UNESCO Courier articles from October 1996

UNESCO Courier archives from October 1996

Biodiversity is a guarantee of evolution. (interview with Swiss microbiologist and co-awardee of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine)(Interview)
October 1, 1996... Swiss microbiologist Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Smith for their discovery of enzymes that protect bacteria against viral infections. Known as the restriction and...

The darkness and light of exile.(Month by Month)
October 1, 1996... Is the state of exile, which was for so long the exception, now becoming the rule? To be expelled from a community in the far-off times when communities regulated every detail of their members' lives was tantamount to receiving a death...

A land of no return. (exile)
October 1, 1996... Exiles live in limbo between two worlds Exile is a time when people experience, often painfully, an almost carnal attachment to the territory (country, native soil, homeland) and group (family, relatives, community, nation) they come from. That...

The coolies' odyssey. (19th century Asian Indians who sought employment in foreign countries where slavery has just been officially abolished)(includes related articles on coolies and the concept of 'coolitude')
October 1, 1996... Large numbers of men and women left India during the nineteenth century to work as coolies in countries where the practice of slavery had recently been officially abolished. Out of their exile grew a pattern of life and poetics which might be...

A journey of self-discovery. (the odyssey of exiled artists, scientists and philosophers)
October 1, 1996... The intellectual history of the twentieth century has been marked by the odyssey of exiled artists, scientists and philosophers An initiatory rite above all else, but also a journey into the labyrinth and a descent into hell, exile is a source...

Travellers from a far country. (exiled authors)
October 1, 1996... Writers are nature's exiles The question that writers living in a foreign country are most often asked is: "Now that you live away from your home country, do you write in the same way as you did before?" In other words: "Did you bring your...

The roots of the banyan tree. (acceptance of being in exile)
October 1, 1996... A wanderer who found himself at home in exile Does the idea of exile that our civilizations share with Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the baroque, classical and romantic eras, make any sense in the age of the Internet? In...

The brain drain. (emigration and immigration of scientific and technical personnel)
October 1, 1996... The North is siphoning off an alarming amount of talent from the South In the second half of the twentieth century, many countries of the South began to send students to the industrialized countries for further education. They urgently needed...

Refugees: the rising tide. (includes related articles on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and on additional information regarding the office)
October 1, 1996... There have never been so many refugees as there are today There are over sixteen million refugees in the world today. The reality behind this stark figure is the multitude of human tragedies being played out in encampments, sometimes surrounded...

Restricted entry: more and more states are curbing the admission of asylum seekers.
October 1, 1996... The protection of persons exposed to persecution has always been a matter of concern to human societies. The history of early Mediterranean civilizations offers several examples of writings on this subject. At the end of the second millennium...

The world's major refugee situations.
October 1, 1996... UNHCR is providing protection and assistance to 26.1 million people around the world, of whom 13.2 million are refugees. War in former Yugoslavia Some 3.7 million people who have been displaced or affected by the war are receiving...

The struggle for peace. (UNESCO)
October 1, 1996... UNESCO has been in existence for fifty years, and for fifty years it has been erecting its vast programme for the promotion of peace through education, science and culture. But the work of constructing peace is unending; it has to go on in all...

The medina of Fez - crafting a future for the past. (old city in Morocco)
October 1, 1996... The old city of Fez (Morocco) is one of the most beautiful quarters of its kind in the world. It was placed on UNESCO'S World Heritage List in 1980, and a few years later Morocco and UNESCO embarked on a far-reaching safeguard operation which is...

Palawan, the Philippines' last frontier.
October 1, 1996... In Puerto Princesa, capital of the Philippine province of Palawan, the new town hall offers a panoramic view over Honda Bay, the turquoise blue sea and a string of islands bordered by white sandy shores. The presence of a rusting and heavily...

Who are we? (UNESCO's Second Philosophy Forum)
October 1, 1996... Earlier this year, UNESCO'S Paris Headquarters was the scene of a four-day intellectual marathon during which philosophers, sociologists, biologists, historians, jurists, writers, political scientists and artists from all over the world met on...

Reflections: culture first. (cultural dimension of development)
October 1, 1996... A follow-up article to last month's issue ("Culture and Development: A life worth living") reports on UNESCO'S thinking about the cultural dimension of development Development policies based entirely on economic considerations and intended to...

Juan Carlos Caceres. (interview with the Argentine singer, instrumentalist and painter)(Interview)
October 1, 1996... Instrumentalist, singer and painter, Juan Carlos Caceres is a one-man history of the Argentine tango, vividly evoking its pathos and sensuality in paintings, pastels and his latest recording, Sudacas. Here he describes some unusual and...

A tiny bubble in the silence of the infinite. (the Universal language of gesture)
October 1, 1996... An apology is clue from me for my intrusion into the world of pictures, thus offering a perfect instance of the saying that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I, as an artist, cannot claim any merit for my courage; for it is the...