01 Jan

World AIDS Day 2009 : “Universal Access and Human Rights” this year’s theme

Universal access to prevention and treatment will not be possible “without fully respecting the universality of human rights, regardless of a person’s age, sex, ethnicity, occupation, religious beliefs and sexual orientation,” stresses UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova in her message for 1 December, World AIDS Day.

  • More
  • Director-General’s message
  • Joint United Nations Program
01 Jan

Swiss Trains – RhB UNESCO Heritage Route

Swiss Trains – The RhB UNESCO Heritage Route – through Southeastern Switzerland is one of the most beautiful sections of track in the world.

01 Jan

Ambassador Killion Meets With Americans for UNESCO

Ambassador Killion sits at the head of the table
Photo: Nicole Varchaver

Ambassador David Killion, together with Kelly Seikman (the Director of the UNESCO Affairs Office in the State Department) and Elizabeth Kanick (the Executive Director of the National Commission for UNESCO), met yesterday with members of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO. They expressed great satisfaction with the visit of UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova to the United States. Director General Bokova met with both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Education as well as with Congressional leaders during her visit, and all offered encouragement for her efforts to lead UNESCO and support for UNESCO’s mission to promote peace, education, science and culture.

We were also informed that there will soon be recruitment of new staff members for both the UNESCO Affairs Office and the Delegation in Paris), and that efforts are under way to reconstitute the National Commission membership and plan for a meeting of the National Commission this year.
UNESCO is currently recruiting senior staff to fill out Director General Bokova’s team, including a new Deputy Director General and seven Assistant Director Generals. The conversations this week were of course often concerned with Haiti, but also with efforts to improve education and especially girls education. 2010 is the International Year of Rapprochement of Cultures, and of course UNESCO will play a key role in its observation.
Elizabeth Kanick to Killion’s left and Kelly Seikman to his righ
Photo: Nicole Varchaver

01 Jan

Online discussion on Gender equality, Education and Training

10 January to 7 February 2010

As part of the debates and events commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, the United Nations’ Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) is organizing a series of online discussions dedicated to specific critical areas of action related to gender equality. These discussions will contribute to the 15-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action at the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women from 1-12 March, 2010

The online discussions are designed to catalyze debate, to analyze progress and to provide an important interactive forum where perspectives, successful initiatives and information can be shared.

UNESCO will be hosting the online discussion focusing on the theme of Gender equality, Education and Training from 10 January to 7 February. During these four weeks, discussions will be organized around a framework of thematic questions in order to stimulate debate between participants.

Read more!
01 Jan

Cultural Property: its Illicit Trafficking and Restitution

This is one of UNESCO’s flagship programs! UNESCO has been actively involved in the return and restitution of cultural property for many years. It has led in the elaboration of a set of multilateral treaties:

An information note has been prepared to facilitate the understanding of the complimentarity between and the functioning of the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention.

Read more on the UNESCO program!
01 Jan

Space Looking out for World Heritage

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

The German Aerospace Center is collaborating with UNESCO to exhibit Large satellite images of World Heritage Sites. The exhibition ‘What a Sight – Space Looking out for World Heritage’ is currently being shown at the UN campus in Bonn. This exhibition was also held in Paris, Berlin, Stuttgart, Cologne and Brussels.

Click here to see an online gallery of the 30 satellite images that are presented in the exhibition.

01 Jan

UNESCO & Google bring you World Heritage sites via Street View

01 Jan

Interview with Laura Bush

Recently, CNN Zain Vargee interviewed Laura Bush in Paris where she was attending a UNESCO meeting. I quote from the transcript:

Zain: You’re here in Paris, for an important event, you’re going to be talking about literacy worldwide. What is your one key message?

Laura: Well, the one key message is how important it is to read and how governments really need to focus their priorities on making sure everybody in their countries can read and that’s what UNESCO does. UNESCO is the big U.N. agency that has education as part of its charge and this is the decade of literacy and the decade will be over in 2012 so we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure people learn to read between now and then.

Zain: How do you make governments have literacy a priority? Because if you look at Africa, you look at Asia and so many other places around the world, governments have to struggle with so many other things there’s corruptions and there’s…. how do you do it?

Laura: Well, what UNESCO is trying to do is focus on the 34 most illiterate countries the countries with the highest rates of illiteracy. They have two programs, one is an assessment program, so they will help governments really assess how many people are illiterate who they are, where they are and what they can do to intervene in their lives… and then the other program out of UNESCO is called LEAP and it’s an adult literacy program and its an adult literacy program and of course most of the people who are illiterate in the world… and they think… 700 million people who are illiterate I think it is, it’s really a lot around the world that are illiterate… Watch the full interview with Laura Bush »

Zain: So it’s really a way to put pressure on governments?

Laura: That’s right and to help them in whatever way they can, because you’re right, the countries with the highest illiteracy are also the poorest, they are the countries with the least capacity to be able to build education systems.

Read more!
01 Jan

Once Seen As A Model, Iraq Struggles To Rebuild Its Education System

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

“Despite the brutality of its former regime, Iraq was once seen as a model of education in the Arab world. The country boasted some of the region’s highest literacy rates, justifying the Arabic saying, “The Egyptians write, the Lebanese publish, the Iraqis read.”

“Today, up to one-quarter of Iraq’s adults are illiterate…….

“International Literacy Day on September 8, which is sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific,and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is an opportunity to address these issues.

“This year, the UN agency is putting the spotlight on literacy’s importance for civic participation, citizenship, and social and human development.

“The message will be delivered in Iraq, where economic sanctions imposed in the 1990s and six years of occupation and violence have dramatically affected the education system.”

Click here to read the entire article!
01 Jan

International Conference on Adult Education


“Today, we are here to demonstrate the power of adult learning and education to ensure a viable future for all. Our goal over the next four days is to take forward the agenda of adult learning and education by securing stronger political recognition of its critical importance for development and agreeing on concrete recommendations to increase its scope and reach,” said the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, at the opening session of the Sixth International Conference on Adult Education in Belem, Brazil on 1 December.

Read more!

© 2010 General Education

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