UNESCO Courier articles from December 1999

UNESCO Courier archives from December 1999

CIRCUS FLASHBACKS.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... Massimo Siragusa's circus photos conjures up a world of happy memories for Italian poet Tonino Guerra, the scriptwriter of Federico Fellini's 1974 film Amarcord ('I Remember') When autumn began and leaves from the chestnut trees covered the...

INTO ACTION.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... I UNESCO is a factor of hope, because it is the one international organization which, through all its programmes, respects and defends what is of universal worth and dignity in the material and spiritual heritage of all cultures, and thereby,...

FORESTS: A HOT DEAL FOR A COOLER WORLD.
December 1, 1999... Forests can play a key role in combating the greenhouse effect but current proposals for using them raise a thicket of thorny issues Why are industrialists so keen on trees these days? After the Japanese vehicle-maker Toyota (see page 13)...

TOYOTA MAKES TREES.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... Industrialists can no longer ignore the effects of their activity on the environment. In a world which is more and more polluted and threatened by global warming, their reputation and future depend on doing something about it. The Japanese...

SPARE THE ROD, SAVE THE CHILD.
December 1, 1999... The widespread use of corporal punishment in Kenyan schools has led to increasing dropout rates and in a few cases, to death I When Justus Omanga, a fourth grade student at Mobamba Secondary School in Kenya's Kisii district, repeatedly...

Memory: making peace with a violent past.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... As much of the world has its eyes fixed, at the turn of the millennium, on the future, this Focus section, in contrast, looks back at the past. How, it asks, have nations that endured atrocities in the second half of this century come to terms...

The evil that men do...(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... The collective memory must be free to come to terms with grief and shape a better future 'We must draw a veil over all the horrors of the past," said Winston Churchill not long after the end of the Second World War. Around the same time,...

Building blocks of international justice.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... War crimes presuppose combat between nations. Genocide and crimes against humanity, on the other hand, may be committed during conflicts within states. An international criminal court to try these offences is in the works. Crimes against...

'We can't forgive until we have justice'.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... Interview with Rosalina Tuyuc Rosalina Tuyuc has spent the past 17 years waiting. One night in June 1982, the Guatemalan army came and took her father away. "Francisco Tuyuc is dead, "she was later told by the military, who never returned...

South Africa: quandaries of compromise.
December 1, 1999... South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up to offer amnesty in exchange for disclosure of events in the apartheid years. How successful has it been? In his book Tomorrow is Another Country, South African journalist...

The price of truth.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... Amnesty applications have shed light on unsolved murders in South Africa, but for some families knowing the truth is not enough Why should victims of apartheid accept that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) gave...

Chile: doing a deal with memory.(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... Chileans have made a pact to ease the transition to democracy. But the collective memory has played a more crucial part in progress towards a rule of law The question of human rights violations by state officials during the military...

An unwritten page of history.
December 1, 1999... Only a few of those responsible for crimes under the dictatorship have so far been tried Some people have alleged that the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile should not be punished because pouring salt into this open wound,...

Russia: an unfinished job.
December 1, 1999... Russians looked back in anger when perestroika revealed the full scale of Stalinist massacres and repression. But current difficulties have largely halted this reappraisal of the past The body of a dictator is buried and dug up several...

Cambodia: a wound that will not heal.
December 1, 1999... A Cambodian film-maker describes how he came to terms with horror. His country will never recover its lost identity, he says, unless it puts the past on trial I left Cambodia when I was 15 with a spiritual wound I knew would never heal. I...

Rwanda's collective amnesia.
December 1, 1999... Christianity tried to destroy the collective memory of Rwandans. After independence, ethnicity became the yardstick of identity and the Tutsis were demonized. Then came the horrors of genocide. In Kigali, they are known as bafuye...

Bosnia and Herzegovina: an impossible reconciliation?(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... A once ethnically diverse population lives in a climate of tear and distrust fuelled by nationalists In November 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina signed the Dayton Peace Accords, a document designed to create a new unified state comprised of...

Can we prevent crimes against humanity?(Brief Article)
December 1, 1999... Canadian judge Louise Arbour, former chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunals (ICT) for ex- Yugoslavia and Rwanda, believes international law is making great strides in violence prevention How has setting up ICTs helped...

POLICE AGAINST RACISM.
December 1, 1999... Training schemes in several European countries are getting to grips with the stereotyping and prejudice that all too often influence police behaviour In a vast salon in Monceau Castle (Belgium), 13 policemen from Charleroi, a town in the...

THE YEAR 2000: WHO'S COMING TO THE PARTY?
December 1, 1999... From Osaka to San Francisco, from Beijing to Moscow and Pretoria, millennium fever seems to have gripped most-but not all-of the planet At midnight on December 31, the world will enter the year 2000. For months, sometimes years, plans have...

INTERNATIONAL RADIO MAKES NEW WAVES.
December 1, 1999... Once the sole source of outside news for many countries, international public broadcasters have had to adapt to a new competitive environment In Budapest (Hungary), British, French and German public radio broadcasters are making a joint...

WANGARI MUTA MAATHAI: KENYA'S GREEN MILITANT.
December 1, 1999... A noted environmental and pro-democracy activist hopes the next millennium will see a new African leadership that puts people first You once said that the quality of the environment cannot be improved unless and until the living conditions...