Send UNESCO E-Cards to Ring in the New Year

Have a thought you want to send someone? Want to bring encouragement to loved ones to ring in the New Year? UNESCO has free education-themed e-cards you can give to brighten someone's day.

Click here for more information.

Happy 2009: The International Year of Astronomy

Massive Young Stars Trigger Stellar Birth

This UNESCO card recognizes that 2009 has been designated the International Year of Astronomy and UNESCO has been designated its lead agency in the United Nations system.

Electing the Next Director General

The process for the election of the next Director General of UNESCO is spelled out in a recent report by UNESCO's Executive Board.

• Member states are to submit information on their candidates for the post by May 31, 2009.
• The Secretariat will provide a list of candidates (in confidence) to the member states and Executive Board by the first week in June.
• Candidates will then have until August 1st to submit statements of their views about the future of UNESCO.
• At the 182nd session of the Executive Board (7-23 September 2009) the candidates are to be interviewed, and one is to be selected by secret ballot to be recommended to the General Conference (which is expected to meet 6 to 23 October 2009).
• The General Conference is to elect the next Director General, but in the past the General Conference has always ratified the recommendation of its Executive Board.

Thus the race is getting hot. In 1999, when the current Director General was elected to his first five year term, there were eleven candidates for the post. Several have already been identified publicly (click on the "governance" tag below to see the list).

Al-Ahram in November had an interview with the Egyptian candidate.

Another Candidate for UNESCO DG

According to Topposts, Musa Bin Jaafar Bin Hassan has been nominated by Oman for the post of Director General of UNESCO. According to Wikipedia:

Ambassador Dr. Musa Bin Jaafar Bin Hassan is a career diplomat and academic. Dr. Hassan is one of the longest serving diplomat to UNESCO as Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of Oman from May 1984 to present. He has been decorated with 1 UNESCO Gold Medal, 3 UNESCO Silver Medals as well as the honorary title of "Ambassador for Peace."

He was President of the 33rd session of the General Conference, UNESCO's supreme governing body.

Read the Ambassador Dr. Musa Bin Jaafar Bin Hassan's biography.

Pope Salutes UNESCO International Year of Astronomy

According to the Associated Press, Pope Benedict XVI in marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope saluted UNESCO's World Year of Astronomy.

The United Nations has proclaimed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009) and designated UNESCO as its lead agency.

Read more from UNESCO about the International Year of Astronomy.

The UNESCO Thematic Initiative “Astronomy and World Heritage” launched in support of this International Year aims to establish a link between science and culture with a view to highlighting the scientific value of cultural sites connected with astronomy.

Read more about the International Year of Astronomy!

Egyptian periodical reports a campaign to prevent Farouk Hosni becoming the next UNESCO director-general is taking shape

Source: "Settling scores," Nevine El-Aref, Al Ahram (Cairo), 18-24 December 2008, Issue No. 926.

I quote:

It was not an easy week for Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and the members of his 2009 UNESCO election campaign committee. Hosni was caught up in yet another drive against his nomination for the post of UNESCO director-general and its impact lingers on.

Earlier this week a rumour began circulating suggesting that Israel had convinced the current US administration to oppose Hosni's nomination. According to leaks the Bush administration has already started a counter campaign and is keen to convince Barack Obama's incoming administration, as well as some European and Latin American countries, to follow its lead.

Read more....

Editor's note: I have no way of checking on this story, but thought it might be of interest to Americans interested in UNESCO. JAD

Season's Greetings!

Bookmarked References on UNESCO

I have posted links to more than 300 references relating to UNESCO on delicious.com, a social bookmarking cite. You are more than welcome to use the bibliography. The following is a tag cloud from Tag Crowd for the bibliography.

anniversary article assembly aug book bookmarks celebrate culture dec delicious diversity education explore financing general history human institute international learn nations natural network online options page people policy popular program publication published recent report rights save science short sort tags theme unesco unescobibliography united universal used user view website years

created at TagCrowd.com

Ambassador Irina Bokova presents candidature for UNESCO director general in Belgrade

Source: Focus News Agency

Bulgaria’s ambassador to France, Irina Bokova, has presented her candidature for the position of UNESCO director-general according to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry press office.

Photo via Radio Bulgaria

Earlier, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov had announced her nomination in the following terms:

I avail myself the opportunity to inform you about the decision of the Bulgarian government to nominate Mrs. Irina Bokova – Bulgarian ambassador in France and Permanent Representative of Bulgaria to UNESCO, for Director General of UNESCO.

As a career diplomat in UN, UNESCO and a number of other international organizations ambassador Bokova has intense experience in the area of multilateral international relations. As Deputy Foreign Minister, as State Secretary and Minister of Foreign Affairs she has a longlasting managerial experience. She is skilled to held a dialogue and to reach a consensus for taking decisions at the highest level. I would like to express our hope that the countries from South Eastern Europe will support the nomination of Mrs. Bokova and I believe that she will contribute creatively for the promotion and strengthening the role of UNESCO in the area of education, science, culture and communication.

Rosental C. Alves Elected President of Orbicom

Rosental C. Alves, the Knight Chair in Journalism and UNESCO Chair in Communication at The University of Texas at Austin, has been elected president of Orbicom, a UNESCO network that links international communication leaders in an effort to affect social justice, democracy and good governance.

Alves, who was unanimously elected by the Orbicom board of directors, will serve a two-year term. He succeeds outgoing president Alain Modoux, a communication consultant from Geneva, Switzerland.

As the chairman of the board of Orbicom, Alves will work with the organization's secretariat based in Montreal, Canada, to coordinate the efforts of the network, especially in research of global communication issues.

Read the rest of the press release from the University of Texas at Austin.

Telephone Conference of U.S. National Commission for UNESCO

The United States National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will conduct a meeting by telephone conference on Monday, December 22, 2008, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

The open teleconference portion of the meeting will be approximately twenty minutes and will address a variety of issues and projects currently before the Commission. During this session, the Commission will accept brief oral comments or questions from the public or media. The public comment period will be limited to approximately ten minutes in total, with about three minutes allowed per speaker. Like other members of the public, media representatives who wish to present oral comments or listen to the conference call should make arrangements with the Commission by December 18, 2008.

The second portion of the teleconference meeting will be closed to the media and public to allow the Commission to discuss applications for the UNESCO Young Professionals Program. This portion is closed pursuant to Section 10(d) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act and 5 U.S.C. § 552b(c)(6)because of the likely discussion of information of a personal nature regarding the relative merits of individual applicants where disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

For more information or to arrange participation in the open portion of the teleconference meeting, contact Andrew Doran, Deputy Executive Director of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, Washington, D.C. 20037. Telephone: (202) 663-0028; Fax: (202) 663-0035; E-mail: DCUNESCO@state.gov.

The New Issue of the UNESCO Courier

Sixty years of views on the world

The UNESCO Courier is celebrating its 60th anniversary. An opportunity to explore the present while looking back at the past. A way, also, to highlight some developments in how we view and think about the world - each paper refers to an article from a back issue of the magazine.

You can read interviews with Wangari Maathai (Kenya), Martti Ahtisaari (Finland), Luc Montagnier (France), just to mention the three Nobel laureates who have contributed to this special issue, alongside other distinguished personalities.

Did you know UNESCO has online resources you can use?

Here are a couple of very useful resources free for you to download:

The UNESCO Thesaurus is widely used to standardize the terminology used to describe content in the areas of education, science, culture, social and human sciences, information and communication, and politics, law and economics. It also includes the names of countries and groupings of countries: political, economic, geographic, ethnic and religious, and linguistic groupings. Check it out!

Micro CDS/ISIS is an advanced non-numerical information storage and retrieval software developed by UNESCO since 1985 to satisfy the need of organizations to streamline their information processing activities by using modern (and relatively inexpensive) PC technologies.

• CDS/ISIS for Windows


• GenISIS: DB publishing


• Information Processing Tools


• IsisAscii


• IsisMarc


• Javaisis


• WEBLIS

Jane Lubchenco for NOAA

Jane Lubchenco is to head up President Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admninistration (NOAA). She is an outstanding choice with a deep background in marine biology. Jane is also a past AAAS president, and past president of the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America. She founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program that teaches outstanding academic environmental scientists to be effective leaders and communicators of scientific information to the public, policy makers, the media and the private sector.

The Scientific and Technological Community should strengthen its cooperation and coordination with programs of the UN system, especially UNESCO and UNEP.
From a statement made to the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development by Professor Lubchenco when she was President of the International Council for Science , 2004.

Dr. Lubchenco was one of two conveners of a workshop sponsored by UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in June of this year.

Jane Lubchenco on Science Debate 2008


This is a very welcome appointment, and it bodes good things for international scientific cooperation in the Obama administration.

International Migrant Day and Radio 1812

December 18 marks International Migrant Day; it also marks the third anniversary of a global radio marathon that highlights the struggles and achievements of migrants all over the world. It seeks to unite migrant groups and radio stations to produce, broadcast, and share content that will help build momentum and draw attention to migrant issues.



The event is supported by UNESCO and is organized by Radio 1812, which is an initiative developed by the Belgium-based NGO December 18. Since its start in 2006, the event has more than tripled in size. Over 50 radio stations broadcast in over 25 countries in 2006. Around 152 radio stations from 34 countries participated in the event last year, and organizers hope to link even more communities together in tomorrow's event. They are making the event increasingly visible as well via their Web site, its audio programs and other media publications, and even its Facebook page.

For more information on how to get involved or learn more about migration, visit Radio 1812's resource center. or UNESCO's International Migration and Multicultural Policies page.

New Orleans: a Model Urban Biosphere

Christine Alfsen informed me that the City of New Orleans has endorsed the project "New Orleans: a Model Urban Biosphere". Ms. Alfsen is the Senior Program Specialist for Sciences at the UNESCO Office in New York.

The program has the following specific objectives:

1. Actively conduct and network research linkages between social and ecological issues;
2. Provide a forum for the general public to inform and create community-driven solutions;
3. Facilitate development of action-based, multidisciplinary projects working at the interface of human security and management of the natural environment; and
4. Provide technical expertise and inform policy to international initiatives, programs and projects.

Hurricane Katrina has set the stage for urban and rural ecological transformations in and around New Orleans on a scale never before witnessed in United States modern history.

The brochure describing the project notes:

UNESCO has partnered with the Center for Bioenvironmental Research of Tulane University and the Stockholm Resilience Center in post-Katrina New Orleans and coastal Louisiana to create a world-class program to research urban ecosystems at risk.

The work in New Orleans is one of a number of coordinated studies networked via ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability. You can see descriptions of the cases at this website.

Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research Deputy Director, Douglas Meffert, serves as the New Orleans coordinator for UNESCOʼs Urban Biosphere International Partnership of Cities which also includes New York and Phoenix (USA), Stockholm (Sweden), Cape Town (South Africa), Istanbul (Turkey), and Canberra (Australia). Read more about the Center's UrbanEco effort.

UNESCO has been involved with a major effort on People, Biodiversity & Ecology for many years, built around the Man and the Biosphere Program. UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Urban Group is specifically backing this program in conjunction with the Urban Biosphere Network (URBIS), a collaboration between UNESCO and the Stockholm Resilience Center.

This project illustrates one of the ways in which the United States can benefit domestically from UNESCO's ability to form international networks in the sciences. The work of the scientists in New Orleans will be strengthened by their collaboration with researchers from other nations, and the combined body of knowledge from the comparative case studies will enrich our general understanding of urban ecology, and understanding which will in all probability improve the effectiveness of the reconstruction in New Orleans.

After Katrina.

Editorial: UNESCO and the Rights to Scientific Knowledge

Sufferers have a human right
to access life-saving science
Flickr/Julien Harneis

David Dickson wrote an editorial for SciDev.Net making the important point that more should be done to enable people to exercise their rights to access to scientific information and the beneficial products of its application.

We must clarify the 'human right' to science — and remind governments of their contractual obligation to uphold it.

I agree completely!

The right is acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Remember, the United States is not only a signatory to this Declaration, but encouraged its development and supported Eleanor Roosevelt as the chair of the committee that drafted the report.

It is also acknowledged in the United Nations in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:

Article 11

2. The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:

(a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;

Article 15

1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone:

(a) To take part in cultural life;

(b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications;

(c) To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.

4. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the benefits to be derived from the encouragement and development of international contacts and co-operation in the scientific and cultural fields.

The United States ratified this Covenant in 1977, and thereby obligated to abide by its provisions.

What Needs To Be Done?

The rights to science must be understood in the context of the overall set of rights. Half the world's population is extremely poor by American standards. That poverty is not merely lack of income and wealth, it also involves poor education, poor health services, poor access to knowledge and education, poor access to technology, poor access to food and inadequate housing. Unless poverty is ameliorated, there will be no real access to science and its beneficial applications.

Everyone, even those of us fortunate enough to live in affluent societies, obtain our access to science via institutions, including importantly educational institutions. However, market institutions provide us to products produced by corporate institutions applying scientific knowledge in their production. Assuring people the rights to knowledge involves implanting the needed policies and building the needed institutions. It also involves educating not only the consumers of science and its products, but also the vast workforce needed to develop, disseminate, and utilize scientific knowledge.

There are still government policies that deny people access to scientific knowledge, censoring information that government officials feel would be dangerous for the public to know or censoring information generally catching scientific information in the net as part of the total injunction. I find the deliberate obstruction of access to scientific knowledge even more unforgivable than failure to take the positive steps needed to promote such access.

The UNESCO Role

Not only does UNESCO seek to promote human rights through all of its programs, it has been intimately involved in the United Nations processes through which the nations of the world have agreed to honor those rights. Through its natural science programs it has fostered international cooperation in science. Its programs focusing on oceans, water, geology, and other sciences have helped to make information widely available on natural resources and their sustainable development.

Information from the social and human sciences is especially sensitive in many countries. While people must understand their societies and their economies if they are to progress, and indeed must understand human behavior, such knowledge can challenge traditional beliefs and threaten dysfunctional elites. UNESCO has been especially involved in improving the use of scientific knowledge in the policy making process.

Science education has been an important element of UNESCO's programs since its inception, involving both its educational programs and its science programs. UNESCO has focused not only on science in the pre-college years, but has also promoted university education, and indeed has helped establish post-graduate opportunities for students of the pure and applied sciences.

UNESCO's Communications and Information Program has worked to help developing countries to improve both the information and communications infrastructure and the content provided through that infrastructure. For many people in developing nations, the mass media are the most available means of access to scientific information, and thus it is critical that the content broadcast through the media be appropriate for their needs and interests.

Thus one way to promote peoples rights to scientific knowledge and its application is to support UNESCO and its programs.

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

Read about UNESCO's celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"Unfinished Business: A Comparative Survey of Historical and Contemporary Slavery"

Unfinished Business was commissioned by UNESCO’s Slave Route project and prepared by Joel Quirk of the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE, U.K).

The publication is divided into five chapters:

• defining slavery in all its forms;
  
• presenting data on the scale of slavery, slave trading and other forms of human bondage;
  
• examining differences and similarities between historical and contemporary practices;
  
• identifying, via case studies in the United States, Saint Domingue/Haiti, Great Britain and Portugal, the main paths through which abolition of slavery has historically occurred; and,
  
• through a further series of case studies, exploring the key limitations of the legal abolition of slavery.

This book combines history and sociology to provide the reader with an understanding of the current problems of slavers (and there are tens of millions of slaves in the world) in their historical context.

Slavery may have been legally abolished around the world, but it remains “a widespread and deeply rooted component on contemporary life” concludes the first-ever comparative analysis of historical slave systems and modern forms of human bondage, published online today by UNESCO.

Click here to download the 141 page report.

Editorial: UNESCO Withdraws from RWB Online Free Expression Day

Reporters Without Borders last week launched the "Online Free Expression Day".

“From now on, we will organise activities every 12 March to condemn cyber-censorship throughout the world,” Reporters Without Borders said. “A response of this kind is needed to the growing tendency to crack down on bloggers and to close websites."

The organization has issued an updated list of “Internet Enemies” as part of its actions to mark this day.

There are 15 countries in this year’s Reporters Without Borders list of “Internet Enemies” - Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. There were only 13 in 2007. The two new additions to the traditional censors are both to be found in sub-Saharan Africa: Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.

“This is not at all surprising as these regimes regularly hound the traditional media,” Reporters Without Borders says in the introduction to its report.“Internet penetration is very slight, but nevertheless sufficient to give them a few nightmares. They follow the example of their seniors and draw on the full arsenal of online censorship methods including legislation, monitoring Internet cafés and controlling ISPs.”

There is also a supplementary list of 11 “countries under watch.” They are Bahrain, Eritrea, Gambia, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Unlike the “enemies,” these countries do not imprison bloggers or censor the Internet massively. But they are sorely tempted and abuses are common. Many of them have laws that they could use to gag the Internet if they wanted. And the judicial or political authorities often use anti-terrorism laws to identify and monitor government opponents and activists expressing themselves online.

Simultaneously, RWB reported:

Reporters Without Borders learned last night that UNESCO has withdrawn its patronage for today’s Online Free Expression Day. We were notified of the decision by the director of its Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace Division. Defending the move, UNESCO said it gave its patronage for the “principle of this day” but could not support the various demonstrations organised to mark it.

UNESCO's charter calls for it to support freedom of information and the press, and UNESCO has supported RWB in the past:

More than a third of the world's people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Reporters Without Borders works constantly to restore their right to be informed.

I was unable to find an explanation on the UNESCO website of its withdrawal, and indeed I was unable to find any mention of "Online Free Expression Day." However, the Latin American News Agency (headquartered in Havana, Cuba) Prensa Latina reports:

A UNESCO diplomatic source told Prensa Latina on Wednesday that the UN body had made the decision based on RSF´s "reiterated lack of ethics" and its attempts to discredit a given number of countries.

UNESCO"s profile or purposes are not in line with RSF"s performance for sensationalist interest nor it is acting as a court of inquisition for developing nations, the source said.

For this and other causes the UN body definitely declared the relation with RSF closed, and excluded any kind of collaboration in the future.

Editorial comment: It has always seemed to me that Reporters Without Borders is a highly reputable organization, performing an important function. I agree that the analysis by RWB is probably correct:

“We are not fooled,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Several governments on today’s updated list of 15 ‘Internet Enemies’ put direct pressure on the office of the UNESCO director general, and deputy director general Marcio Barbosa caved in. UNESCO’s reputation has not been enhanced by this episode. It has behaved with great cowardice at a time when the governments that got it to stage a U-turn continue to imprison dozens of Internet users.”

The United States Government should investigate UNESCO's conduct in this matter. If indeed UNESCO has yielded to the pressures of countries identified by RWB as impinging on freedom of expression on the Internet and is withdrawing from its charter responsibilities to safeguard freedom of expression the U.S. Government should make the strongest possible protest.

John Daly
(The opinion is that of the author and does not necessarily represent that of Americans for UNESCO.)

UNESCO Supports Environmental Journalism in Central Asia

Journalists from across Central Asia learned the basics of covering environmental issues on the web at a workshop in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in late November.

The Digital Informational Network on Environment and Sustainable Development in Central Asia and Russia (CARNet) organized the regional training of trainers workshop, launched within the framework of UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) project Training in Central Asia in Reporting Environmental News Online. Fifteen journalists from five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan), participated to acquire the skills necessary to practice environmental journalism on the web – and spread the knowledge to more journalists in their countries.

The workshop drew widespread praise in Central Asia. The environmental ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan signed a letter supporting the goal of advancing trainers on education for sustainable development within the framework of UNESCO activities. The Interstate Commission on Sustainable Development for Central Asia (ICSD) formally backed the course as well, noting that the organization of such events will greatly enhance implementation of the Aarhus Convention, increase public awareness and improve the quality and timeliness of reporting on environmental issues.

The Chairman of the Tajik Government Committee on the Environment, Mr. Khursandkul Zikirov, voiced his support for the effort as well: “In my country, we are constantly looking for ways to improve interaction amongst journalists. For example, we organize press conferences for journalists twice a month in Tajikistan. But unfortunately the use of Internet technologies is not yet sufficiently widespread. I very much hope that with the support of UNESCO and through this initiative to improve the skills of journalists, we will address this issue and facilitate the rapid dissemination of information.”

UNESCO’s IPDC supported participants from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Trainers from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan participated with co-financing from the Regional Environment Centre for Central Asia.