More About the Obiang Prize Controversy

Here are links to some articles on the controversy over the proposed Obiang Prize for the Biological Sciences that is being debated at UNESCO's Executive Board.

• U.S. Calls for Withdrawal of United Nations Prize Financed by a West African Dictator (The New York Times)
• Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa Joins Latin American Writers in Condemning UNESCO-Obiang Prize (Open Society Justice Institute)
• African Intellectuals Say No to Unesco's Obiang Prize (AllAfrica.com)
• A Corrupt Dictator Tries to Buy UNESCO's Brand Name (The Huffington Post)

I understand that a committee has been appointed to work during the current session of the Executive Board to produce a draft resolution, and that a final vote on the matter may not occur until the final day of the 185th session on October 25th.

"Decision Time at UNESCO"

There is an important Special Report in The American Spectator by Louise Oliver, the former U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO. The article summarizes the controversy over the proposed "UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences." While the UNESCO Executive Board agreed to accept a donation from Equatorial Guinea to fund a major prize, the decision was opposed by several members during the debate (including by Ambassador Oliver who at the time was on the Executive Board), and was greeted by an outpouring of criticism by non-governmental organizations and others who felt that UNESCO should not honor "Obiang, the president of Equatorial Guinea, (who) is thought to be one of the most corrupt dictators in Africa" by attaching his name to a UNESCO prize. (See for example this posting by the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.) Director General Bokova suspended the award earlier this year, requesting that the Executive Board reconsider its decision. The Board is about to meet with the opportunity to do so.

Ambassador Oliver concludes:

If the Executive Board is serious about using prizes to enhance UNESCO's visibility and prestige, it must reverse its earlier decision and reject the Obiang prize. It should also encourage Equatorial Guinea to spend the $3 million it has allocated for the prize on improving the lives of the suffering people in its own country -- which ranks near the bottom of the UN human development report, and where 20 percent of the children die before reaching the age of five. 

Ms. Bokova is right: UNESCO's reputation is on the line. If the Executive Board does not reject the prize at its October meeting, it will forfeit the respect of the international community. This should be an easy one, but the Executive Board's tradition of consensus and collegiality will make taking a principled stand difficult. Will they do it? Don't hold your breath.

The New Issue of the UNESCO Courier is Out

Rebirth for Haiti

How can Haitian society be rebuilt? What is the role of culture, education, the economy, in its rebirth? These are the questions raised in this issue of the UNESCO Courier.

It reflects the Forum held at UNESCO on 24 March 2010 that brought together experts and intellectuals from Haiti and elsewhere. Articles are signed by Raoul Peck, President of La Fémis film school in Paris; Wole Soyinka, Nigerian laureate of the Nobel prize for literature; Jacky Lumarque, rector of Quisqueya University and Alex Dupuy, American sociologist.

Read the issue!

UNESCO's Research Featured in The Economist

Map of the world's groundwater resources

There is an article in the current issue of The Economist on efforts to protect aquifers that cross national borders. I quote:

Aquifers, like fish stocks, are most at risk when they cross national borders, making property rights weaker. Groundwater provides about a fifth of the planet’s water needs and half its drinking water. In arid countries such as Libya or Saudi Arabia, that figure is close to 100%. Almost 96% of the planet’s freshwater resources are stored as groundwater, half of which straddles borders. UNESCO, a United Nations body, estimates that 273 aquifers are shared by two or more countries.

The United Nations passed a resolution in 2008 on creating a legal regime for aquifers (it may become a full convention next year). Now sampling and monitoring have resumed, under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (which has a sideline in environmental monitoring).

Such scientific work is crucial because aquifers are still poorly understood. Until a UNESCO inventory in 2008, nobody knew even how many transboundary aquifers existed. Experts are still refining the count: the American-Mexico border may include 8, 10, 18 or 20 aquifers, depending on how you measure them. Defining sustainability vexes hydrologists too, particularly with ancient fossil aquifers that will inevitably run dry eventually. Estimates for the life of the Nubian sandstone aquifer range from a century to a millennium.

Read more about the Law of Transborder Aquifers!

What Does UNESCO Do?

Every Day UNESCO

• PROMOTES EDUCATIN FORALL, now impacting 1.5 billion children, youth and adults
• Monitors World Heritage properties in 151 countries and intangible heritage in 130 countries
• Fosters sustainable development through 564 biosphere reserves in 109 countries
• Combats violations of press freedom and condemns harassment, imprisonment and killings of journalists
• Monitors some 2500 endangered languages and tracks some four million translated works in over 1000 languages.
• Leads 26 UN agencies in assessing freshwater resources leads 121 countries in developing Tsunami warning systems
• Runs the only global database on bioethics, environmental ethics, and science and technology ethics.
• Fights discrimination through sic regional coalitions of 4858 "Cities Against Racism."
• Promotes conservation of documentary heritage with items from 84 countries on the Memory of the World Register.

A Role for UNESCO Assuring the Ethical Treatment of Laboratory Animals

Source: "ANIMAL RESEARCH: Long-Fought Compromise Reached On European Animal Rules," Gretchen Vogel, Science 24 September 2010: Vol. 329. no. 5999, pp. 1588 - 1589

The European Parliament gave its final approval on 8 September to a new directive spelling out rules governing animal research in academic and industrial labs. The directive will take effect through laws enacted by each member country of the European Union. The rules cover research with all vertebrates and extend coverage for the first time to cephalopods, which include octopi and squid; all research using such animals must pass an ethical evaluation that takes into account possible alternatives and refinements that could improve the welfare of the animal subjects. The directive also sets out for the first time minimum housing and care standards for dozens of the most common animals used in research. The previous E.U. rules on animal research date from 1986, and officials have been working on the new regulations since 2001.

The NAS Guide for the Care

 and Use of Laboratory Animals

The United States, with a research program comparable in size to that of the European Union, has a complex system of rules governing animal research in laboratories. There are separate rules for non-human primates and other mammals. (There are also rules for research involving livestock outside the laboratory and animals involved in research in the wild.)

UNESCO is the only United Nations Organization with charter authorizing general oversight for science; it has a broad program dealing with the natural sciences as well as a program dealing with the ethics of science and technology. However, other U.N. agencies -- notably WHO, FAO and the UNDP -- also deal with research that involves laboratory animals.

Perhaps this is a time in which UNESCO could play a useful role by convening a working group of U.N. Agencies to discuss the role of the United Nations system in promoting rules that assure the ethical treatment of laboratory animals. Such a group might provide a useful service to the world by creating an online observatory of such rules that exist in individual nations and in regional organizations such as the European Union.

John Daly
The opinions expressed in this posting are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.

Photo from awionline.org via the NYU website

U.S. Prize Winner May Hold Promise for UNESCO Tsunami Warning System

Liquid Robotics Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., won the Wall Street Journal Technology Award in the category of Robotics for developing an unmanned seagoing craft propelled by the power of ocean waves. According to the WSJ:

Most unmanned ocean craft can remain at sea for only a short time, relying on batteries to power propellers or pumps. The heavier their payload, the less time they have.

Thanks to its propulsion system, Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider avoids those limits.

The craft, which consists of a surface buoy and a submerged glider with wing-shaped panels, converts the up-and-down motion of waves into forward thrust, making it possible to propel the buoy indefinitely without relying on batteries or other power sources.

The craft can be controlled remotely via satellite over an Internet connection. Instruments are powered by a solar panel on the surface of the floating buoy.

The technology should be of interest to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, since it can be used for be used for observing weather and ocean conditions. Since it can also be used to monitor tsunamis, it could be especially interesting to the IOC Tsunami Program which supports Member States in improving capabilities for tsunami risk assessment, implementing early warning systems and enhancing preparedness of communities at risk.

UNESCO and the Smithsonian sign a Memorandum of Understanding for cultural and natural heritage

On 17 September, UNESCO Assistant Director General for Culture Francesco Bandarin signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding with Francine C. Berkowitz, Director of International Relations of the Smithsonian Institution. This is an unprecedented agreement between the two institutions for cooperation on cultural and natural heritage programs.

Together the Smithsonian and UNESCO will develop programs and work together on a wide range of projects, including a travelling exhibition and an international conference on the 40th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in 2012. Other initiatives will be directed to conserving natural World Heritage sites, developing outreach on World Heritage and indigenous issues, conducting research on the means of preserving the world's languages, activities for the dissemination of traditional music, and aiding in the recovery of Haiti's cultural heritage following January 12 earthquake.

The Smithsonian Institution with its 19 museums and 137 million objects, artworks and specimens in its collections is not only "America's attic" but one of the great scientific and curatorial institutions in the world.

Francesco Bandarin and Francine C. Berkowitz

Rita Colwell Named Science Envoy

Dr. Rita Colwell, a member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO, has been named a U.S. Science Envoy. The Science Envoy program, announced by President Obama in Cairo in June 2009, is a centerpiece program to implement U.S. global engagement in science and technology. Dr. Colwell is one of six distinguished scientists to have been appointed to this prestigious as well as important position.

Dr. Colwell is a Distinguished Professor at both the University of Maryland at College Park and Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has focused her research on global infectious diseases, water and health, and is currently developing an international network to address emerging infectious diseases and safe drinking water for both the developed and developing world. Dr. Colwell served as the 11th Director of the National Science Foundation from 1998-2004. She is recipient of the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize awarded on September 9, 2010 by the King of Sweden.

UNESCO contributes to the fifth Internet Governance Forum

The 5th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 14 to 17 September 2010. It focused on the following issues:

• managing critical Internet resources, 
• security, openness and privacy, 
• access and diversity, 
• Internet governance for development, 
• taking stock of Internet governance and the way forward, and 
• cloud computing.

In conjunction with the meeting, UNESCO organizes two workshops:

Privacy and Social Networking (16 September)
This workshop examined the interaction between privacy protection, freedom of expression and security.

Freedom of Connection – Freedom of Expression: The Changing Legal and Regulatory Ecology Shaping the Internet (14 September)
This event is a follow-up to a well attended discussion on Internet Censorship and Filtering by the participants of IGF 2009 in Sharm el Sheikh. UNESCO took this opportunity to release an in-depth analysis entitled Freedom of Connection – Freedom of Expression: The Changing Legal and Regulatory Ecology Shaping the Internet. This report, conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute, builds upon previous discussions and provides a panorama of observations and useful exploration of the subject.

UNESCO also organized an open forum to present its activities on multilingualism in cyberspace, open educational resources and open access to scientific information. In addition, UNESCO installed an exhibition stand to present the Organization’s overall activities and programs.

Membership in the ILO as a Precedent for Membership in UNESCO

Frances Perkins was an interesting person. She was the first woman to hold a cabinet post in the Federal Government, serving for the entire period that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. After FDR died, Perkins wrote a book titled The Roosevelt I Knew which includes a discussion of the decision in the 1930s for the United States to join the International Labor Organization (ILO). I found that decision shed light on the likely intent of the United States in the creation of UNESCO, and especially the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO.

The legislation which enabled the United States to create the U.S. National Commission cites the Constitution of UNESCO in defining the duties of the NatCom. That Constitution allows but does not require that national commissions both associate the nation's "principal bodies interested in educational, scientific and cultural matters with the work of" UNESCO and "act in an advisory capacity to their respective delegations to the General Conference and to their Governments in matters relating to" UNESCO. People associated with the NatCom in the period prior to the departure of the United States from UNESCO membership have told me that the NatCom was both energetic and influential in that time. This is confirmed by Howard E. Wilson in his book, The United States National Commission for UNESCO, published in 1948.

Perkins worked with President Roosevelt to support the entry of the United States into the ILO. The ILO existed before the creation of the League of Nations, but was formally affiliated with the League after the League was created. Of course, the United States never joined the League. Perkins and Roosevelt agreed with State Department personnel and eventually the Congress that the ILO and the League of Nations were distinct entities, and that the United States might appropriately join the ILO. They did so in large part because the ILO had a separate governance structure in which member nations were represented by persons representing employers and workers as well as government; the participation of citizens outside of government of member states in the governance of the ILO made all the difference.

John A. Daly

The opinions expressed in this posting are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.

U.S. Financial Contributions to UNESCO

U.S. funds to UNESCO

are allocated by the Congress

There is a formula used by the United Nations and other agencies of the UN system to determine the portion of the assessed contributions to be paid by each member nation. According to this computation, the United States contributes 22 percent to the regular budget of UNESCO; the approved regular budget for the two years 2010 and 2011 is $653 million. In addition to the assessed budgetary contributions, UNESCO received voluntary extrabudgetary contributions. These are an important part of the Organization's financial resources amounting to an estimated $463 million for the same two years.

The U.S. contributes close to $3.7 million dollars in extra-budgetary funds to UNESCO each year in addition to its assessed dues. Those funds are devoted to specific projects:

• The Creative Cities Network Capacity Building and Partnership Program
• Development of UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage Laws Database
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project
• Teach for Lebanon
• Strengthening Teacher Education in Pakistan
• Taking OERs beyond the OER Community: Policy and Capacity
• UNESCO OER Model Curricula for Journalism Education (MCJE)

Read more about:

• The U.S. voluntary contributions to UNESCO projects
• The UNESCO program and budget for the biennium 
• UNESCO's explanation of U.S. contributions to the Organization

Event to Honor Rita Colwell

The Maryland-Asia Environmental Partnership (MD-AEP) is honoring Dr. Rita Colwell, this year's winner of the Stockholm Water Prize, at their leadership event on September 22nd. Dr. Colwell is a member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO. Read more...

Editorial: UNESCO should investigate Social Network Analysis as a tool for Development

An article on Social Network Analysis in The Economist states:

Last year America’s army, which jointly funds SOMA with the air force, began disbursing about $80m in five-year research grants for network analysis to promote democracy and national security. An authoritarian government, for instance, may have difficulties slowing the spread of a new idea in a certain medium—say, internet chatter about a book that explains how corruption undermines job creation...... An authoritarian government, for instance, may have difficulties slowing the spread of a new idea in a certain medium—say, internet chatter about a book that explains how corruption undermines job creation. Diplomatic services can use this information to help ideas spread.

SPADAC, a firm based in McLean, Virginia, performs such analyses on Egypt and other countries in Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Clients include the United States, Mexico and various diplomatic services. Riots, bloody elections and crackdowns, among other things, can be forecast with improving accuracy by crunching data on food production, unemployment, drug busts, home evictions and slum growth detected in satellite images.

A key phrase in the UNESCO Constitution states:

That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.

This has been taken to define the core mission of UNESCO. The founders of created

the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the purpose of advancing, through the educational and scientific and cultural relations of the peoples of the world, the objectives of international peace and of the common welfare of mankind for which the United Nations Organization was established and which its Charter proclaims.

UNESCO acts as an international intellectual leader, an honest broker, and a clearinghouse for ideas as well as by helping poor nations to build their capacity for social and economic progress.

I strongly suggest that UNESCO catalyze an investigation of the potential of social network analysis as a means to improve the planning, implementation and evaluation of social and economic development efforts. To do so would be very consistent with its mission in the promotion of social and human sciences, and specifically with its program on the Management of Social Transitions. The effort would also be consistent with the activities of UNESCO's Communication and Information Program, and specifically with its efforts to promote the dissemination of software and to promote the evolution toward Knowledge Societies.

John Daly
The ideas in this posting are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.

THE LIFE OF WATER. WATER WHICH GIVES LIFE - Water Project H2Ooooh!

Water Project H2Ooooh!
3-D Animation/Cartoon - Gruppo Alcuni
in collaboration with UNESCO Venice Office

Water in a Changing World

The World Water Assessment Program, managed by UNESCO, has issued the Third United Nations Water Development Report. It is available online.

The structure of the WWDR3 has four main chapters, apart from the introduction and the recommendations:

• ‘drivers of change’,
• ‘the use of the resource for humans and for ecosystems’,
• ‘the state of the resource’, and
• ‘responding to a changing world: what are the options?’

Recommended: A Profile of UNESCO's Chief, Irina Bokova

Irina Bokova was elected to the position of Director General of UNESCO in October 2009 by the General Conference of the Organization as the winner of a close contest among nine formal candidates for the position. She assumed the office in November, and has since led the organization as it faced major challenges such as responding to the Haitian earthquake and the Pakistani floods. She is the first woman to head UNESCO and the first citizen of a former Communist country.

Toute l'Europe has provided this very useful profile of DG Bokova and her priorities as she leads the Organization.

The U.K. National Commission for UNESCO is more active than the U.S. NatCom

For example, the U.K. NatCom has the following working groups in the area of science:

• Working Group for Input to Development of UNESCO's Science Programs
• Working Group for Increased Cooperation Among UNESCO Intergovernmental and International Scientific Programmes in the UK
• Working Group for Improving Access to Scientific Information in Developing Countries
• Engineering Education in Africa

The UK National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) is also working in a number of areas to support science, engineering and technology capacity building in developing countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa.

The U.S. National Commission has had a committee on UNESCO's Natural Science program, and it annually reviews reports from U.S. scientists following the work of UNESCO natural science sub-programs. Since the U.S. reentry into UNESCO, the natural science experts on the U.S. National Commission have been primarily involved in responding to (infrequent) requests for advice from the State Department. It does not have a significant role in promoting input to UNESCO's programs or increasing cooperation between U.S. scientific programs and those of UNESCO. Neither does it work on scientific information for developing countries, building African scientific capacity, nor science and engineering education in Africa.

It is my opinion that the U.S. National Commission should be asked to do more in the area of natural sciences, perhaps on the model of the U.K. National Commission, or those of other developed nations such as Australia, Japan, Germany, France or Canada.

John Daly
The opinions expressed in this posting are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.

FIP-UNESCO University Twinning Network for Pharmacists formally Approved by UNESCO

On Tuesday 31st August, the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) and the UNESCO launched a unique global University Twinning and Networking Program. The Global Pharmacy Education Development network is a UNESCO sponsored initiative hosted under the UNITWIN scheme (for university-twinning). This UNITWIN collaboration is the first ever in the field of higher education for health professionals and the first for global pharmaceutical education.

In bringing together pharmacy schools from all regions of the world with UNESCO and FIP, the UNITWIN Network in Global Pharmacy Education Development (G-PhEd) will enable synchronised and powerful development in pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences education and improve communication for scientific innovation, healthcare outcomes, and ultimately, the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Read more!

To find out more about the UNITWIN G-PhEd Network, please contact: 

education@fip.org. 

A Comment on the Ethics of Research: A Role for UNESCO

For a couple of decades I was involved in the management of grants programs that funded research in developing nations. One of the key issues in the management of such a program was assuring that the research we funded be conducted ethically.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that different societies have different views on ethics. For example, it is generally agreed that research involving human subjects should only be done with informed consent. However, different societies have differing views as to who should provide that consent. In the United States, the informed consent normally comes from the subject himself/herself. In some African societies, the consent must be communal, often provided by a village chief. There are also differences as to the age at which a subject is thought able to give informed consent, and who has the right to give consent for those deemed unable due to age or other condition.

Given such differences, our practice was to have research protocols reviewed by institutions in all of the countries involved in a specific project. That was often difficult in that institutions in countries that do not do much research were often poorly equipped to do effective ethical review. The capacity to do so depends on the existence of institutional review boards, clear statements of ethical standards, and people experienced in the ethical review of research. There were also questions as to which questions could be delegated, and which we had to directly assure ethical conduct.

Some of the ethical concerns involved in research ethics are:

• Ethical treatment of human subjects of biomedical, social science and other kinds of research
• Ethics of research involving human reproductive biology (e.g. research involving stem cells)
• Ethical treatment of non-human primates in laboratory research and/or in research on wild animals
• Ethical treatment of other laboratory animals
• Ethical treatment of livestock involved in field studies
• Ethical treatment of wild animals (other than primates) involved in field studies
• Safety of researchers (consideration of radiation risks, exposure to pathogens, exposure to noxious substances, etc.)
• Safe containment of human pathogens (to protect the public from accidental releases)
• Safe containment of animal or plant pathogens
• Ethical conduct of research involving recombinant DNA
• Protection of endangered species that might be affected by the research
• Ethical concern for environmental risks consequent to the research beyond those already mentioned (e.g. the risk of escape of exotic species which might damage agriculture)
• Safety in the international shipment of potentially dangerous materials (e.g. radioactive materials or samples that might contain pests or pathogens)
• The treatment of data collected during research (e.g. protection of confidentiality, appropriate sharing for scientific review)

UNESCO has a program focusing on the Ethics of Science and Technology, with an International Bioethics Committee, and Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee, and a World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. The program and its international bodies do not seem to have taken much interest in the ethical conduct of research as described above. UNESCO has an affiliated network of University Chairs in Bioethics which could be the basis for an expanded role research ethics.

UNESCO could, and I believe should play an important role:

• as a forum for the discussion of ethical issues involved in the conduct of scientific research and technology development;
• as a clearinghouse for information on best practices in assuring the ethical conduct of research;
• as an agent helping developing countries develop the capacity to assure the ethical conduct of research conducted within their borders; 
• as the central UN science agency, in convening a working group of WHO, UNFPA, UNAIDS, FAO, UNIDO and other UN agencies to discuss research ethics; and
• as a legitimate neutral party to help in parties come to agreement on ethical standards for multinational research projects.

John Daly

(The opinions expressed above are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.)

UNESCO's History

The Controversy over a proposed UNESCO Science Prize

An earlier photo of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Principle source for this post: "African Union 'would consider taking on UNESCO-Obiang science prize'," Yojana Sharma, SciDev.Net, 27 August 2010

There is a controversy now over the proposed UNESCO-Obiang Prize. According to UNESCO, the proposed purpose of this Prize was "to reward the projects and activities of an individual, individuals, institutions, other entities or non-governmental organizations for scientific research in the life sciences leading to improving the quality of human life."

"UNESCO member states agreed in 2008 to establish the award with a US$3 million endowment from Equatorial Guinea's president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, but the decision on the first prize due to be awarded last March was postponed because of a public outcry over apparent association with the Obiang regime."

According to the New York Times, one of the precipitating actions that encouraged UNESCO's Director General, Irina Bokova, to request that the Executive Board reconsider the prize was a letter from U.S. Permanent Representative to UNESCO, David Killion, urging UNESCO to suspend plans to award the prize.

Now it appears that the African Union may be willing to step in and award the prise instead of UNESCO. A formal decision by UNESCO is expected  in October.

Clearly such a prize has the potential to recognize important scientific achievements, and equally clearly there are significant issues in associating UNESCO with the donor of this prize in so public a manner, as well as accepting funds from such a source. Were the African Union to accept the responsibility of awarding the prize, it might choose to limit the award to African scientists, which might be helpful in stimulating useful scientific research where it is so badly needed.

John Daly
(The opinions expressed in this posting are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

Public Interest in UNESCO

	Asian sites win UNESCO world heritage status Inquirer.net - Jul 8 2008
	2,500 languages threatened with extinction: UNESCO Times of India - Feb 19 2009
	UNESCO launches World Digital Library Deutsche Welle - Apr 21 2009
	UNESCO strips Dresden of World Heritage site title Vancouver Sun - Jun 25 2009
	Bulgarian diplomat wins UNESCO race Philadelphia Inquirer - Sep 22 2009
	UNESCO adds 7 sites to World Heritage List Ynetnews - Aug 1 2010 The graph is from Google Trends. The top graph indicates that the number of search requests on Google for the term UNESCO has gone down since 2004. Three of the recent peaks in interest correspond to specific news related to UNESCO's World Heritage program, one to the launch of the World Digital Library (an initiative led by the United States Library of Congress), one to a UNESCO report on the threatened disappearance of many endangered minority languages, and one to the election of the Director General of the Organization. The bottom graph indicates that the number of news articles recognized by Google about UNESCO has shown an increasing trend over the period from 2004.

Donate to UNESCO to help it help Pakistan Recover from the Floods

I quote extensively from the New York Times article today on the flood in Pakistan:

The destruction could set Pakistan back many years, if not decades, further weaken its feeble civilian administration and add to the burdens on its military.......

The flooding, which began with the arrival of the annual monsoons late last month, has by now affected about one-fifth of the country — nearly 62,000 square miles — or an area larger than England, according to the United Nations.

At the worst points, the inundation extends for scores of miles beyond the banks of the overflowing Indus River and its tributaries, said Cmdr. Iqbal Zahid, a Pakistani Navy battalion commander in charge of rescue operations in Sindh Province.

“You have to highlight that the infrastructure all the way from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to Sindh is ruined,” Commander Zahid said, referring to Pakistan’s northernmost and southernmost provinces. “It will take years to rebuild.”

Nearly 20 million people have been significantly affected, about the population of New York State, the United Nations said. The number in urgent need is now about eight million and expected to rise. More than half of them are without shelter.

UNESCO has a very limited budget, but with more money it could respond to:

• help Pakistan's school system help Pakistan's kids deal with the trauma caused by the floods;
• help Pakistan to plan to rebuild the schools it has lost;
• help Pakistan protect its World Heritage sites and cultural heritage from the damage of the floods;
• help Pakistan improve its hydrology and prepare to prevent such damaging floods in the future;
• help Pakistan improve its disaster warning systems.

UNESCO has established a website to allow you to make donations to assist it in these efforts.

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

“By its decision to proclaim 23 August each year as the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, UNESCO sought to pay tribute to the tireless struggle of the slaves for their freedom.

The uprising that took place on the island of Santo Domingo (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) during the night of 22 to 23 August 1791 shook the slave system radically and irreversibly and provided the impetus for the process which would eventually lead to the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.”
Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, 23 August 2002

Dirac Medallists 2010

Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo (left above, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy) and Indian-American physicist Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan (right above, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA) have been awarded ICTP's Dirac Medal and Prize for 2010. 

The award recognizes their fundamental contributions to the understanding of weak interactions and other aspects of theoretical physics. The weak interaction is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, along with strong interaction, electromagnetism, and gravity. It is crucial to the structure of our universe, as it, among other things, causes the fusion that makes the sun burn. Read more...


Founded in 1964 by Abdus Salam (Nobel Laureate), the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) operates under a tripartite agreement among the Italian Government and two United Nations Agencies, UNESCO and IAEA. Its mission is to foster advanced studies and research, especially in developing countries. While the name of the Center reflects its beginnings, its activities today encompass most areas of physical sciences including applications.

Is the UNESCO Underwater Heritage Convention Well Considered?

Following up a New Orleans conference in February 2010, eight scientists (six from the United States) have published a report titled "Underwater Cultural Heritage & UNESCO in New Orleans: An Introduction". The Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention was approved by the UNESCO General Conference in November of 2001, and went into force for ratifying states in January 2009. To date 32 nations have ratified the Convention, not including the United States of America. (Nor have France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Sweden nor the United Kingdom among many other non-ratifiers.)

The report is quite critical of aspects of the Convention, as is demonstrated by this excerpt:

For now, a feeling remains in many heritage and scientific circles that sections of the Convention are an unenforceable set of Utopian rules and regulations compiled by legal teams who incorporated minimal fundamental input from archaeologists. If the initiative is compared to terrestrial archaeology, where countries would react with outrage to any supposition that they need to be centrally supervized so intimately from abroad, many marine archaeologists with decades of experience and contribution are highly concerned about why they are suddenly being forcefully re-educated in their core competencies.

Download the entire report (PDF, 26 pages) 

Check out UNESCO's website on safeguarding underwater cultural heritage.

Science & Technology Policy Asian Network Newsletter

The UNESCO Office Jakarta and the Regional Bureau for Science in Asia and the Pacific, which is also in Jakarta, publish the Science and Technology Policy Asian Network (STEPAN) newsletter. Here are the last three issues:

• STEPAN update, vol. 9, no. 1 (June 2009)
• STEPAN update, vol. 9, no. 2 (December 2009)
• STEPAN update, vol. 10, no. 1 (June 2010)

Learn more about STEPAN!

UNESCO Report on Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park Calls for Additional Protections

"Efforts by the governments of British Columbia, Montana, and the United Statesseemingly have removed mining-related threats to Glacier National Park andWaterton Lakes National Park. But an international team of scientists believes both Canada and the United States must work harder to protect the resources of the International Peace Park.

"Though the field team's final report to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage Committee presented in July in Brazil did not differ in tone from some of the tidbits that leaked out following the field team's visit to the two parks last September, its formal presentation put on record the team's concerns over the long-term health of the two national parks."

Read more from the National Parks Traveler

UNESCO contributes to the fifth Internet Governance Forum

The 5th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 14 to 17 September 2010. It will focus on the following issues: managing critical Internet resources, security, openness and privacy, access and diversity, Internet governance for development, taking stock of Internet governance and the way forward, and cloud computing.

During the four-day Forum UNESCO will provide various spaces for inclusive discussion on the Organization’s key contribution to the Internet Governance debate. In particular, UNESCO will organize two workshops:

Privacy and Social Networking (16 September)  This workshop will bring together worldwide stakeholders and take a broader approach to examine the interaction between privacy protection, freedom of expression and security.

Freedom of Connection – Freedom of Expression: The Changing Legal and Regulatory Ecology Shaping the Internet (14 September) This event is a follow-up to a well attended discussion on Internet Censorship and Filtering by the participants of IGF 2009 in Sharm el Sheikh. UNESCO will take this opportunity to release an in-depth analysis entitled Freedom of Connection – Freedom of Expression: The Changing Legal and Regulatory Ecology Shaping the Internet. This report, conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute, builds upon previous discussions and provides a panorama of observations and useful exploration of the subject.

Read more!

A World of Science (July–September 2010)

Contents Volume 8 n°3

IN FOCUS 2. A bleak outlook for biodiversity?

NEWS 
12 ‘IPCC for nature’ gets green light 
12 Thirteen new biosphere reserves 
13 A 4D system for improving conservation of Calakmul 
14 50 years of ocean studies

INTERVIEW 
15 Why Vineet Soni is bent on saving the guggul plant

HORIZONS 
17 Tracking plant diversity in a changing world 
21 Mapping the oceans to save the seas

IN BRIEF 
24 Diary 
24 New releases

Direct link A World of Science Vol. 8 n° 3 (document PDF) 
See also ARCHIVES for A World of Science

U.S. Delegation Attends IHP Intergovernmental Council

Former U.S. Mission Science Attaché Will Logan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE); Head of Delegation Matt Larsen, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); Ambassador and Mrs. Killion; Eugene Stakhiv, USACE; Verne Schneider, USGS; Jody Eimers, USGS

The Intergovernmental Council (IGC) of UNESCO's International Hydrological Program (IHP) met at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris July 5 – 9.  It was a noteworthy occasion for the United States, which recently became an IGC member and was elected to the seven-member IHP Bureau at the outset of the weeklong meeting. 

The IHP has been a leader in the field of hydrology since it was established in 1975 in order to facilitate intergovernmental cooperation in water sciences and water resource management.  Today, the IHP places a particular emphasis on hydrology as a component of sustainable development.  To meet its objectives, IHP coordinates water centers around the world, including the new International Center for Integrated Water Resources and Management (ICIWaRM) in the United States. 

Read more about the delegation and meeting.

Read more about Will Logan.

Congressional Research Service UNESCO Related Reports

The Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress has from time to time produced reports on UNESCO related topics. Here are links to some of them:

• UNESCO Membership (November 20, 2003)
• Tsunamis: Monitoring, Detection, and Early Warning Systems (May 10, 2007)
• International Convention Against Doping in Sport: Issues for Congress (August 11, 2008)
• Biosphere Reserves: Fact Sheet (October 03, 1997)
• BIOSPHERE RESERVES AND THE U.S. MAB PROGRAM (June 4, 1999)
• Ocean Commissions: Ocean Policy Review and Outlook (August 9, 2006)
• WORLD CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE, JUNE 26-JULY 1, 1999: PURPOSE AND ISSUES (May 24, 1999)
• The UNESCO Wold Heritage Convention: Congressional Issues (January 07, 2009)

Also of interest with respect to UNESCO:

• Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Drought: Species and Ecosystem Management (April 9, 2008)
• Tsunamis (May 10, 2007)
• Tsunami Detection and Warnings for the United States (May 28, 2008)
• U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and the 9/11 Commission Recommendations (Updated May 1, 2006)
• Science and Technology Policymaking: A Primer (June 20, 2008)
• Diplomacy for the 21st Century: Transformational Diplomacy (January 29, 2008)

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development

Leading lights from industry, civil society, UN agencies and the creative sphere, who together comprise the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, have emphasized the critical role of broadband networks in future global development. The meeting was co-sponsored by the ITU and UNESCO.

Click here for more information.

Clinton puts science at heart of US development strategy

"Moves by the the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to put science, technology and innovation firmly at the centre of its aid efforts have been enthusiastically endorsed by a rousing speech from secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in which she described herself as "a friend of science".

"'Innovation, science [and] technology must again become fundamental components of how we conduct development work,' Clinton told a high-level meeting of international development and science experts in Washington DC this week (14 July).

'The meeting, entitled 'Transforming Development through Science Technology and Innovation' (STI), was originally billed as a consultation to help map out a "bold new" science strategy for the US Agency for International Development (USAID)."

Read more of the SciDev.Net article by Yojana Sharma.

World Social Science Report 2010

Social science from Western countries continues to have the greatest global influence, but the field is expanding rapidly in Asia and Latin America, particularly in China and Brazil. In sub-Saharan Africa, social scientists from South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya produce 75% of academic publications. In South Asia, barring some centres of excellence in India, social sciences as a whole have low priority. These are a few of the findings from World Social Science Report, 2010: “Knowledge divides”.

Produced by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and co-published with UNESCO, the Report is the first comprehensive overview of the field in over a decade. Hundreds of social scientists from around the world contributed their expertise to the publication. Gudmund Hernes, President of the ISSC, Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), Hebe Vessuri, Director, Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), and François Héran, Director of Research, National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), France, are among the experts who presented the Report during its official launch at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 25 June 2010.

Go to the Report website.

Say No To Racism

The teams from the Netherlands and Brazil at the World Cup supporting FIFA's campaign, Say No to Racism!