UNESCO Courier articles from October 1999

UNESCO Courier archives from October 1999

BERLIN, THE ISLAND THAT WAS.
October 1, 1999... Gone are the days of West Berlin's insular tranquillity and East Berlin's state-coerced calm. Today, a metropolis is rising up on the ruins of the Wall Berlin was once an island. I moved from Cologne to West Berlin in 1988, when the Wall...

FOUR CHALLENGES FOR A NEW WORLD.(Editorial)
October 1, 1999... The issues and proposals outlined in this editorial are developed by Federico Mayor in his recently published book Un Monde Nouveau.(1) Federico Mayor has served as Director-General of UNESCO for twelve years. His second mandate at the head...

THE KAKADU AFFAIR SHAKES THE HERITAGE WORLD.
October 1, 1999... The opening of a mine in Australia's Kakadu Park has revived international debate about the protection of the world heritage How far should world heritage be protected and who should judge? Nearly 30 years after UNESCO adopted its 1972...

QUESTIONING THE ABCs OF WOMEN'S LITERACY.
October 1, 1999... By sharing the day-to-day village life of Nepalese women who made the move to attend literacy classes, an inquisitive researcher takes a critical look at what is being taught, and why As we slipped along the muddy paths, Laxmi took her...

Getting youth through the Aids crisis.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... The industrialized world stands out as an exception on the global Aids map. it has managed to stabilize the rate of new infections and to sharply reduce the number of Aids deaths through new combinations of anti-HIV drugs. But everywhere else,...

Seizing every opportunity.
October 1, 1999... Fighting Aids involves no less than changing our whole sexual culture. Peter Plot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, stresses the impact of preventive education on young people's behaviour If scientists fail to cure Aids, the epidemic will...

Frontline Aids victims: girls in the South.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 1999... Youth, in particular girls, and developing countries bear the brunt of Aids' virulent spread Some two decades after the virus started to spread, HIV/Aids is a growing crisis disproportionately weighing on youth and on the developing world....

A slow march forward.
October 1, 1999... In the eye of the global Aids epidemic, Africa has no choice but to organize a massive, multi-pronged prevention campaign which mobilizes the broadest range of players The Aids epidemic raging in sub-Saharan Africa is one of the worst...

A condom tree in Burkina Faso.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Fighting prejudice with laughter, film director Fanta Regina Nacro gets a strong message across After she heard from a cousin in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) about the dangers of catching Aids, one of Konate's two wives asked him to wear a...

Healers to the rescue.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Vastly outnumbering standard doctors, traditional healers are destined to play a key role in the fight against Aids in Africa. Senegal shows the way forward "You could see the bones sticking out under my skin and I was almost blind," says...

Southeast Asia: Slowly getting bolder.(AIDS education gets better despite silence about sexuality)
October 1, 1999... While the region increasingly taps the media's potential to spread the message on Aids prevention, traditional taboos continue to hamper the educational programmes MTV Asia is currently broadcasting an excellent HIV-prevention campaign....

Stemming the tide in Thailand.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Through a sustained national campaign, Thailand has brought its rate of HIV infection under control, but the economic crisis is casting a shadow over the progress A survey conducted in Thailand for the British contraceptive firm Durex,...

The classroom and beyond: Prevention at school: an arduous course.
October 1, 1999... School is an ideal place to make young people aware of the danger of Aids. But the topic is delicate and all the harder to handle with precious few resources Educating schoolchildren about Aids is something very recent in developing...

A crash course for teachers.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... During a day of role-playing and discussion, Rwandan teachers learn to broach the subject of Aids in the classroom without shyness or fear At the school in Mujina, a couple of hours by road from the Rwandan capital of Kigali, the teachers...

Uganda: a jihad against Aids.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... In informal schools tied to mosques, Muslim religious leaders have taken on a pivotal role in teaching youth the basics of prevention Mohammed Mubiru admits that Aids is a topic he has never discussed with his parents. "They would think I...

Reaching street kids on their own turf.(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Born in Mexico City, Latin America's only Aids prevention programme for street children is ready to share its expertise with other countries in the region The street is their home. For several thousand young Mexicans, it is the place where...

The stigma of Aids.
October 1, 1999... Discrimination against people with Aids is a major obstacle to fighting the epidemic. The solution lies in education In her village in Kwazulu-Natal, the South African province hardest hit by the Aids epidemic, Gugu Dlamini died because of...

THE DEATH PENALTY: ABOLITION GAINS GROUND.
October 1, 1999... Countries that have abolished capital punishment now outnumber those applying it. But four countries still account for 80 per cent of all executions. In the teeming jumble of daily news, one important human rights event passed almost...

THE AMERICAN EXCEPTION.(capital punishment)(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... In a climate influenced by the religious right, a public stand against the death penalty is regarded as nothing short of political suicide In a nation where the death penalty is in force in 38 out of 51 states, roughly 3,500 prisoners are...

THE MELTING POT OF MODERN DANCE.
October 1, 1999... More than ever before, modern dance is synonymous with buzzing cultural exchange - from North to South, East to West, and vice-versa The scene is set in Soweto, one of Johannesburg's notoriously poor townships, soon after Nelson Mandela's...

PHOTOJOURNALISM: THE LAST LAP?
October 1, 1999... Supply of photo reports outstrips demand, competition from television is intense. Can photojournalism survive? The famous picture of the distraught woman in Algiers being comforted by a friend (left) may well be the last still photograph to...

MANUEL CASTELLS: THE CITIZEN VERSUS THE MACHINE.
October 1, 1999... As the technological revolution revolutionizes economic life and communications and shakes industrial society to its foundations, a noted Spanish sociologist asks where the citizen stands in the emerging 'information society' The most...