UNESCO Courier articles from December 2001

UNESCO Courier archives from December 2001

To Be Heard and Listened To
December 1, 2001... World events over the past few months have shown us that the efforts of those international organizations working for peace and dialogue between cultures are more important than ever. From this perspective, the pertinence of UNESCO'S...

The Greatest Enemies to Liberty. (Ethics - October 1958)
December 1, 2001... In 1947 while the U. N. Commission on Human Rights was working out an international bill of rights, UNESCO carried out a broad enquiry into the philosophic bases of the rights which could be included in such a declaration. It consulted leading...

Race, History and Culture. (Ethics - March 1996)
December 1, 2001... One of the world's leading anthropologists, Claude Levi-Strauss twice set forth his ideas on racism for UNESCO, first in Race and History (1952) and later in Race and Culture (1971). On the following pages we publish long extracts from these two...

Document: Vaclav Havel. (Ethics - June 1990)
December 1, 2001... President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, is a playwright and a fighter for freedom. It was as a dissident writer that he won the reputation that led to his election as President on 29 December 1989, becoming thereby the symbol of the...

'I Was Born 1,000 Years Ago.': Open Letter from Chief Dan George of the Capilano Indians. (Ethics - January 1975)
December 1, 2001... My very good dear friends : WAS it only yesterday that man sailed around the moon? You and I marvel that men should travel so far and so fast, yet If they have travelled far then I have travelled farther, and if they have travelled fast then...

A 'Silent Genocide'. (Ethics - May 1988)
December 1, 2001... Our UR planet is inhabited by two distinct types of human beings. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) count of 1983, one quarter of mankind, some 1,100 million people, are "developed". They inhabit two-fifths of the land...

Beethovan Tames the Jungle: A Great Soviet Composer Presents His Views on Music without Frontiers. (Culture - June 1973)
December 1, 2001... THE interaction and the play of mutual influences between the musical cultures of West and East, of peoples brought up in the traditions of European musical thought and the peoples of the rest of the world, constitutes a key factor for the...

Andre Malraux: 'There Is Only One Action over Which in Different Stars and Unchanging Rivers Have No Sway: It Is the Action of a Man Who Snatches Something from Death'. (Culture - May 1960)
December 1, 2001... The following is the full text of an address delivered in Unesco's Headquarters on March. 8 by Andre Malraux, French Minister of State for Cultural Affairs. M. Malraux was presiding at the ceremony which marked the launching of the International...

Where Gods and Men Have Mingled. (Culture - September 1977)
December 1, 2001... BRAZIL is a country OF racial mixture. This is an obvious and incontrovertible fact. The Brazilian experiment is of immense importance in the search for a solution to the terrible racial problem that afflicts the world. For in Brazil the most...

North-South: Beyond the Great Divide; the Universal and the Particular. (Culture - December 1993)
December 1, 2001... FOR some time, I have been arguing that the idea of universality is put forward by people in centres of power and places that dominate the rest of the world. The spectacle of the chaos reigning in the modern world impels us to fall back on this...

World's largest Buddhist statue. (Culture - June 1956).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... To the north west of Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, in a green and fertile valley surrounded by pink and rose red mountains, lies Bamiyan. In ancient times it was a stopping place on the caravan route which linked Central Asia to India, and...

'Culture Must Be One of the Foundations for World Understanding'. (Culture - June 1996)
December 1, 2001... (1879-1955) In order to grasp the full significance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is well to be fully aware of the world situation that gave birth to the United Nations and to UNESCO. The devastation wrought by the wars of...

The Pugwash Movement. (Science - August 1986)
December 1, 2001... THE direct initiative for the Pugwash Movement came not from a scientist but from the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. In 1955, the world situation appeared highly dangerous and the outlook for mankind very gloomy. The development of the...

The Divorce of Science & 'Culture': A Phenomenon of Our Time. (Science - February 1958)
December 1, 2001... THERE was a time when scientists looked askance at attempts to make their work widely intelligible. But, in the World of the present day, such an attitude is no longer possible. The discoveries of modern science have put into the hands of...

Interview: Vandana Shiva Talks to Judith Bizot. (Science - March 1992)
December 1, 2001... * You are a physicist who abandoned your country's nuclear energy programme to devote yourself to nature and to halting its destruction. How did you reach your present position? Ever since I was a child, love and knowledge of nature have...

Towards a World Conservation Ethics: The Rio Convention Marked the First Major International Step towards the Sharing of Biodiversity Based on the Principle of Social Fairness. (Science - May 2000)
December 1, 2001... It has become commonplace to say that the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted during the Rio Summit in June 1992 is an important landmark in integrating the principles of ethics and equity in the use of biodiversity. To stem the...

Can We Educate for World Peace? (World of Learning - October 1985)
December 1, 2001... Extracts from the opening remarks by Archibald MacLeish during a radio discussion with Dr. F.L. Schlagle, President of the U.S. National Education Association, Mr. Herbert Emmerich, Director of the Public Administration Clearing House, and Dr....

Bouba and Jacques: The birth of a Dialogue between Africa & Europe. (World of Learning - September 1960).
December 1, 2001... Over the signature of Bouba, the schoolchildren of Pitoa (Cameroons) began an exchange of letters a few years ago with Jacques and the schoolchildren of Costes-Gozon, a tiny village in southern France. They wrote of their work, their games,...

A Voice from the Third World: Towards a 'New World Order of Information'. (Media - April 1977)
December 1, 2001... INCONTESTABLY, 1976 was the year in which the problems of information and communication became world-wide issues. A whole series of conferences, symposia and meetings on these subjects launched a major debate and the issues were fully aired at...

The Electronic Gap. (Media - February 2000)
December 1, 2001... In the United States, business journals, market gurus, economics professors and highly paid consultants talk incessantly about the coming global boom, the transformation of the workplace, the technology revolution and the knowledge explosion. It...