UNESCO Courier articles from June 1999

UNESCO Courier archives from June 1999

Madagascar's Undaunted Street Children
June 1, 1999... Antananarivo's boay kely sleep rough and live hard, but they are still children, with children's fears, laughter and high spirits A late-evening downpour drenches Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, known as Tana for short. Huge drops...

Cities, Citizens, and Civilization
June 1, 1999... In 1995, UNESCO created a Cities for Peace Prize to pay tribute to city governments which have succeeded in "strengthening social solidarity, improving living conditions in troubled neighbourhoods and developing genuine urban harmony". Every two...

Space Law Lifts off for a New Odyssey
June 1, 1999... As commercial interests and international partnerships dovetail in space exploration and use, space law will have to be rewritten to cut a way through an increasingly dense legal thicket Send up a satellite, haul an asteroid onto it and ship...

Colombia Exports Its 'New School' Blueprint
June 1, 1999... To make up for the failings of traditional rural schools, Colombia's Escuela Nueva movement offers flexible and efficient solutions which are being taken up in other countries At La Nina school, the teacher doesn't stand in front of the class...

Living with Leviathan
June 1, 1999... In the year 2015, there will be 30 mega-cities with more than 8 million inhabitants - 22 of them in Asia. How will they cope? Humanity is about to set a new record. Nearly two-thirds of the planet's population will be living in cities by...

Lagos: The Survival of the Determined
June 1, 1999... Lagos is a city where near anarchy prevails rather than government. Lagosins respond to the chaos by relying on their own ingenuity to get by It's rush-hour near the stadium in Lagos where Nigeria has just lost a football match. Streams of...

Fear and Loathing in Ikosi
June 1, 1999... An attempt to destroy a fruit market highlights the mutual suspicion between government and people who have no choice but to take matters into their own hands A corpse lies among rotting vegetables in the street of Ikosi, the largest fruit...

Jakarta's Dispossessed
June 1, 1999... Victimized by speculative development projects and arbitrary planning procedures, millions of Jakartans have had to start their lives afresh On a humid tropical evening in mid-April, Henry Muhamad Ali stood under a tall billboard in southern...

A Brasilian's Home Is a Castle
June 1, 1999... In the suburbs of the Brazilian capital, even poor families barricade themselves behind iron railings. To guard against thieves, but also to proclaim that they have conquered a fiefdom in the city Brasilia is two places. One of them is...

Shanghai's Migrant Millions
June 1, 1999... As it learns to manage the massive influx of 'temporary residents' that provide muscle for its explosive economic growth, China's city of opportunity is treading a delicate balance between control and grassroots involvement Among the...

Urbanization and Globalization
June 1, 1999... How we handle globalization will determine whether our cities and our civilization will be divided and violent or user-friendly and peaceful We cannot get a clear picture of urban life in the 21st century, especially in the poor countries of...

Dead-End Seeds Yield a Harvest of Revolt
June 1, 1999... Farmers in developing countries are up in arms against a new technique to produce sterile seeds. Scientists, however, warn that blind opposition to biotech research will do more harm than good It was a dream come true for seed companies....

Cracking the Code of Art's Allure
June 1, 1999... A bold new theory to identify the common denominator of all visual art 'If a Martian ethologist were to land on earth and watch us humans, he would be puzzled by many aspects of human nature, but surely art - our propensity to create and...

A Virtual Library on the Web
June 1, 1999... Untold riches await anyone who can tap into the public libraries now available on the Internet. But stiffening copyright law could rein in the trend Publisher Eric Eldred belongs to a breed of diehards who see the World Wide Web as a way to...

2,000 World Classics on Line
June 1, 1999... Relying on the sole efforts of volunteers, Project Gutenberg has been launching the world's literary heritage into cyberspace for nearly 30 years while conducting a crusade against copyright restrictions When Michael Hart, a student at the...

Gurdev Singh Khush: Masterminding a New Rice Revolution
June 1, 1999... An architect of the Green Revolution(*) is now trying to bring about a "Green Green Revolution" to avert a food crisis in the coming decades Experts have warned of a possible food crisis in Asia in the coming decades due to population growth...