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!