is that projections of economic
conditions are getting worse and worse.
The not so bad news is that they may not
be very credible.

Kevin Watkins and Patrick Montjourides of the team writing the Education for All Monitoring Report made a presentation to a UNESCO Future Forum session titled "The Global Financial and Economic Crisis: What Impact on Multilateralism and UNESCO?" (Others of the presentations at the session are available online.)

A UNESCO press release summarizes the presentation, beginning with this assessment:

We are in the greatest economic crisis since 1929 – international experts at the UNESCO Future Forum (Monday, 3 March) were in agreement on this. Its consequences could be disastrous, starting with the deaths of two million children between now and 2015.

A further 200 million people, mostly in Africa, could be living on less than US$1.25 per day (up 6.1% on 2007 figures) and, as Aart de Geus, Deputy Secretary-General of OECD, pointed out, the world’s unemployed could swell to 30 million, even 50 million, over the course of the coming years, if the situation continues to worsen (see interview). This would mean an unemployment rate of 7.1% with 230 million job seekers worldwide, over half of them women.

The report from which this presentation was drawn is not yet published, but I have obtained a copy of the presentation itself which you can download from Box.net.

The Gender Mainstreaming facet of the UNESCO website makes streaming videos available of some of the presentations from the Future Forum that focused specifically on women and gender equality.

The Global Financial and Economic Crisis: What Impact on Multilateralism and UNESCO?

UNESCO Headquarters

© UNESCO/Nina Levintha

The UNESCO Future Forum held a session on this topic on 2 March 2009 at UNESCO Headquarters. Its purpose was to reflect on the ramifications of the present financial and economic crisis and their implications for international cooperation in general and in particular for UNESCO’s domains, namely education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.

The one-day event had three goals:

• Provide the Secretariat, Member States of UNESCO, media, NGOs and the public at large with a better understanding of the potential impact of the global financial and economic crisis on multilateralism and UNESCO
• Contribute to the sharpening of UNESCO’s approaches in a context of lower resource prospects and growing needs
• Underline UNESCO’s role as a laboratory of ideas and to enhance its visibility in this regard.

The website for the conference has interesting presentations by a number of experts.

Read More!

The Morung Express has an interesting article related to the meeting.