UNESCO Courier articles from November 1995

UNESCO Courier archives from November 1995

A new beginning. (world peace)
November 1, 1995... For many years world events moved slowly because the two super-powers took all the decisions, and it seemed that the rest of the world had been side-tracked away from decision-making. Now, suddenly, we realize that we are facing new threats for...

Our common home. (world peace)
November 1, 1995... The preamble to UNESCO'S constitution makes the correct diagnosis that, "since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed". Today, although the illusions and enthusiasms of 1945...

The road to 1945. (UNESCO)
November 1, 1995... UNESCO did not spring forth fully armed, like Athene from the head of Zeus, out of the smoking ruins of London one foggy day in November 1945. As British Prime Minister Clement Attlee said at the opening session of the London conference for the...

UNESCO's program for peace.
November 1, 1995... Peace-keeping is a function of the United Nations Organization. Peace-building, an activity concerning the human conscience and the moral and intellectual foundations of human behaviour, is a task which is incumbent on UNESCO. The level on which...

Demilitarizing military service.
November 1, 1995... In many countries the army is an organized and efficient structure and can play an important role in development. Both in the North and the South, young people who are called up to do military service have often done civilian jobs. They have...

Nelson Mandela: a giant of our time.
November 1, 1995... It requires great humility to write about someone who has spent his whole life on a long march in the name of dignity. First, there is the dignity of his people, which was fated to live under the laws of apartheid, one of the most barbaric...

Frederik Willem de Klerk: a conservative revolutionary.
November 1, 1995... Frederik Willem de Klerk must be one of the few leaders in the world of politics to have voluntarily set in motion events resulting in the inevitable surrender of his personal power and the demise of his government. Just a few short months...

Shimon Peres: passion and patience.
November 1, 1995... One of the world's most prestigious centres for the study and teaching of public and private international law, The Hague Academy of International Law is distinguished by a spirit of freedom and respect for others which is very close to that...

Yitzhak Rabin: a hawk with the wings of a dove.
November 1, 1995... Close friends of Yitzhak Rabin say mischievously: "When he was a teenager Yitzhak was ginger-haired. There's a slang word in Hebrew to describe the temperament of people with ginger hair: gingi, which means inflammable. Gingi people flare up...

Yasser Arafat: the father of Palestine.
November 1, 1995... "This is the most difficult situation that we've ever had to face," Yasser Arafat told me one day in 1982. We were in his little hotel room overlooking the sea, a few kilometres outside Tunis, where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)...

Jimmy Carter: pilgrim president.
November 1, 1995... When Jimmy Carter left the White House in 1981 after one term as president of the United States, he was not popular with Americans. Since then, more and more of his compatriots have come to say, "Carter is the best ex-President we've ever...

Juan Carlos I: the democratic king.
November 1, 1995... Juan Carlos I of Spain is a king for our times. Not for him ermine robes, crown, sceptre, or throne--although he was well and truly on the throne when he brought about the collapse of an attempted military coup in February 1981. On that...

Fish farming: a 4,000-year-old growth industry.
November 1, 1995... Four thousand years ago the Egyptians were already successfully farming Tilapia or "Nile carp" (Oreochromis niloticus). It is still a highly regarded species: about 500,000 tonnes of it are produced worldwide today. Carp-raising has been a...

The Iguacu falls: cascading wonder of the subtropical forest.
November 1, 1995... On the border between Argentina and Brazil, the Iguacu Falls are one of the natural wonders of the world and the main attraction of the Iguacu National Park (Iguazu in Spanish) which is registered on UNESCO'S World Heritage List. The 275...

La route du blues.
November 1, 1995... After emerging from the field songs of the cotton plantations in the Deep South at the end of the 19th century, the blues became a fount of inspiration for jazz and later rock 'n' roll. Here Isabelle Leymarie reviews La route du blues ("The Blues...

Yehudi Menuhin talks to Martine Leca.(Interview)
November 1, 1995... A former child prodigy, one of the great violinists of the century, Yehudi Menuhin has also conducted, directed several music festivals and founded a music school in England. A man of peace, he played for the Red Cross during the Second World War...

The watchful eye of democracy.
November 1, 1995... The task of encouraging tolerance may seem complex at any time, but we live today in a particularly sombre era. Our capacity to destroy each other, if we let intolerance take its course, has never been greater--from massive state-organized...