L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

2 . . . . . .

IN DEMANDYolanda Ortiz GarcésProvincial Centre for Scientific and TechnologicalInformationLas Tunas (Cuba)

The range of informa-tion presented in your magazine is pre-cious. We always make sure that it is avail-able to our readers and the demand is greatgiven the quality and timeliness of thethemes covered.

THE CHASEAnn BixBusinesswomanMoosejaw (Canada)

Bravo for the issue“What on earth are we doing to the oceans”(No. 96). The ocean is indeed our “life sup-port system” - it’s a message you cannothammer home enough.

And here at home in Canada, we havecertainly been hammered by our disastrouslack of fishing regulation, a global prob-lem highlighted in your article, “Too ManyBoats in the Ocean”. Ironically, very fewboats are found cruising our eastern coastwith a strict moratorium protecting the fewfish we still have. In fact, we’ve even takento chasing foreign-owned boats (whichshall remain unidentified for reasons ofdiplomacy) entering murky legal waters byskirting in and out of our exclusive eco-nomic zones.

This kind of activity has been the causeof some very serious international inci-dents involving our navy and raise somevery important legal, ethical and environ-mental issues which your articles failed toaddress.

ARCHIVES IN DANGERJames M. WambuaDocumentalistKenyatta University Basic Education Resource CentreNairobi (Kenya)

We enjoy reading issuesof Sources, which has very informative andeducative contents.

In particular, I concentrated very keenlyon your issue on World Heritage in Danger(No. 95). You focused mainly on nationalparks. Now what about turning to nationalarchives? I think they are also very impor-tant. We should lament over the state inwhich they are kept and preserved. And yetthey tell of a country’s heritage and poster-ity. Please consider giving them the spacethey truly merit in one of your upcomingissues.

We will certainly keep your suggestion in mind. In themeanwhile, you may want to read the article “A Selec-tive Memory” in issue No. 95 which focuses on UNESCO’sMemory of the World project in highlighting the needsand problems linked with setting up a world archivalregistry to better preserve this heritage. Ed.

FORGOTTENIMMIGRANTSHammadi Ben AmmarTeacherTunis

I found your issue on“Making the Most of Globalization” (No.97) very interesting. I nevertheless haveone question concerning your map of “Peo-ple on the Move”. Why is there no mentionof immigration to Australia, particularlythe flow of people coming from Viet Nam?I found this rather strange, especially inlight of the fact that your dossier includesan article specifically on Asian immigra-tion to Australia.

Although Australia is considered a migrant receivingcountry, it takes in only 85,000 people each year, ofwhom only 3.6% are Vietnamese. Ed.

UNESCO Sourcesis available on

Internet

under the headings:new or publications

at our address:http://www.unesco. org

✉✉✉

✉✉✉

✉✉✉

✉✉✉

✍WHO’S RESPONSIBLE?Annie WebsterJournalistAuckland (New Zealand)

In your article “Theplunder of Afghanistan” (No.97, January1998), you quote Pierre Lafrance, theformer French ambassador to Pakistan

saying that “objects stolen from the Ka-bul museum have no market value. Undernational and international law they can beseized immediately. Informed collectorswouldn’t risk handling them.”

I can’t hem help but think that if therewere no buyers (usually “informed” Euro-peans and Americans) willing to pay fabu-lous prices for such objects, they wouldn’tbe stolen in the first place. On the other endof the scale, if governments in target coun-tries like Afghanistan, Cambodia andthroughout Africa seriously undertook toimprove their peoples’ lot (and pay theircustoms and police officials properly)maybe they would be less inclined to sellout their heritage.

It’s all very well to crack down on im-poverished locals raiding archaeologicaldigs to feed and clothe themselves and theirfamilies, but are they really the guilty ones?

✉✉✉

✍

I N S I G H T

PAGE AND SCREEN . . . . . . . . . . 4

PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

C O N T E N T S

F O C U S

A l l a r t i c l e s a r e f r e e o f c opy r i gh tres t r i c t ions and can be reproduced,i n wh i c h c a s e t h e ed i t o r s wou l dapprec ia te a copy. Pho to s ca rr y ingno copyright mark © may be obtainedb y t h e m e d i a o n d e m a n d .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S

Editorial and Distribution Services:UNESCOSOURCES, 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP. Tel.(+33 1) 45 68 16 73. Fax. (+33 1) 45 68 56 54.This magazine is destined for use as an infor-mation source and is not an official UNESCOdocument. ISSN 1014-6989.

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

Pages 6 to 16

PLANET:

Culture• THE POWER OF CULTURE. . . . . . . . . .18

Environment• A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE . . . . . . .20

Education• AN UNUSUALNURSERY SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Culture of Peace• RALLYING THE FLOCKS . . . . . . . . . 23

LOOKING AHEAD . . . . . . . . . . 24

Cover : © COLLECTIONVIOLLET/A Slave market inNigeria

Selling culture.

Lest we forget.

Plant therapy.

WE, THE PEOPLE...

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

THE SLAVE ROUTEA MEMORYUNCHAINED

3. . . . .

René L E FORT

Wh i l e Ko f i Annan c e l eb ra t ed , Romeo Da l l a i r e wep t . . .

T he s u c c e s s o f t h e UN s e c r e t a r y - gene ra l ’s l a s t c han ce

m i s s i on t o Baghdad wa s ha i l e d a round t he wo r l d . “We

re j o i c e t o s e e t h e f o r c e o f r ea son p r eva i l o ve r t h e r ea son

o f f o r c e , ” app l auded F ede r i c o Mayo r, t h e d i re c t o r - gene ra l

o f UNESCO .

The s u c c e s s f o r t h e UN s y s t em i s man i f o l d : i t h a s impo sed

i t s d e c i s i on s and pu l l e d t h e wa r mach i ne ba ck f r om t he

b r i nk , p r even t i ng r enewed b l ood shed and even g r ea t e r pa i n

f o r a peop l e who have a l r eady s u f f e r ed t oo much .

A t t h e s ame t ime , Ma j o r Gene ra l Roméo Da l l a i r e , t h e

commande r o f t h e UN A s s i s t an c e M i s s i on f o r Rwanda

(UNAMIR ) i n 1994 when t he f i r s t g eno c i d e s i n c e t h e s e c ond

wo r l d wa r s aw t he s l augh t e r o f b e tween 500 ,000 and a

m i l l i o n peop l e , wa s g i v i ng e v i den ce be f o r e t h e UN I n t e rna -

t i ona l C r im ina l Tr i buna l f o r Rwanda (A r u sha , Tanzan i a ) .

Da l l a i r e , o f Canada , a sked - and an swe red - t h e one

que s t i on o f any impo r t an c e i n h i s e ye s : “Wou l d a de t e r-

m ined , we l l - e qu i pped and manda t ed f o r c e have been ab l e

t o p r even t t h e mas sa c r e o f i nno c en t c i v i l i a n s ? My an swe r

i s : a b so l u t e l y . . .

“ I t i s t o o ea sy t o a c c u s e t h e Un i t ed Na t i on s o f r e f u s i ng t o

i n t e r vene . . . ” h e c on t i nued , “ bu t t h e Un i t ed Na t i on s i s a l l

o f u s ! We a l l b ea r pa r t o f t h e r e s pon s i b i l i t y o f hav i ng

s t ood by f o r f ou r mon th s and wa t c hed t he Rwandan geno -

c i d e un f o l d ! ” And he wep t .

T he Un i t ed Na t i on s Cha r t e r open s : “We t he peop l e s o f t h e

Un i t ed Na t i on s ” . I t i s i n t h e i r name t ha t t h e UN u l t ima t e l y

a c t s . . . and s u c c eed s o r f a i l s . C e r t a i n l y, “ t he peop l e ’s ”

r e spon s i b i l i t y i n t ho s e s u c c e s s e s and f a i l u r e s i s l e s s ened by

t he o f t en no t i c ab l e gap be tween t he i r w i l l a nd t he way i t i s

p r e s en t ed by t h e gove rnmen t s t ha t s peak f o r t h em a t t h e

UN . Bu t a s c e r t a i n l y, t h e i r r e s pon s i b i l i t y i s en t i r e when t ha t

w i l l i s n o t man i f e s t ed a t a l l : when i nd i f f e r en c e r e i gn s on

wo r l d i s s ue s o r i s s hown t owa rd s t h e on l y me chan i sm f o r

t h e r e s o l u t i o n o f c o n f l i c t s o f t h i s s c a l e .

P A G E A N D S C R E E N

4 . . . . . .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

to wedding festivities, longjourneys driving camels, andritual poetry sessions.

• Yemen - Songs fromHadramawt. Music andMusicians of the World,UNESCO/Auvidis, 120 FF.

UNESCO publications andperiodicals can be purchased atUNESCO Headquarters andthrough national distributors inmost countries. In each MemberState, books and periodicals can beconsulted at a UNESCO depositarylibrary.For further information or directorders by mail, fax or Internet:UNESCO Publishing, 7 place de Fon-tenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP (France),tel.: (+33 1) 01 45 68 43 00; fax:(+33 1) O1 45 68 57 41; Internet:h t tp ://www.UNESCO.org/publishing.

BOOKS

PERIODICALS

GENGHIS KHANTHE HISTORY OF THEWORLD-CONQUEROR“....the plain had become atossing sea of countless hostsand splendid troops, while theair was full of clamour anduproar from the neighing ofarmoured horses and theroaring of mail-clad lions.”A masterpiece of Persian prose,this chronicle is also a principlehistorical source of the MongolEmpire. The narrator, Ata-MalikJuvaini, born in about 1226,recounts the rise of Genghis

• Genghis Khan - The Historyof the World-Conqueror, byAta-Malik Juvaini, translatedand edited by J.A. Boyle with anew introduction and biblio-graphy by David O. Morgan,Manchester University Press/UNESCO 1997, 725 pp.,255 FF.

STUDY ABROAD 1998-1999This book is a veritable goldmine, with more than 2,900entries concerning post-secondary education andtraining in all academic andprofessional fields in 120countries and territories.Information on scholarships,financial assistance, university-level and short-term courses,extramural and continuingeducation programmes, facilitiesfor the handicapped, studentemployment possibilities andmore. All of which makes it anessential guide.

•Study Abroad UNESCO/International Bureau of Educa-tion 1997, 1067 pp., 120 FF.

YEMEN - SONGS FROMHADRAMAWTThis collection presents themusical jewels of Hadramawt -the fertile valley of frankincenseserving for centuries as acultural centre for Yemen andthe Arab world. Recordedbetween 1985 and 1995, thedisc presents the chants ofprofessional and amateur malesingers of dân - relatively simplemelodies sung alone or accom-panied by hand-clapping, lyres,and lutes.While austere, the music is stillwarm - conveying the spirit ofthe valley with a careful selec-tion of melodies corresponding

phytoplankton before a closinglook at The Right to Hopeinitiative seeking to mobilize thecreative spirit for environmentalpreservation.

COPYRIGHT BULLETIN“Copyright is, in a way,symbolic of the relationsbetween the ‘haves’ and the‘have-nots’ in publishing. All thecards are in the hands of thepublishers from the industrial-ized countries. They control theinternational copyright treaties,which were, after all, estab-lished by them and with theirinterests in mind...”Philip Atbach opens the debatein the latest issue of the bulletin(No. 4, Vol. 31) which looks atthe impact of digital technologyon neighbouring rights underthe Rome Convention beforepresenting UNESCO’s latestactivities in the field - namely therecommendations concerningthe status of the artist madeduring a world congress in Parislast June.

Khan and more particularly thereigns of his three successors.Drawing not only from the re-collections of his father andgrandfather, Juvaini’s epic workis infused with the personalinsight of someone who workedfor the Mongol governors ofNorthern Persia.Indeed, the text’s force lies notin the details of the principalactors and events but in thecontradictions of a manworking for his conquerors. Thetranslator, J.A. Boyle points out:“How is one to reconcile theseseeming contradictions - on theone hand, the candid recital ofMongol atrocities, the lamentfor the extinction of learning,the thinly veiled criticism of theconquerors and the open ad-miration of their vanquishedopponents; and on the otherhand, the praise of Mongolinstitutions and rulers and thejustification of the invasion asan act of divine grace?”

COMPACT DISCS

NATURE & RESOURCESTo alter a vegetable or not, thatis the central question of thelatest issue (Vol. 3, No. 2). “Theextent to which a change isjudged to be a substantive harmdepends on human values,whether nature should be‘intransient’ or modified,”explains author Darryl Macer.While pointing to the variousbenefits of plant biotechnology,he explores the many ethicalquestions - from intellectualproperty laws to public attitudes,health effects and environmentalsafety and regulation.“Windows into the pastures ofthe sea” open with an article on

THE UNESCO COURIER“Who can fail to wonder aboutthe mystery of the hereafter?”ask the editorialists of the Marchissue which focuses on a “neces-sary illusion” for some and a“supreme reality” for others.According to African tradition,the aftermath is not a metaphysi-cal notion but rather is seen as“a cosmic principle which bothencompasses and transcendsindividual births and deathsenfolding us all together in timeand space”. While Indiansociety is essentially based on acycle of births and rebirths, inChina, a certain pragmatismintertwines death, the gods andlife. With Marxist “faith” theafterlife is seen as an instrumentof power used by the dominantclasses.The last article, “Living to tell thetale”, reveals the strikingsimilarities of the near-deathexperiences undergone bymillions of people revived from“clinical death”. Irrespective oftheir religious and culturalbackgrounds, they are oftenconvinced that they have seen alight beyond which assuagedtheir fear of death.

P E O P L E

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

5. . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

RODNEY OSIAKO: SAYINGMORE THAN JUST ’NO!’

JOSE CARLOS GARCIA GOMEZ:THE SEA, THE SEA

(Ph

oto

UN

ES

CO

/N

ine

Levi

nth

al)

.

(Ph

oto

© a

ll r

igh

ts r

eser

ved

).

In Nairobi, six cents buys anordinary Marlboro cigarette or

a joint rolled with local marijuanawhich may help to explain whyhalf of the capital’s high schooland university students take, orhave tried, drugs. In fact, youngpeople represent 25% to 35% ofthe country’s drug users.

“Drugs are not part of thetradition in Kenya. It’s a recentphenomena,” says RodneyOsiako, 19. Two years ago, thecommunications student createdthe Drug Chase Foundation withabout 30 young people, all inter-ested in writing, singing, shoot-ing films, etc. Pooling togethertheir limited pocket-moneyearned from odd jobs, they pro-duced a newspaper, a pop songand video, all of which attractedattention not just locally but in-ternationally.

United Nations InternationalDrug Control Programme.

But how did a clean-cut guylike Rodney get into the battleagainst drugs?

“I used to write for the schoolmagazine. After that, a fewfriends and I wanted to start acultural project which would bebeneficial for young people. Werealized that in Kenya, whenpeople do talk about youth, theytalk a lot about teenage preg-nancy or AIDS. They don’t talkabout drugs. Maybe becausethey aren’t seen as a danger, orthey don’t see the consequences.But it is a very common prob-lem at the high schools and col-leges.”

Rodney and his friends beganby publishing a small journal -eight photocopied pages. Theythen branched into cinematogra-phy, shooting a video of a playwritten and performed by foun-dation members, which portraysa male teenager’s descent intodrugs and delinquency. Thedrama was complemented by on-the-scene reports produced ondifferent school campuses.

“ It took us two years to makethe film! We could only film whenwe had the money. Some of theschool directors refused to giveus the authorization to shoot be-cause they were worried aboutdamaging their schools’ reputa-tions.”

They also took to theairwaves by producing a musichit, “Drugs No Love”: in Kenya,as elsewhere, it is more likely fora teenager to listen to the radiothan the instructions of theirelders.

Nadia KHOURI-DAGHER

Rodney came to UNESCO inearly February to meet with about30 people his age from 25 coun-tries, all trying to prevent and re-duce the demand for drugs.Through an initiative by theNGO Environnement SansFrontières, they launched TheYouth Charter for a 21st Cen-tury Free of Drugs as part ofan international campaign sup-ported by UNESCO and the

• The Nigerian journalistCHRISTINA ANYANWU willreceive the 1998 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World PressFreedom Prize. The publisherand editor in chief of TheSunday Magazine (Lagos) was

arrested after publishing anarticle about an attempted coupagainst the Nigerian govern-ment on March 1, 1995. Shewas condemned to 15 yearsimprisonment by a militarytribunal in a closed trial. She

suffers from high blood pres-sure, typhoid and malaria in“extremely harsh prison con-ditions in a country where theindependent press and freedomof information have almost dis-appeared,” said the president of

the jury which met at UNESCOon February 16. The prize,worth $25,000, was namedafter a Colombian journalist,assassinated in the course of hiswork. It will be awarded on May3, World Press Freedom Day.

W hen he was seven, hebought his first diving

mask and while his friendssplashed about and built sand-castles, he spent hours gazing atfish, seaweed and shells.

which a score of people haveworked for more than four years,involves a system of using plantsand living things as “ecologicalsentinels,” which disappear orproliferate according as to howthe ecosystem changes.

“When a forest burns, youcan see it,” says Garcia Gomez.“But with the ocean, you can’t seewhat’s happening, so it’s harderto assess ecological damage andhow to prevent it.”

More than 1,700 animal andvegetable species have beenfound in the bay, including 30hitherto unknown to scientists,such as the Reinera Mucosasponge, which produces a chemi-cal which appears to fight cancer.

But the reseaddrch also re-vealed the disappearance of manyspecies, including some seaweedswhich grew in abundance 30years ago.

“In the 200 years since theIndustrial Revolution,” saysGarcia Gomez, “human beingshave done more damage to theenvironment than at any time pre-viously. Thousands of biologi-cal species are vanishing everyyear. The human species is outof control.”

Garcia Gomez has also madea name as an underwater photog-rapher and some of his 10,000 orso pictures shot in the Red Sea,the Indian Ocean, the Pacific andeven the Antarctic have wonprizes too. His equipment is defi-nitely more state-of-the-art thanthe little goggles he wore when hewas seven, but his passion is justthe same.

Today, at 41, Jose CarlosGarcia Gomez from Andalusia isone of the most gifted marinebiologists of his generation. Asthe director of the marine biol-ogy laboratory at the Universityof Seville, he won a new scien-tific honour on January 17 - aUNESCO-sponsored prizeawarded by the World Confedera-tion of Subaquatic Activities for aproject (the first of its kind in Eu-rope) to ecologically monitor theBay of Algeciras, in southernSpain.

“I fell madly in love with thesea when I was a boy,” he sayswith an infectious enthusiasm. “Ifelt an irresistible call and sworethat I would later work by and forthe sea.”

The Bay of Algeciras is oneof the Mediterranean’s mostcrowded human and industrialareas. The winning project, on

N.K.-D.and Liliana SAMPEDRO

«THE CULTURAL DYNAMISM THAT MARKS THE AMERICAS AND THECARIBBEAN TODAY... COULD PROVE THE CRUCIBLE FOR WHAT HAS

TO BE A MAJOR GOAL FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM:CULTURAL PLURALISM» (Photo © Luz Maria Martínez Montiel).

ALL

ARTI

CLES

ARE

FRE

E OF

COP

YRIG

HT R

ESTR

ICTI

ONS.

SEE

P.3

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

F O C U S

The project is also an opportunity torethink Africa, whose major problems ofunder-development and ethnic conflictscannot be explained without reference tothe unprecedented savagery of thetrade.

It is also a chance for Africa to displayonce more its incredible cultural vitality.African slaves stood up to the violence ofthe slave trade armed with the living forceof their culture, their gods, their legends,values, traditions and rhythms - all of theseburied in their souls, beyond the reach ofthe slave owner, who was only interestedin their bodies.

But slave trafficking would not have lastedas long as it did without an ideology ofmoral justifications and legal structures.The ideology was the intellectual argumentof racial superiority - the cultural denigra-tion of black people and of Africa whichrationalized the sale of human beings asmerchandise. The slave trade has now dis-appeared, but the racism that underpinnedit is still wreaking havoc. The judicial struc-tures grew out of the notorious “Codesnoirs,” (Black Codes) which have been re-moved from historical and legal memory,but which urgently need to be recalled.

The slave trade was also the biggestforced movement of people in history and

7. . . . . .

THE SLAVE ROUTE

A MEMORY UNCHAINED

T h i s m o n t h ’s d o s s i e r

UNESCO’s “Slave Route” project isinspired by French historian Jean-

Michel Deveau’s comment that the trans-atlantic slave trade was “the greatest trag-edy in human history because of its extentand the time it lasted.” A tragedy whichwrenched tens of millions of Africans fromtheir villages to be transported to theAmericas and the West Indies.

Slavery is a universal phenomenon.The Ancient Greeks made it into a fine art.But the transatlantic trade was special inthree ways - its duration (about 400 years),its racial nature (the black African as itsmain symbol) and its legal organization(the special laws which were drawn up).

This is why the slave trade is sofirmly repressed in history and in the sub-conscious of those involved. TheUNESCO project wants to go beyond thelegitimate feelings this human commercearouses and sponsor rigorous scientific re-search into the root causes, methods andconsequences of the trade.

The slave trade is barely present in hu-manity’s collective memory and historybooks, even African histories. This silencehas “fed the fertile womb which gave birthto the vile beast,” in the words of Germanplaywright Bertold Brecht. The fight forhuman rights is a fight for remembrance,for any tragedy hidden away can appearagain in different forms.

was thus a meeting - or a throwing togetherof cultures. This intermingling of Africans,Americans Indians and Europeans has pro-duced the cultural dynamism that marks theAmericas and the Caribbean today. It couldalso prove to be the crucible for what hasto be a major goal for the third millenium:cultural pluralism, or the ability and the po-tential of different people, religions andcultures to live side by side.

In modern city suburbs, the vibrant ar-tistic expressions rooted in slave trade in-teraction in the Americas and the Carib-bean, such as rap music, raise the questionof cultural pluralism in western societies.UNESCO wants to highlight this plural-ism through “The Slave Route” project,which aims to consider the process of iden-tity resulting from this interaction, from thechemistry between the essence of a peopleand what they receive from the outside, evenif through violence.

So UNESCO is promoting a kind ofcollective catharsis to move things fromtragedy to life. To show Europe, Africa,the Americas and the Caribbean travellingthe same road together towards a commonfuture - facing a tragedy as one and con-sciously fertilizing the result in the spiritof a culture of peace.

Doudou DIÈNEDirector, Intercultural Projects

WREAK ING HAVOC

The transatlantic slave trade, which fuelled the world economy during the 18th century, saw thegreatest deportation in history (see below & pp.12-13). This must be said out loud, and we mustcontinue examining the evidence of it. This terrible human tragedy, spread out over several centuries,and “legitimized” by racist arguments (p.9), has been pushed back into the depths of our collectivememory - as is patently clear, for example, in the treatment it receives in school textbooks (p.8).Yet, the slave trade left a heavy legacy. It shook the African continent’s evolution to its foundations,weakening all development there since (p.10). It also produced a cultural dynamism in the Americasand the Caribbean, the value and potential for creativity of which was long denied (p.11). Recognizingand assuming this legacy is very much a subject of current and often bitter debate (p.14). It’s alsoa preliminary condition for a more serene and cooperative relationship between the three continentsconcerned (p.15), UNESCO’s ultimate heading for the Slave Route (p.16).

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

D o s s i e r

8. . . . . .

MAINTAINING THE IGNORANCEShame, guilt, racism and incognizance: for all these reasons textbooks in Europe, America and Africadeal lightly, and inaccurately with the slave trade.

In France and elsewhere in Europe, theslave trade is considered a marginal sub-

ject of study. It is hardly written into schoolcurricula even though it was the motor ofthe world economy during the 18th cen-tury,” says French university professorJean-Michel Deveau, who recently startedexamining the need for new teaching toolson the slave trade. “What’s more, the tradeis referred to in a completely ignorant man-ner. Textbooks are stuffed with stereotypessuch as ‘the blacks were bought with trin-kets’. It’s very racist: it insinuates the Afri-cans were complete idiots who sold them-selves for worthless objects. Most of all, it’sfalse. The slaves were exchanged accord-ing to a highly delineated protocol, for tex-tiles - which represented 70% of slave ships’cargo - iron bars, fire arms, utensils suchas metal basins and, in some sectors, foralcohol. Merchandise without value suchas glass jewellery and parasols was effec-tively part of the deal but it served as a kindof bonus. These texts also refer to great Afri-can states as ‘little kinglets’.

France is not alone. “In the UnitedKingdom, the trade is referred to essen-tially in the context of abolition,” addsDeveau. “They may have decreed it first...but they do not say how many expeditionsthey led, nor that they were the biggest slavetraders on the planet.”

The under-representation of the slave tradein Portuguese textbooks may appear “lessshocking” in the sense that it reflects “astep forward” explains Isabel CastroHenriques, from Lisbon University. “We’vecaught up with the European norms andthat’s already something. After having beentotally avoided, the slave trade issue ap-peared about 15 years ago when school-books were revised to get rid of colonialideology. However, the trade occupies lessspace than events of Portuguese expansionjudged to be more noble, like the great dis-coveries.”

“This gap has its roots in the generalambience surrounding the problem,” ex-plains Deveau. “There’s a willingness todisguise, there’s western guilt. We wereslave-holders, torturers and we don’t wantto admit it. We have to start by breaking

this silence and schools will follow. Thetrade also goes back to Africa, which isweighed down by racist parameters thatwe are far from being rid of. Another ele-ment: school textbooks follow research. Weare very few in Europe to study the trade.In large French ports, university staffsdon’t want to touch it because it would al-ienate the local bourgeoisie.”

On the American side, if slavery istreated in schools, the trade and its Afri-can context remain shadowy areas. It is an

observation as valid for the United Statesas for Brazil. “Slavery is taught every-where, with more or less insistence, as apart of American history,” explains JosephHarris from Howard University in Wash-ington. “It’s difficult to generalize becausethe programmes differ according towhether the school is private, religious,public... In most of the black schools, slav-ery is getting stronger treatment, while inthe south, certain teachers rush over it.”For Harris, the theme is still “under-rep-resented ” because it has been developedout of context: “when you teach a lessonabout the settlement of the Europeans inthe United States, you speak of their back-ground. It should be the same with the Af-ricans. And yet in the vast majority ofschools, we start with slavery as if it sig-nalled the beginning of black history.”

In Brazil, researcher Joel Rufino dosSantos stresses that“when teachers wantsome information on the history of Africa,

they refer to French textbooks. The tradeis hardly mentioned. We only speak of slav-ery, and always in an ideological manner;either blacks were reified - presented asthe pawns in a new international divisionof labour - or children are told that Brazil-ian slavery was ‘soft’, less cruel than thatof the United States.”

Paradoxically, the place occupied bythe trade in African education is hardlylarger. “It is certainly not with lightness ofheart that we speak of these capture warsand the slave traders who brought men,women and children to the coast,” recog-nizes the Guinean historian Djibril TamsirNiane. The same goes for Senegal, accord-ing to historian Mbaye Gueye, “you get theimpression that people refuse to speakabout it. However Africans must acceptto study their history. Because when youcarry a past without acknowledging it,everything you take on in the future iscast in doubt.”

The question is compounded in Africa by“editorial problems and limited means,”continues Deveau. “The countries are sopoor they can’t pay for either authors orbooks. As a result, textbooks are very old,apart from exceptions like in Benin, whichmade an effort to revise and produce oneor two extracurricular works on the slavetrade. Moreover, these countries don’t havethe means to pay researchers nor to sendthem to Europe where most of the archivesare found. Information provided orally andgathered on tape hasn’t yet been used be-cause the priority was to collect it before itdisappeared.”

“Secondary school teachers, whoshould benefit from university research, donot have access to it,” adds Mbaye Gueye.Very few theses have been published in thevarious states since their independence,imported books are exorbitantly expensiveand libraries don’t work. ”

However “tongues are starting to un-tie in Africa to speak about this ignomini-ous commerce, and the archives in Europeare opening,” concludes Niane. “We areemerging from an era of shame.”

Sophie BOUKHARI

A WI L L INGNESS TO D I SGU IS E

NO ACCESS

O N E O F T H E R A R E C O M I C S T R I P S O N T H ES L A V E T R A D E , P R O D U C E D W I T H T H EN O R W E G I A N N A T I O N A L C O M M I S S I O N

F O R U N E S C O .

ALL

ARTI

CLES

ARE

FRE

E OF

COP

YRIG

HT R

ESTR

ICTI

ONS.

SEE

P.3

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

F O C U S

D o s s i e r

9. . . . . .

RACISM, PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMICSRacist ideology was used to legitimize the slave trade, allowing it to flourish and endure.Did the Enlightenment contribute to this or help defeat it ?

Did racism against blacks begin with theslave trade? Did the Enlightenment,

the broad rationalist current of thought de-veloped up in 18th century Europe, endorseracial exploitation or did it give birth to themovement to abolish slavery?

“The buying and selling of slaves wereancient customs in Europe,” says Frenchphilosopher Louis Sala-Molins. “Since thetime of Aristotle, there had been the no-tion in the West of two kinds of people, thefree and the unfree. Trading in slaves flour-ished in medieval Europe, mainly supply-ing the Muslim rim of the Mediterranean.The word ‘slave’ came from ‘slavus’ be-cause Europeans went looking for slaveson the Balkan frontiers of Christendom,among the Slav peoples. But with the trans-atlantic slave trade, things switched fromthis relatively local scale and took on an‘industrial’ dimension.

“Racism against blacks existed well be-fore the slave trade. There was the curseon Canaan and the descendence from blackAfrica of he who was condemned by Noah.In the Bible, blacks were doomed to beslaves.”

When, for example, the Portuguesebegan navigating the African coasts, thepope authorized them to take Africans asslaves. In this way, the purchase of peopleand racism became intertwined in the West.

With the Enlightenment of the 18th centurycame the first attempts at anthropologicalclassification, which relegated blacks to thelowest grade of the human species. Butthere was also the great movement whichled to the French Declaration of HumanRights and the Citizen, which was mostlybased on the defence of those peoples op-pressed by Europe.

“The rationalist movement developedas a break with religious thought,” saysSala-Molins. “The Church debated thematter at length and concluded that Indi-ans and blacks were human beings and hadsouls. But the dominant language usedthen was scientific: it was in this periodthat the first anthropological categoriesappeared.

“The work of Georges Buffon (theFrench naturalist, philosopher and writer,

1707-1788), had considerable impact be-cause it was the yardstick of the time.There had always been classification, butBuffon made it ‘scientific’. Categories werecreated because the stories of returningtravellers showed there were stages in ‘be-coming a human being’. This included theidea that the white race was the most per-fect and that blacks were right at the bot-tom, close to the apes.”

knew it concerned them. They rose up withcopies in hand of the Declaration of Hu-man Rights and the Citizen.”

But as so often, events were causedmore by economic change than by a move-ment of ideas. The slave revolts were partlyinspired by the ideals of the Enlightenmentbut in practice were made possible bychanges in colonial society.

“In the 18th century, a class of mulat-tos grew up on the plantations,” saysGauthier. “Some were freed men withrights of inheritance and property. Thesewere the ‘free coloureds’. They took chargeof plantations and competed with the poorercolonists, who had a hard time in the towns.

“This gave rise to a whole range of pro-hibitions concerning professions, dress andother aspects of life, which foreshadowedthe discrimination which has endured intothe 20th century. The whites waged waron the free coloureds, seizing their land andkilling them off. When the slaves saw theirtwo masters fighting each other, they knewtheir chance for rebellion had come”.

The abolitionist movements were likewiseless the result of generosity than of the eco-nomic interests of the colonial powers.

“Abolition was strongest in England.Why was that? Were they more enlight-ened?” asks Sala-Molins. “Not at all. TheEnglish went to India and saw that whatwas produced on the American plantationscould just as well be produced there”.

“Europe simply chose another colonialsystem,” confirms Gauthier. Instead of dis-placing people, they simply set up their pro-duction systems locally.

Finally, notes Sala-Molins, “if youcompare what the Spaniards said about theIndians in the 16th century, what the Eu-ropeans said about the blacks in the 18thand what the French said about North Af-ricans in the 19th or even the 20th, it’s asif they’d copied each other. The non-whitesare supposedly all the same: lazy, drunkand good-for-nothing.

“Societies notoriously develop ideolo-gies which distrust, keep at a distance andreject those they need the most for theirmaterial success.

N.K-D.

T H E Y A R E P E O P L E !

A N O T H E R C O L O N I A L S Y S T E M

T H E N E G R O - B E T W E E N A P O L L O A N D A NO R A N G O U T A N G . . . E X T R A C T F R O M

L’ H I S T O I R E N A T U R E L L E D U G E N R EH U M A I N , B Y J . J . V I R E Y, E N D O F T H E

X V I I I C E N T U R Y ( P h o t o © B i b l i o t h è q u ec e n t r a l e M . N . H . N . , P a r i s ) .

It was even thought at the time that blackshad sex with apes, a notion which surfacedagain recently with the AIDS epidemic.

“The concept of human rights grewout of the spectacle of the conquest of theAmericas,” says French historian FlorenceGauthier. “The Enlightenment was in-spired by knowledge from the 16th centuryon unprecedented crimes against Indians andblacks and the idea of defending the rightsof these people and of humanity as a whole.

“The Enlightenment was also a revoltagainst European domination of the world.This is why blacks latched on to it: they

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

D o s s i e r

10. . . . . .

CHAIN REACTIONSThe slave trade depopulated Africa, aggravated ethnic conflict and sparked retreat to a subsistenceeconomy - but is it the root of all the continent’s problems?

In the 17th century, the population ofBlack Africa was comparable to that of

China,” according to the Senegalese his-torian Mbaye Gueye. “Today, it’s half asmany.” But the argument about depopula-tion through slavery persists, even if histo-rians agree on the number of people de-ported: “between 11 and 15 million in the18th and 19th centuries,” according to theFrench historian Jean-Michel Deveau. “Be-fore that, we don’t know, but the major, in-dustrial part of the slave trade began in the18th century.”

And for every slave who made it to theNew World, several others died on the way.Gueye estimates maybe eight to 10,Deveau between three and five. And yetmore slaves died on African soil than atsea. “The death rate on the ships was 15-18%,” says Deveau, “but many were killedduring attacks on their villages or whilethey were being marched to the coast. Insome places, women about to be captured,killed their own children.”

“Then,” says Gueye, “there were the dis-eases brought by the Europeans, like TB,syphilis and smallpox, and the faminescaused by the destruction of crops, as wellas alcoholism.” In addition, the slavestaken were the strong of childbearing age.

In the end, whole regions were depopu-lated, such as the 200 km strip north of theGulf of Guinea. “But in some depleted ar-eas, people made up for it by a soaringbirth rate” says Deveau. “After the slavetrade ended, the rate stayed high and evencaused overpopulation. More careful stud-ies are needed to work out the true depopu-lation. But the dispute is a bit pointless.However many slaves there were, it wasstill horrific.”

Indeed oral tradition recounts whatDjibril Tamsir Niane of Guinea calls the“very poorly documented tragedy” whichunfolded in the continent. It depicts a worldin the throes of great movement, with “car-riers, middlemen and brokers milling aboutthe ports and filling the roads. The storiestalk only of war, famine and fear. In theSudan-Sahel region at the end of the 19thcentury, every village had been laid wasteat least two or three times or else moved

or surrounded with walls. This fear whichis part of African psychology must be un-derstood. People only went around ingroups. Fields got smaller with people scaredto be too far away and alone. This is the ori-gin of the retreat to a subsistence economy.”

For Gueye, “this was when ethnicity,which is still at the root of many wars andconflicts in Africa, took hold.” He thinksthat by sowing discord among the king-doms and local chiefs, either by givingthem arms or bribing them, the Europeansruined the political system that was devel-oping. “Before the Europeans arrived, theSonghai and Monomotapa empires andthose in Mali, Oyo, Benin and Congo werepolitical centres developing into viablemulti-ethnic states. There was enough landfor everyone and the ruler’s authority wasgenerally accepted. Slavery existed but hadthe role of integrating delinquents, peoplewithout family and victims of disasters.”

Niane adds that “from the 16th centuryand for the next 400 years, the kings foughteach other, because to get European goodsand weapons, you had to supply slaves. Avicious circle developed. In West Africa,some groups split into sub-ethnicities, dia-lects proliferated and the caste system grewstronger. A person’s only recourse was totake refuge in the family or another suchclosed group.”

The British historian Robert Law agreesthat “in some areas conflicts between

groups began with the slave trade. Eventoday, people know who the raiders wereand who were their victims (see box). Butthe many ethnic conflicts had nothing todo with the slave trade. The Hausas mas-sacred the Ibos in Nigeria in 1966, but theyhad not come into contact with each otherbefore the 20th century.”

The Portuguese historian Isabel CastroHenriques thinks too that it is “hard to saythat the slave trade caused the completedisintegration of Africa’s societies andeconomy, if only because you can’t gener-alize about the continent as a whole.Clearly, the balance of power was altered,bringing about the fall of the coastal king-doms, but powerful new political groupsbuilt on the slave trade, rose in their place.

“However, some structures like theLunda empire, in present-day Angola, sur-vived and until the end of the 19th century,the Portuguese did not dare venture into theinterior.”

“ In some areas,” says Law, “the slavetrade gave rise to strong states like Daho-mey and an unprecedented militarization ofsociety.” All this has left its mark. he says.“But poverty in Africa has much more todo with the collapse of raw material pricesthan with the slave trade. Unless you ad-mit that the slave trade put Africa in a weakposition, forcing them to submit to the co-lonial system.”

S.B.

“The legacy of slavery is real in every African country where slavery was practised.” Historian AkosuaPerbi know what she is talking about. Not only has she written a thesis on indigenous slavery, but shelives in a country where it continues to poison relations. “As long as there is no problem”, she says“then we consider ourselves to be ‘one people’ and the identity of former slaves remains a familysecret. But the moment something goes wrong with a land claim for example, you have to show who isreally who. You can read 40 pages into a land claim to suddenly find that the holder’s great grandmotherwas bought and therefore never really owned the land.”Perbi points to her own family experience. “A few years ago, my uncle was asked to be a chief in myhometown in Ashanti country. Each of the four royal houses takes turn to appoint a chief. My uncle wasselected by our family but the other three protested. For four years, there was no peace. They even sethis car on fire. He took his case all the way up to the National House of Chiefs. ‘No!, they said. ‘Yourpedigree is a problem.’ In fact, his great great grandmother was bought in a slave market in the1800s. So my uncle had to step down. We are talking about something that happened almost 200years ago.”

“WE L IVE WITH I T EVERYDAY”

HORR I F I C

ALL

ARTI

CLES

ARE

FRE

E OF

COP

YRIG

HT R

ESTR

ICTI

ONS.

SEE

P.3

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

F O C U S

11. . . . . .

D o s s i e r

WITH BARE HANDS AND SOCIAL CEMENTIn the New World, the slaves moulded mixed cultures to find the strength to survive, integrateand resist. They continue to be a well-spring of creativity.

R ipped from their ancestral lands,branded by the foreigner with a hot

iron, shipped to the other side of the oceanand condemned to live in a concentrationcamp universe ruled by the law of profit.Where did the slaves get the strength tosurvive in the New World? It would be toosimple to just state that their African cul-ture allowed them to resist.

“I don’t think we can say that the Afri-can cultures were in themselves an instru-ment of resistance,” says Laënnec Hurbon,a specialist in Haitian voodoo and Carib-bean cultures. “Rather, they transformedthemselves in order to produce somethingnew.” It’s an opinion shared by BrazilianJoel Rufino Dos Santos. “Culture is essen-tially dynamic. From this point of view, theconcept of cultural resistance is deceptive.In Brazil, the complex whole of African cul-tures was more the founding element of anoriginal process of civilization than a fac-tor of resistance. During the entire slaveryperiod to abolition in 1888, there was apermanent, complex and marvellous inter-action between different cultures.”

“In the mind of the African who doesn’tknow where he’s going, many things occurduring the voyage,” continues Hurbon. “Heemits a cry of astonishment, surprise andsuffering, to quote the Martinique writerEdouard Glissant, translating the fact thatalready, at this stage, a new culture is ger-minating. Arriving with bare hands, with-out the symbols or the material support oftheir cultural systems, the slaves wereobliged to create.”

As soon as they were offloaded, theywere dispersed in such a way as to forgettheir origins. “Ethnic groups were system-atically mixed by the masters.”Thus be-gan new, intercultural relations betweenAfricans. Then came the meeting with theIndians. “There was for example, the learn-ing of their ecological system.” And thirdly:the forced contact with European culturesand Christianity. “This enormous intermix-ing and creative work began to take rootfrom the 17th century. It is then that Afro-American and Caribbean cultures weretruly born. These new cultural and reli-gious systems, capable of combining

multiple elements without highlighting theircontradictions, provided the slaves with akind of social cement that gave them thestrength to confront the institution of slavery.”

“Religions played an essential role asa factor of survival, integration and resist-ance,” adds Benin’s Elisée Soumonni. “Apact with the ancestors gave the force toconfront suffering. Religion provided themeans to explain events, to find a place inthe world and energy to live,” confirmsDos Santos. “Voodoo was a place of re-structuring for the different ethnic groupson the ground,” adds Hurbon. “It inte-grated different elements of Christianityand of the Indian world. It was a cultural

creation during which the slaves learnt toexpress their suffering, their oppression,their uprooting from Africa. It gave themthe possibility to symbolize this rupture andto initiate a new history, and swing frompassivity to the offensive. It was duringa voodoo ceremony that the slaves ofSaint-Domingue vowed to keep thelaunch date of the 1791 insurrection asecret.”

For Hurbon, the Afro-American cul-tures hold a particular place in humanity’scommon cultural heritage, because theywere born in the fight for freedom. “Theslaves expressed their human dignity viathe cultures they created.”

These cultures also owe this place totheir rich growth and development since.“It’s why a project like the Slave Routeshould not confine itself to historical as-pects, but examine the cultural develop-ments that resulted from the trade. Theyare often thought of as well known but thatis not the case,” adds Soumonni. This ig-norance, stresses Hurbon, has been volun-tarily orchestrated by modern states, which,continuing in the tradition of the slave-trad-ing nations, have scorned cultural devel-opments in order to minimize the contri-bution of black communities. But this isbeginning to change. As proof, Soumonnipoints to a tremendous revival in Africanstudies at American universities.

“We are discovering that the mixed systemswere important and they still are to the ex-tent that African cultures are rehabilitatedand better known,” continues Hurbon.“Greater cultural pluralism is expressedtoday in the Caribbean. In Latin America,the Catholic and Protestant churches areless hegemonous and admit new religiousmovements of Afro-American style.” In par-ticular, we are starting to recognize thatthese cultures were the matrix of innumer-able artistic creations, inspired by their rites,rhythms and myths. Martinique novelistPatrick Chamoiseau put it this way recentlyin the French weekly Le NouvelObservateur: “Music, culinary art, dance,literature, visual arts - an ‘archipeligan’way of thinking that goes beyond existingsystems.”

“For decades,” deplores Hurbon, “wehave only wanted to see an archaism, aprimitivism incompatible with modernity.But the more that these systems can bepractised in a free manner and tolerated,the greater the chance that they will evolve.The individual can acquire a critical vi-sion that demands modernity through edu-cation, the political process and the pro-gressive democratization of societies. Butin no case should a unique cultural modelbe adopted. Humanity’s wealth, after all,lies in the possibility that 100 flowers, onthe contrary, may bloom.”

S.B.

I N T E G R A T I N G A M Y R I A D O F R E L I G I O N SA N D C U L T U R E S V I A V O O D O O

( P h o t o © G A M M A - L i a i s o n / G . S m i t h ) .

SURPR IS E AND SUFF ER ING

R I T ES RHYTHMS AND MYTHS

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

F A C T S I N M A P S

12. . . . . .

QuébecNova Scotia

Canary Islands

Montréal

New York

Richmond

LiverpoolLondon

Paris

Toulon

Venice

RomeNap

GenoaBordeaux

LisbonGranada

Arguin

Gorée Island

AlladaLagos

Calabar

Cadi

Lu

ElminaBonny

Ouidah

Seville

BarcelonaMarseille

Bristol

Charleston

Mexico CityVeracruz

Cartagena

Lima

ValparaisoSantiago Buenos

Aires

Montevideo

Rio de Janeiro

Pernambuco

SalvadorCallao

MobileNew Orleans

Legend

Principal trade and slave routes:Arab Arab and European European Internal African Convict labour routes Selected slave destinations/transit points

Selected origin of slave cargoes:Primary Secondary Tertiary

THE SLAVE ROUTESThis map shows the extent of the deportation of enslaved African populations up until 1873,when the final treaty abolishing the East African trade came into force.

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

F A C T S I N M A P S

13. . . . . .

Australia

Tasmania

ce

eaples

dinda

uanda

Quelimane

IboKilwa

Zanzibar

Mombasa

Mogadishu

Cairo

Khartoum

Muscat

Calcutta MacaoCanton

Hangzhou

Hormuz

Basra

Suakin

Massawah

ZeilaBerbera

Istanbul

AlexandriaBaghdad

ShirazBandar-Abbas Delhi

Karachi

Diu

BombayHyderabad

Goa

Nagasaki

Cochin

Malacca

Mecca

HodeidaMocha

Aden

Jedda

Hobart

Capetown

Madagascar

MauritiusRéunion

Sumatra

Borneo

© 1990 Joseph E. Harris Produced by Clark University Cartographic Service

In 1873, the final treaty abolishing the slave trade on Africa’s east coast was signed by England and the Sultan ofZanzibar. This map shows the main sea routes taken by Arab, European and American traders. The debarkation andsettlement zones are indicated as well as the ports transited by African crews, locations of slaves taken on home leaveto England and France by slave-holders and military officers, and points in England and Canada where slaves weretaken following the American War for Independence in 1783.

The overland routes in Africa led to the embarkation ports on the coast. Those slaves who came from the north ofthe continent via the Sahara Desert were normally shipped to Arab or Muslim areas across the Mediterranean Sea; thosefrom the northeast to Asia via the Red Sea; those from the East African coast, to Asia and the Americas; those fromthe West African coast, to Europe and the Americas via the Atlantic Ocean.

A small number of Africans were also among the convicts sent to Australia from England, the West Indies,Mauritius and South Africa during the 19th century.

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

D o s s i e r

14 . . . . . .

THE DIFFICULTIES OF SAYING SORRYA proposal to make a formal apology to black Americans whose ancestors suffered under slaveryproves too hot to handle.

Forty acres and a mule. That was thepackage promised to freed slaves after

the Civil War in the United States. But likeso many promises, it largely went unkept -but not forgotten.

In June 1997, Congressman Tony Hallof Ohio proposed a simple resolution: “theCongress apologizes to African Americanswhose ancestors suffered as slaves underthe Constitution and laws of the UnitedStates until 1865” (when slavery was for-mally abolished throughout the union).Hall’s reasoning was clear: “when a brotherwrongs a brother, he apologizes. That isthe foundation for beginning again. Thatis the price for restoring lost trust... It hasbeen 135 years since slavery ended. Sincethat time, Congress has taken proud stridesforward, including civil rights laws. Butthey are not enough...”

However, as many were quick to pointout, it’s easy to say ‘I’m sorry’. Who needsanother empty gesture? But “if it was someaningless,” asked Hall, “why has theresolution erupted into a firestorm of con-troversy throughout the nation?”

Indeed, the resolution sparked a chargeddebate over collective and individual guilt.On one side, Americans harked back to theirimmigrant ancestors whom, they said, boreno connection to the slave owners or legis-lators responsible for legitimizing the trade.

The opposite side saw the black com-munity continuing to suffer from the legacyof slavery with glaring inequalities in in-come, education, employment and hous-ing. They reminded that collective apolo-gies were nothing new in the United States.Just one month before, the president apolo-gized for the Tuskegee experiment in whichgovernment doctors used about 600 blackmen as guinea pigs in the 1930s and 40sby not treating them for syphilis in orderto study the disease.

According to a Gallup poll, two out ofthree whites objected to a formal apology,while two out of three blacks supported it.But the issue was not so simple.

“The Congressional Black Caucus doesnot have an official position - and weshould not have one,” said Congress-woman Maxine Waters of California. “We

should carry on as proud African-Ameri-cans demanding justice and equality ... Toapologize or not to apologize - it is forwhite America to answer.”

Many civil rights groups like the Na-tional Urban League and the United Churchof Christ (UCC), were concerned that thecontroversy surrounding the apologywould overshadow the real issues. “It’s alittle difficult to take seriously all the talkabout apology from a nation which isquickly retreating from the closest thing wehave had to restitution - affirmative ac-tion,” wrote Bernice Powell Jackson of theUCC Commission for Racial Justice (TheCivil Rights Journal, July 14,1997).

Affirmative action refers to legislativemeasures ensuring that minority groups areappropriately represented in universities,government and business. Although underfierce attack in state legislatures and a re-publican-controlled Congress, it is stillconsidered a cornerstone for reducing in-equalities by many civil rights groups rep-resenting the black community. For thesegroups, if the Congress really wanted toatone for the sins of slavery, it could beginby taking the steps needed to reduce thoseinequalities. After all, when the governmentapologized for the forced internment of Japa-nese Americans during the Second WorldWar, the victims were awarded $20,000 each.

“Reparations are probably politicallyproblematic,” wrote Jackson of the UCC.“But if Congress is serious about apology,then restitution might take the form of

college scholarships, job training pro-grammes, prison intervention and alterna-tive programmes.”

But the talk of reparations transformedthe apology issue into a defence lawyer’sworst nightmare - a Pandora’s box ofindemnities. How do you convert suffer-ing of such a massive yet diffuse scale intodollars and cents?

President Clinton originally expressedinterest in the apology, but later steeredclear of the issue. “Slavery has left deepscars on our nation,” he said. “Togetherwe will continue to address these issues,but at this time, I do not believe that anapology or a discussion of reparations is

the best way to move the country forwardon this issue.” Instead, Mr Clinton focusedon his new Race Initiative with a commis-sion set up to find ways of offering “realopportunities to Americans who work hard,but who continue to face barriers of dis-crimination based on race. We want tohighlight successful examples of Americanscoming together across racial lines to over-come the divisive legacies of our past.”

In the meanwhile, the proposed apol-ogy sits in a judiciary committee, awaitinga hearing which is unlikely to take place.According to a spokesperson at Congress-man Hall’s office, the resolution will prob-ably be reintroduced next year. And whatis another 12 months to apologize for thesufferings of several generations.

Amy OTCHET

D IV IDED OP IN IONS

I N S A NF R A N C I S C O

A M A R C HA G A I N S T

P R O P O S I T I O N ST O E N D

A F F I R M A T I V EA C T I O N

( P h o t o ©G A M M A

L I A I S O N /D a r c y P a d i l l a ) .

ALL

ARTI

CLES

ARE

FRE

E OF

COP

YRIG

HT R

ESTR

ICTI

ONS.

SEE

P.3

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

F O C U S

“ We organized two seminars on theslave trade and invited teachers, studentsand university people from Ghana and StCroix, the biggest of the Virgin Islands tocome and stay with Norwegian families,”says Hareide. “The first part of the projectinvolves using the Associated Schools tospread more information about the slavetrade in the classroom and encourage chil-dren to talk about it and come to terms withit. It is also a way of learning about othersocieties. A school in St Croix is corre-sponding by email with one in Norway towrite a little newspaper together. It’s likea catharsis. Until very recently, we neverdared to see what the slave trade reallywas. We also want to make young peoplelook at modern forms of slavery.”

Adults have a lot to learn too from theseexchanges. “A Ghanaian teacher who washere last April is still in touch with herNorwegian colleagues.” She wants to takeadvantage of the International Year of theOcean to study sea routes at the time ofthe slave trade and their effects on humansettlement. Contacts between university

teachers are also fruitful. “At one of the twoseminars I was invited to,” says Ghanaianhistorian Akosua Perbi, “I told the realstory of the slave trade in Ghana. The Nor-wegians are going to use some of that in-formation for their teaching materials. Iwas also able to correct a few mistakes intheir cartoon book.”

Perbi also made new friends. “In Nor-way, I met George Tyson, a colleague fromthe Virgin Islands, who invited me topresent my work on internal slavery in

15. . . . . . .

D o s s i e r

ALL IN THE SAME BOATA chapter of Norway’s history has resurfaced with the discovery of the wreck of a slave shipoff its coast.

Were Scandinavia’s slavetraders just twisted hippies? Asilly question, of course. Yetthe words “peace” and “love”were the only two found in thewreck of the Fredensborg,

one of the ships chartered by the RoyalDanish West Indies and Guinea Company.They appear on a seal around an image of adove with an olive branch in its beak. Al-most a message to future generations.

The students in Norway belonging toUNESCO’s Associated Schools Project(4,250 schools in 137 countries) have re-ceived the message loud and clear. “Theydecided to make the seal the logo of theNorwegian contribution to the Slave Routeproject they are involved in,” says MariHareide, secretary-general of the Norwe-gian National Commission for UNESCO,who is coordinating the project, which wasstarted after the discovery of theFredensborg.

This ship is the reason for Norway’s inter-est in the Slave Route. It sailed from thekingdom of Denmark (which then includedNorway) to the Gold Coast and the VirginIslands in the Caribbean (sold to the UnitedStates in 1917 for $25 million). It left withEuropean goods, used to buy slaves in Af-rica who were then brought to the islandplantations and exchanged for colonialproducts. To return to Copenhagen, it hadto first go up to Norway to benefit from thewinds. But in 1768, it sank in a storm offthe coast of Norway with a cargo of sugar,rum, elephant tusks and two slaves.”

Three divers identified the wreck inSeptember 1974 and brought up the tusks.“ It is one of the best documents on slaveships ever found. We have all the recordsin Denmark. So we know exactly who wason board, how many trips were made andmore.” The divers were so impressed thatthey did further research, which last yearresulted in an exhibition and two books,one of them in cartoon form. Norway hasalso earmarked three million dollars overfive years (1997-2001) for the Slave Routeproject, which is exceptional for a countrywhich only played a small part in the tradecompared to other European nations.

Ghana. I went for the first time in January.It was refreshing. Actually, I was touched.I’ve been teaching African history for thepast 17 years and for the first time I got toexperience the thing that I had read about.In the Akan language, a slave is called‘donko’. When I said this in St Croix, anelderly lady sang a song to me in Englishwith the word in it. She was fascinated whenshe learned what donko meant. Anotherteacher, from the island of St John, told methat where he came from, cola nuts werecalled ‘bisaa’. Another Akan word. And thefood! I ate a chicken soup that tasted justlike it does at home.”

Through Norway, Africa is discoveringAmerica. Such cultural exchanges will in-crease in the course of the Norwegianproject, which includes the holding of tri-continental festivals. Another way is byrestoring cultural monuments. Some Gha-naian coastal forts, which still have Dan-ish names, may be restored and becomeplaces of remembrance. “We must acceptthe past instead of trying to forget it,” saysPerbi.

In St Croix, attitudes are changing. Af-ter repressing their history, the islanders arenow keen to discover it and are doing ge-nealogical research. “To be the descendentof a slave has never been something to beproud of. But to have survived the cross-ing, to have freed oneself and to have be-gun a new life is something honourable.We have to build this sense of pride. Thatis what many of us are working on now.”

S.B.

T H EF R E D E N S B O R G -A V E R YC O N C R E T ER E M E M B R A N C E( P h o t o ©L e i f S v a l e s e n ,N o r w a y ) .

A TR I CONT INENTAL TRADER

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

D o s s i e r

16. . . . . .

A THREE-PRONGED APPROACHHistorical truth, remembrance and intercultural dialogue form the basis of the Slave Route project,which also aims to contribute to building a culture of peace.

TO FIND OUT MORE ...

To highlight the original causes and thepractices of the transatlantic slave trade,

the project’s 43-member international sci-entific committee has recommended givingpriority to studying documentary sourcesand preparing classroom material.

The question of sources was dealt withat three meetings of the committee - inAlcala de Henares (Spain) on “The Ibe-rian records of the slave trade” (October1995), in Conakry (Guinea) on “Oral tra-dition and the slave trade” (March 1997)and in Copenhagen (Denmark) on “Euro-pean records of the slave trade” (Febru-ary 1996).

With money from the Norwegian aidagency NORAD, UNESCO’s educationsector, and especially the coordination unitof the Associated Schools Project, hasdrawn up a detailed plan to mobilize thenetwork’s 4,250 schools in 137 countriesand prepare teaching material. UNESCO issupporting work already done in this re-spect, especially by the French town of LaRochelle.

The importance of preserving thememory of the slave trade can be illustratedby the remark of Nobel Prizewinner ElieWiesel that “the executioner kills twice, thesecond time by silence.” It is this silence -historical, scientific and moral - on thetragedy of the slave trade which is per-haps the biggest challenge of the SlaveRoute project.

The hope is that, by being studied, thetopic will acquire a universal quality andfeature in the history books of everycountry, alongside all the other majortragedies of human history. UNESCO

therefore attaches great importance to thevisibility of the project and it has alreadybeen widely reported on in the press andthe audiovisual media.

The project has accordingly led to thelaunching, with the World Tourism Organi-zation, of a joint cultural tourism pro-gramme on the Slave Route to help the

countries involved to identify, restore andpromote all the places, buildings andphysical symbols of the transatlanticslave trade. The implementation of thisprogramme is being carried out in closecooperation with African culture andtourism ministries and with the Organi-zation of African Unity (OAU).

To encourage remembrance, UNESCOis also setting up, notably with the back-ing of NORAD, a number of slavery mu-seums in countries which have asked forthem, including Haiti (the initiator of theSlave Route project), Cuba and Angola.

The project’s contribution to a cultureof peace is its investigation and publiciz-ing of the tragedy of the slave trade andof the interactions it produced in theAmericas and the Caribbean. This ap-proach is reflected very well in the title agroup of intellectuals in the French port cityof Nantes gave to a recent exhibition on theslave trade. They called it “The Chains ofMemory”. The chain, or metal ring, sym-bolizes the iron which keeps the slave a pris-oner but also the deep and complex link theslave trade forged between Africa, Europe,the Americas and the Caribbean.

This is why one of the key aspects ofthe project is the highlighting of the extra-ordinary process of “multi-cultura-lization” which the slave trade generatedin the Americas and the Caribbean.

Several big events and meetings have al-ready taken place: in Port-au-Prince (Haiti)on the slave uprising of August 22, 1791,in the colony of St Domingue; in Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe) on the theme of “be-tween histories and memories on both sidesof the slave route”; and in Santiago (Cuba)on cultural interaction, national identity andsociety.

Conferences on the African diaspora,where proceedings will be published, areplanned for Brazil, Jamaica and the Do-minican Republic.

Doudou DIÈNE

GENERAL HISTORY OF AFRICA: The eightvolumes move from African prehistory (vol.I, 1981) to 1935 (vol. VIII, 1993) inanalyzing the evolution from ancientcivilizations to the demise of colonialdomination. Abridged editions are alsoavailable.

GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CARIBBEAN:Slave societies are the focus of vol. III(1997) analyzing demographics, socialstructures, forms of repression and resist-ance as well as the creolization and plural-ism of the 18th and 19th centuries.

S I L ENCE

D I A S P O R A

THE UNESCO COURIER: “Slavery - A crimewithout punishment”, October 1994.

DIOGENE: n°. 179 Vol. 46/2-1998, is on theroutes and traces of the slaves.

A B O U T T O B E S O L D , A S L A V E I S L E F TI N A N E T I N B R A Z Z A V I L L E

( T H E R E P U B L I C O F C O N G O ) ( P h o t o ©M u s é e d e l ’ H o m m e / R . P. L e r a y ) .

A history

of the ideas,

peoples and their

interactions with

other cultures

and continents,

from prehistoric

to modern times

in eight volumes.

UNESCO PublishingPrice per volume: 300 FF

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

A l l a r t i c l e s a r e f r e e o f c o p y r i g h tr e s t r i c t i o n s a n d c a n b e r e p r o d u c e d .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

P L A N E T

18. . . . . .

THE POWER OF CULTURECulture provides us with society’s building blocks, and governmentpolicies need to take this into account.

C u l t u r e

In India, an estimated ten million people -mostly women - work in craft industries.Japan boasts more than half a million pro-fessional artists, and “cultural industries”such as book publication and audiovisualproduction, account for an estimated 2% ofthe country’s GNP.

In 1996, French families spent 182.5billion francs in the cultural sector, whichemploys more than 412,000 people (notincluding teachers employed by the minis-try of culture or those employed in localcultural services). Between 1950 and 1990,the number of Americans employed in “ar-tistic occupations” increased by 400%. Anda recent study in the British city of Man-chester showed that every job created inthe culture sector there generates another2.8 in the service sector.

Worldwide, an estimated 100 millionpeople live outside their country of origin,many of them settling in countries whosecultural identities are radically differentfrom their homelands. In Los Angeles, forexample, some 180 languages are spoken,and more than a third of Australia’s popu-lation originates from non-English speak-ing cultural backgrounds.

Despite what might be seen as a “newcosmopolitanism” some 40% of the 40 cur-rent “major armed conflicts” listed inPloughshares Armed Conflicts Report1997, are described as “state formationwars” in which “ethnicity, communalidentity and religion” play a prominentpart.

These figures provide an indication of thecentral role culture plays in our lives. Thereport of the UN/UNESCO World Commis-sion on Culture and Development (OurCreative Diversity) argues that it is one ofthe main keys to successful development -human and economic - touching, if not shap-ing, virtually every aspect of our lives. Yet,for most of the world’s governments it isstill a low priority. Where cultural policydoes exist, it is usually focused on the artsand conservation. The IntergovernmentalConference on Cultural Policies for Devel-opment, to be held in Stockholm (Sweden)from March 30 to April 2, has set itself thegoal of changing this.

A follow up to the Commission onCulture and Development, the conferencewill bring together delegates from aroundthe world to look at how governments canbetter fulfil their roles in this domain. Theaim is an ambitious one in a globalizing,increasingly multicultural world, where thestate and national identities are under chal-lenge, and small government is seen as theway to go.

In the United States for example, “manywould say the very idea of cultural policyis not appropriate ... that it runs counter tothe fundamental individualism that identi-fies the American way of life,” says AlbertaArthurs, the former director of arts and hu-manities at the Rockefeller Foundation.“Cultural policy (in the U.S) is handmade.It arises from local interests, new arrivalsand old beliefs...it is made out of a diver-sity of organizations across the country.”Much of the support for arts and culturalinstitutions in the United States, for exam-ple, comes from the non-profit sector, whilequestions concerning such equally culturalissues as the recognition and use of the lan-guages of large migrant communities inschools and even on streets signs, are oftendecided by municipal authorities.

France is at the other end of the scale.It has a minister of culture at the head of astrong ministry, whose objectives are thepromotion of “creation, conservation,training, the democratization of culture andcultural development,” explains JacquesRenard, the former head of cabinet for theminister of culture. “The ministry providesthe articulation between the arts and thepublic.” Up until recently, culture in Francewas considered a sector apart. Its “reinte-gration” with the economy still fuels de-bate. “Culture cannot be submitted to thelaws of the market place” argues Renard.“A balance must be struck between the eco-nomic imperatives of the free market andthe artistic autonomy required for creationand dissemination of culture.” This think-ing also applies to the promotion and rec-ognition of France’s regional identities, butless so to its immigrants, who are more orless encouraged to become as “French” aspossible.

●

Some 1,000 PEACE PACKS are ontheir way to the Associated SchoolsNetwork operating in 147 countries.The colourful back-packs include:posters on the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, tolerance, booklets onthe UN and UNESCO, and kids’ viewson “What is a Good Teacher?”. Thereis also a video on the seven Culture ofPeace Festivals held for kids aroundthe world and fun materials like amask and pencil puppets.

●

Ten YOUNG VOLUNTEERS f r om t heBa sque Coun t r y ( Spa i n ) w i l l j o i nt e chn i c a l a s s i s t an c e and human i t a r i anp ro j e c t s i n L a t i n Amer i c a and A s i a unde ran ag r eemen t s i gned by UNESCO and t heAu t onomous Gove rnmen t o f t h e Ba squeCoun t r y on F eb r ua r y 24 .“ The peop l e o f t h e Ba sque Coun t r y a ref ew bu t s o l i d a r y, and we p l a c e a t t h es e r v i c e o f t h e wo r l d , t h r ough UNESCO ,t he be s t t r a i n ed you th o f ou r h i s t o r y, ”s a i d J uan J o s é I ba r r e t xe , t h e p r e s i d en to f t h e Ba sque Gove rnmen t , wh i c h i sf i nan c i ng t h e vo l un t ee r s ’ pa r t i c i p a t i on .

A L O W P R I O R I T Y

H A N D M A D E

The packs are part of an experimentalproject - the organizers hope toextend with supplementary sponsor-ship.

(Pho

to U

NESC

O/M

. Cl

aude

).

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

P L A N E T

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

19. . . . . .

C u l t u r e

While France is still overcoming itsreservations about mixing culture and eco-nomics, Thailand’s cultural policy, foryears, has been directed solely at improv-ing GNP, with culture viewed as a com-modity to be measured in dollars and cents.“Up until the crash of the financial mar-kets and the ensuing recession, culturalpolicy was based on materialistic devel-opment, such as the number of tourists vis-iting the country,” says Chakrarot

Chitrabongs, the deputy secretary-generalof Thailand’s National Culture Commis-sion, which comes under the umbrella ofthe education ministry. “This very limitedvision led to a false and unnatural repre-sentation of Thailand’s culture. The crash,by bringing an end to a certain number ofillusions, provided an opportunity for cul-ture workers to be heard. There has been alot of political and academic pressurebrought to bear on the powers that be, tomake them understand the importance ofculture in terms of social development. Thegoal now is to integrate cultural policy intoevery aspect of national development, fromeducation to security.

“We have launched our own decade fornational cultural development, based onUNESCO’s decade of the same name(1987-1997), and although our budget ismodest, it is increasing by about 20% an-nually. We are also working on an index ofgross national happiness - to counter thefocus on production and economic success- that takes people’s welfare into account,and moving away from the idea that lowincomes mean under-development.”

South Africa is also changing the di-rection of its cultural policy. Few there need

convincing of culture’s importance, start-ing with President Nelson Mandela who be-lieves that “culture should be the languagethat heals and transforms the nation.”

“Under the apartheid regime the stateused culture as a means to keep peopleapart, and policy was solely aimed at pro-moting the cultural values of the white popu-lation,” explains Dr Amareswar Galla, aformer advisor to the Arts and Culture TaskGroup in South Africa, and director of the

Australian Centre for Cultural DiversityResearch and Development at the Univer-sity of Canberra. “On the other hand, theSouth African freedom movement, used artas one of the most powerful tools of resist-ance. Immediately after the elections theSouth African government initiated a proc-ess unprecedented anywhere else in theworld, of comprehensively reviewing cul-tural policy.”

South Africa’s government “clearly seesthat cultural policy is its responsibility”,says Galla, “the national policy providingfor the development of regional ap-proaches.” However, much remains to bedone at the local level he says, to “genu-inely ground culture in community devel-opment.”

This will also be one of the messagesfrom the Stockholm conference. To be ef-fective and to fully bear its fruit, culturalpolicy cannot be left to the narrow confinesof market forces, or valued only by culture’scontribution to a country’s GNP. It cannotbe dictated by powerful minorities and it isnot the preserve of a social elite. It is thebusiness of everyone.

S.W.

●

Mystery and danger enshroud theVALLEY OF JARS, an archaeologicalsite dating back to 300 BC withmegalithic funerary jars weighing asmuch as a tonne in northern Laos.Archaeological excavations endedthere in the 1930s as conflict erupted.Three million tonnes of bombs pum-melled the area and today the site islittered with undetonated B-52 bombsand land-mines of various origins.During a visit to Laos on February 2,the Director-General appealed for thevalley’s restoration and excavation,and contributed $50,000 as seedfunding.

▼

“SOUTH- EAST EUROPE : A CROSS -ROAD OF CULTURES ” wa s t h e t h emeo f a c on f e r en c e o r gan i z ed a t UNESCO ,Feb rua r y 9 t o 10 , by t h e pe rmanen tde l ega t i on s o f t h e reg i on ’s n i n e c oun -t r i e s : A l ban i a , Bo sn i a -He r zegov i na ,Bu l ga r i a , G r ee c e , t h e F ede ra l Repub l i c o fYugo s l a v i a , t h e f o rme r Yugo s l a v Repub l i co f Ma cedon i a , t h e Repub l i c o f Mo l dova ,R o m a n i a a n d Tu r k e y.Some 30 h i s t o r i an s and s o c i o l og i s t sana l y zed l i nk s be tween t he peop l e s o ft he Ba l kan s du r i ng d i s c u s s i on s on t h e“Road s o f F a i t h , Road s o f Tr ade” , “ Eu ro -pean t hough t ” and “Pe r c ep t i on s o f t h eO the r ” . T he a im wa s t o he l p hea l wound scau sed by t h e r eg i on ’s v i o l en t c on f l i c t s .

C U L T U R EC O N T R I B U T I N GT O D E V E L O P M E N T( P h o t o ©H O A - Q U I /E . V a l e n t i n ) .

●

A t t en t i on a r t i s t s l e s s t han 35 yea r s o l ds eek i ng t o t r a i n ab road i n v i s ua l a r t s ,mu s i c , dan ce , c r ea t i v e w r i t i ng , t h ea t r ea r t s , t ex t i l e d e s i gn o r med i a a r t ! Abook l e t f r om t he I n t e rna t i ona l F und f o rt he P r omo t i on o f Cu l t u r e ( I FPC ) p r e s en t s58 BURSAR I ES f o r 1998 -1999 i n 31coun t r i e s . I n f o rma t i on i s p r ov i ded on t hena tu r e o f t h e ho s t i n s t i t u t i on and t hebu r s a r y, d e t a i l s c on c e rn i ng e l i g i b i l i t y andapp l i c a t i on s .

☛ Ava i l ab l e t h r ough t he I FPC

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

A l l a r t i c l e s a r e f r e e o f c o p y r i g h tr e s t r i c t i o n s a n d c a n b e r e p r o d u c e d .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

P L A N E T

crop - then highly uniform because it wasdescended from a small number of plants.

In 1943 in India, brown spot diseasedestroyed the rice crop and started the“great Bengal famine”, while wheat stemrush took most of the hard wheat crop inthe United States in 1953 and 1954.

Wild species help overcome these menaces.The brown planthopper sucks the sap outof rice plants and transmits a viral diseasecalled grassy stunt. It struck the rice fieldsof South and Southeast Asia with a venge-ance in the 1960s and 1970s: in Indonesiaalone three million tons of rice - enough tofeed nine million people for a year - werelost between 1974 and 1977. The solutionto the contagion menacing the world’snumber one food was found in one wildspecies related to rice, collected in a water-logged field in the state of Uttar Pradesh inIndia, which contained a gene resistant tothe virus. That gene is found today in everyhigh-yielding variety of rice grown in tropi-cal Asia.

Many basic fruits and vegetables owetheir high nutritional content and flavourto their wild relatives. The modern tomato,owes its high vitamin count to a gene in-troduced from a rare wild species in Peruwith fruit the size of small cherries. Fromwild pineapples in Argentina, Paraguay andBrazil, comes increased acidity, high sugarcontent and a fuller flavour. And wild rela-tives of strawberries from Canada, Califor-nia and Chile have provided the genes todramatically boost commercial yields.

“There are also many potentially newcrops that could be developed from wildplants,” says Sir Ghillean. “New productsfor instance, are being developed fromquinoa and amaranth in the Amazon.” Notto mention the medical possibilities, whichpharmaceutical companies twigged tosome time ago. They have been scouringsites around the world in search of plantsthat may lead to the development of newtreatments, in some cases contributing totheir extinction.

Prunus africana for example is a treewhich grows in montane forests through-out central, north-eastern and eastern Af-rica and Madagascar. Its bark contains

E n v i r o n m e n t

20. . . . . .

A WALK ON THE WILD SIDEWild plants contribute more to our well-being than realized,and the price paid for ignoring them will be costly.The new edition of the World ConservationUnion’s Red Data Book of threatenedplants, due out in April, lists more than33,500 species. “This means that more than13% of the world’s estimated quarter of amillion plant species are in danger,” saysSir Ghillean Prance, the director of theRoyal Botanic Gardens at Kew (U.K) andchairman of DIVERSITAS, an internationalprogramme of biodiversity science research,launched with UNESCO’s support in 1991.

Deforestation, urbanization, uncon-trolled collection and neglect are among themain causes for the situation, which, if al-lowed to continue could cost us dearly.How many of these plants, for example,hold genetic secrets that could help feedthe world’s growing population? Howmany contain material that could be devel-oped as medicines to treat the many dis-eases afflicting humanity?

“The problem is that we don’t know,”says DIVERSITAS’ Vernon Heywood,who chaired a meeting on the conservationof wild plants held at UNESCO headquar-ters from February 11-13. An educatedguess though would be that the potentialof wild plants to contribute to people’shealth and well-being is enormous.

For a start, traditional societies everywhererely heavily on wild plants for substitutefood crops in times of shortages, building,weaving and craft materials as well as ani-mal fodder and fuels. In Africa 70 to 80%of the population relies on traditional medi-cines, and medicinal plants play a major rolein a healthcare system, where “modern”doctors are few and access to “modern”medicines extremely limited.

Then, the staples that feed us are lim-ited to about 40 crops worldwide, whichare grown from high-yielding species orcultivars that have been developed for in-dustrial-age intensive agriculture. As theyhave been perfected, these new cultivarshave become more and more geneticallyuniform, thus increasingly vulnerable toepidemics of pests and diseases. The dan-gers of such uniformity have long been ap-parent. In the late 1840s in Ireland, for ex-ample, one million people starved to deathwhen disease wiped out the 1845 potato

F O O D A N D M E D E C I N E

R E S I S TA N C E

●

Fou r hund red hou r s o f f i lm s ho t du r i ngUNESCO ’s t h ree i n t e r na t i ona l s c i en t i f i cS I LK ROADS e xped i t i on s have gone i n t ot he mak i ng o f a do cumen ta r y p rodu cedby UNESCO , ARTE - a F r an co -Ge rmant e l e v i s i on s t a t i on - and NDR , a Ge rmanb road ca s t i ng o r gan i za t i on . “ Su r l a p i s t ede s c a r avane s ” ( ‘On t he Tr a i l o f t h eCa ravan s ’ ) wa s t e l e v i s ed by ARTE onFeb rua r y 19 , exp l o r i ng t h e l e genda r yrou t e l i nk i ng t he Ch i ne s e c i t y o f X i anand Con s t an t i nop l e on Eu rope ’s doo r s t ep .

(Pho

to ©

J.F

.Bau

mar

d).

▼

The action film hero Terminator “seemsto represent the characteristics whichchildren think are necessary to copewith difficult situations,” according toThe UNESCO Global Study on MEDIAVIOLENCE, a preview of which waspresented by the Director-General onFebruary 19.Five thousand 12-year-olds in 23countries took part in the survey whichwill be released at the end of the year.It notes that an average hour oftelevision programming contains fiveto ten episodes of violence, most ofthem presented as either thrilling and/or rewarding. With 91% of thechildren surveyed having access to atelevision set at home, they spend atleast 50% longer sitting in front of thebox than doing any other out-of-school activity, including homework.

A ve r s i on f o r i n t e r na t i ona l d i s t r i bu t i on i si n p r epa ra t i on .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

P L A N E T

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

21. . . . . .

E n v i r o n m e n t

active compounds to treat prostate hyper-trophy. As a result, a commercial markethas developed leading to extensive debark-ing and destruction of trees in the wild.Prunus africana is now considered byCITES (the Convention on InternationalTrade of Endangered Species) as a speciesthat, if not endangered, requires close ob-servation and controlled harvesting.

Similarly, reports South African ethno-botanist Tony Cunningham in African me-dicinal plants (UNESCO 1993), “the

American National Cancer Institute col-lected 27.2 tons of plant material fromMaytenus buchananii, a shrub from theShimba Hills conservation area in Kenyafor screening purposes as a potential treat-ment for pancreatic cancer. When additionalmaterial was required four years after thefirst harvest, regeneration was so poor thatcollectors struggled to obtain the additionalmaterial.”

“But the problem of how to conservethese species has been relegated to theback-burner by many organizations,” saysVernon Heywood. “This is in large part dueto our lack of knowledge about these plantsand their uses.” Of the 90,000 species inthe Central and South American tropics,only 2% have been screened for theirpharmacological potential. “We need a morecomplete picture of which plants are beingused and to what extent, how importantthey are and what the threats to themreally are.”

With the priority of most governmentsand international organizations beingplaced on nutrition, research tends to fo-cus on the main food crops. But, remindsHeywood, “people do not live by bread

alone - even the diets of the poorest are notjust made up of staples...”

The advent of the Convention on Biologi-cal Diversity - one of the conventions thatcame out of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 -has at least helped to identify the problem,“but no-one is very clear on just what the nextsteps should be,” says Heywood.

The February meeting, organized byDIVERSITAS, UNESCO, the Food and Ag-riculture Organization (FAO) and the Inter-national Plant Genetic Resources Institute

(IPGRI), brought together participants fromthe world’s leading organizations con-cerned with the conservation and sustain-able use of wild plants and forests. Theyagreed that first and foremost “the messagehas to be spread” - from governments tothe scientific and local communities. Andthey urged greater collaboration betweenexisting organizations to coordinate theirwork, share data and even form a lobbygroup to keep the issue high up on theworld’s political agenda.

“We must clearly show the cost of con-servation as against the cost of non-con-servation,” says Pierre Lasserre, the secre-tary of UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Pro-gramme (MAB). “One figure to keep inmind: the total value of ecosystem serviceshas been estimated at an average $33 tril-lion per annum - nearly double the grossglobal product. This includes the directvalue of a great number of wild speciesthrough their use by people throughout theworld or their importance in raising agri-cultural and forest production. Can we af-ford to continue neglecting them?”

Sue WILLIAMS

A T R A D I T I O N A LM E D I C A L

P R A C T I O N E R A TW O R K I NL E S O T H O

( P h o t o ©B é a t r i c e P e t i t ) .

●

Min i s t e r s and d i r e c t o r s o f s po r t andyou th p r og rammes i n C en t r a l Ame r i c a andPanama me t i n San Sa l vado r on F eb rua r y5 a n d 6 f o r a r o u n d - t a b l e o n “Y O U T H ,SPORT AND DA I LY P EACE ” . I npa r t i c u l a r, t h ey app r oved s ome 100p ro j e c t p r opo sa l s r equ i r i ng abou t $10 .5min f und i ng . T hey a im t o u s e s po r t a s anedu ca t i ona l mean s t o p r even t d e l i n -quen cy, v i o l en c e and ma r g i na l i z a t i on ,i n s t ead o f r e l y i ng s o l e l y on r ep r e s s i v er e spon se s t o t h e s e s o c i a l p r ob l ems .Gove rnmen ta l i n s t i t u t i on s w i l l s e ek t her equ i r ed f i nan c i ng w i t h UNESCO ’sa s s i s t an c e f r om deve l opmen t bank s ,f ounda t i on s , i n t e r na t i ona l s po r t f ede ra -t i on s , p r i v a t e bu s i n e s s e s and t h r oughb i l a t e r a l c oope ra t i on ag r eemen t s b e tweenc o u n t r i e s .

▼

From rebuilding education systems inthe aftermath of the Second WorldWar to introducing today’s newesttechnologies, UNESCO has beenworking for half century to transform“our perception of education, from anindividual right to a social andeconomic imperative”.

A richly illustrated book, entitled 50YEARS FOR EDUCATION, explores the“ever changing challenge thateducation poses to all societies”before turning to the myriad ofUNESCO activities in response to thischallenge. The accompanying CD-ROMs bring to life the activities,events, and people that have shapedthe Organization’s work.

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

A l l a r t i c l e s a r e f r e e o f c o p y r i g h tr e s t r i c t i o n s a n d c a n b e r e p r o d u c e d .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

P L A N E T

E d u c a t i o n

22. . . . . .

AN UNUSUAL NURSERY SCHOOLAn “alternative” kindergarten in Bamako combines traditionalstructures and modern teaching methods.

●

Con ce i v ed i n t h e f i e l d and de s i gned t o goba ck t he r e , L anguage p l ann i ng i n ap l u r i l i n gua l edu ca t i ona l c on t ex t i s ap ra c t i c a l gu i de t o he l p i n t r odu ce LAN-GUAGE RE FORM i n p r ima r y s c hoo l s andt ea che r- t r a i n i ng c o l l e ge s , pa r t i c u l a r l y i nA f r i c a . T he me thodo l og i e s and s t r a t eg i e sf o r b i - o r e ven t r i - l i n gua l s i t ua t i on s a r eg rounded i n p r a c t i c a l expe r i en c e . F r oms t r a t eg i e s t o make o f f i c i a l s and c ommun i -t i e s r e c ogn i z e t h e need f o r r e f o rm t os e t t i ng up t he s t r u c t u r e s t o d e s i gn ,p r odu ce and d i s t r i bu t e t ea ch i ng ma t e r i a l s ,t h i s gu i de i s f l ex i b l e enough t o ea s er e f o rm p rob l ems i n any p l u r i l i n gua l .env i r onmen t

☛ L INGUAPAXUn i t o f t h e Edu ca t i on S e c t o r

▼

More than $11m with 91 projects in32 countries - it’s an exceptional track-record for a five-year-old UNESCOProgramme for the Education ofCHILDREN IN NEED, highlighted in the

brochure, Paths to Hope. Publicawareness and fund-raising cam-paigns have provided the financialmeans for rapid and concrete inter-vention in the lives of children withhandicaps, victims of war and naturalcatastrophes or left to survive on thestreets.

Mali’s capital, Bamako, has only three state-run nursery schools and a few private day-care centres.

To fill the gap, Oumou Diakité, a formerteacher and a child psychiatrist, in Marchlast year set up the Den Ladamu So centre,

which in the Bambara language means“house of education for the child”. Theschool is a pioneer example of an inexpen-sive educational unit which UNESCOhopes will catch on elsewhere in Africa.

“I live in a bustling part of the city andI see little kids spending the whole day withtheir mothers, at the market or in thestreets,” says Diakité. So in a corner of theplayground at the local school, Diakité builta “nursery area,” with a sandbox, somemats, a room to keep games and toys in anda traditional oven to cook lunch.

She recruited 15 volunteers from theneighbourhood women’s association sheran. They range in age from 22 to 55 andmost of them cannot read or write. Theytake turns, in daily teams of three, so thateach could continue working at other jobs.The children’s parents charged 100 CFAfrancs ($0.16) a day and the volunteers get atoken daily wage of anout $0.80. The wholeoperation costs no more than $250 a monthfor around 20 children.

“Children in Africa were traditionallylooked after by the elderly women of thevillage while their mothers worked in thefields,” says Bernard Combes ofUNESCO’s French-speaking Africa Net-work for Early Childhood Education, whichorganized a meeting in Bamako (Feb. 2-9)to sell the idea of such alternative struc-tures to governments.

Diakité’s school offers a modern ver-sion of traditional child-minding practices.She gave her volunteers a week’s trainingin the basics of teaching, hygiene and nu-trition and they review the situation to-gether every five weeks.

“We offer stimulating activities whichwill inspire them to do things. We also takeinto account Malian cultural values,” shesays.

This includes speaking in Bambara,making toys and games and teaching tra-ditional songs and stories. This culturalbias also fits in with economic necessity.The return to roots coincides with modernideas about training and awakening achild’s mind by developing independenceand creativity.

Lack of money has long obliged Mali,like other African countries, to give prior-ity to primary education. As a result, only3% of children are in nursery schools, com-pared with 70% in developed countries.Today, awareness of the link between anursery education and later success atschool and the increasing number ofwomen working outside the home are forc-ing African countries to rethink their poli-cies.

The Malian education ministry willback the setting up of the next centre, duebefore the end of this year, and wants tosee more such alternative schools. “Inother countries,” notes Combes, “it issometimes hard to sell the idea of resort-ing to illiterate grandmothers to look afterchildren.” The Den Ladamu So centre isshowing how it can be done.

N. K-D.

A L O T M O R EF U N T H A NT A G G I N G A L O N GW I T H M U M( P h o t o ©A l l r i g h t sr e s e r v e d ) .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 9 9 / M A R C H 1 9 9 8

P L A N E T

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

○

23. . . . . .

UNESCO SOURCES is a monthly magazine pub-lished by the United Nations Educational, Scien-tific and Cultural Organization [tel: (+33 1) 4568 16 73; fax: (+33 1) 45 68 56 54]. Englishand French editions are produced at Paris Head-quarters; the Spanish edition in cooperation withthe UNESCO Centre of Catalonia, Mallorca 285,08037 Barcelona, Spain; the Chinese edition incooperation with the Xinhua News Agency, 57Xuanwumen Xidajie, Beijing, China; the Portu-guese edition in cooperation with the PortugueseNational Commission for UNESCO, Avenida InfanteSanto, No. 42-5°, 1300 Lisbon, Portugal.

Editor-in-Chief: R. Lefort. Associate editors:S. Williams, S. Boukhari, A. Otchet, N. Khouri-Dagher. Assistant Managing Editor: C.Mouillère. Spanish edition: L. García (Barce-lona), L. Sampedro (Paris). Lay-out: G. Traiano,F. Ryan. Circulation and Secretariat:D. Maarek.

Photoengraving and printing in UNESCOWorkshops. Distribution by UNESCO's special-ized services.

C u l t u r e o f P e a c e

RALLYING THE FLOCKSTop-level dialogue between world’s three monotheistic religionsmust these days involve ordinary believers.

●

“ T h e E D I C T O F N A N T E S i s m o r er e l e van t t han eve r, ” d e c l a r ed D i r e c t o r-Gene ra l F ede r i c o Mayo r a t a c e r emony a tHeadqua r t e r s on F eb r ua r y 18 c ommemo-ra t i ng t h e 400 th ann i v e r s a r y o f t h e a c tt h r ough wh i c h Hen r y I V, t h e k i ng o fF r an ce , pu t an end t o t h e wa r s r a vag i ngt he r ea lm by g i v i ng r e l i g i ou s f r e edom t oF r en ch P ro t e s t an t s . Howeve r, addedPa s t eu r J ean Ta r t i e r, t h e p r e s i d en t o f t h eP ro t e s t an t F ede ra t i on o f F r an c e ando rgan i z e r o f t h e c e r emony, “ t he ob l i ga -t i on t o r emembe r doe s no t c on s i s t o fdwe l l i n g on t he pa s t , bu t on mov i ng onand b r i ng i ng t he pa s t up t o da t e . ”

▼

“CREATIVITY AND DECOLONIZATION”was at the heart of debates at asymposium organized at UNESCO,February 7-8. About 30 historians,authors and psychoanalysts focused onthe “irreparable wounds” left byslavery and colonization and the formsthey continue to take. The meeting washeld in homage to the French authorand psychoanalyst Octave Mannoni(1899-1989) whose works promotedawareness of the ills of colonialism.

The principle is now well-established: “Theethical values common to our three mono-theistic religions - justice, comprehension,compassion, humility and forgiveness, soli-darity and sharing, dialogue and non-vio-lence ... must draw people together ratherthan divide and contribute to the moral soli-darity of humanity rather than the clashbetween civilizations.”

This belief has been reiterated so manytimes that its restatement at the one-daymeeting on the “Dialogue between theThree Monotheistic Religions: Towards aCulture of Peace”, in Rabat on February16, was not news. Even when it was em-phasized by a score of eminent religiousfigures such as Cardinal Roger Etchegaray,head of the Vatican’s Justice and PeaceCommission, Israel’s Chief Rabbi EliahuBakshi-Doron and Sheikh Fawzi FadelAzzafzaf, the secretary-general of Cairo’sAl-Azhar University.

But beyond the theory is reality. The chiefrabbi asked what “peace education” couldmean for the children of Jerusalem, whenthey have to wear gas masks. The city’slatin patriarch, Msgr Michel Sabbah, repliedsharply that in “a city at war, how can wetalk of peace to Palestinian children? Howcan we talk about peace to Iraqi childrenwhen an international embargo is starvingthem to death?”

The former chief rabbi of France, René-Samuel Sirat, reminded delegates that “itis at these most difficult moments that we,as spiritual guides and teachers, must re-iterate messages of peace and non-vio-lence.”

The aim of the Rabat conference, aUNESCO initiative fully supported by Mo-rocco’s King Hassan II, was to move onfrom just words and plan steps which, saidCardinal Etchegaray, would help “bringthe message down to the flocks,” to the or-dinary worshippers of the three religions.

Open any newspaper any day and thegap between the words coming from thoseat the top and the very different life at thebottom is clear.

Two paths were chosen to begin puttinginto effect the results of the dialogue.UNESCO and the Moroccan government

were not asked to set up any big structure.One of the approaches agreed upon was tocreate a “reflection and action” group inMorocco itself, with representatives of thethree religions choosing from among theproposals made by all sides those which de-served special support and seeing they gotit. There would also be a UNESCO-spon-sored university chair in Morocco, whichwould be concerned less with teaching thanaction-oriented research.

This research would concern mainlyyoung people, through production of a ba-sic guide to the monotheistic religions, sinceuntruths and silences still sometimes mareven the best of this kind of educationalmaterial. It would also involve the media,which is often accused of resorting to stere-otypes, though little or no effort is made toget accurate information to journalists. Alsothe history of the religions, especially areasand causes of conflict between them. As theGerman Lutheran Bishop Heinz Joachim Heldnoted, the dialogue will only move forward ifeach religion “re-reads its own history.”

R.L.

PEACE AND RELIGION

H A R D R E A L I T I E S

The seminar was a follow-up to the Barce-lona ‘Declaration on the Role of Religion inthe Promotion of a Culture of Peace’ (De-cember 1994). It was this declaration thatinspired UNESCO’s efforts to link interreligiousdialogue and the idea of a culture of peace,which has become the basis of the Organiza-tion’s action.Other expert meetings took place in Rabat inJune 1995 in the context of the UNESCOproject “Roads of Faith”, and in June 1997in Malta under the title of “PromotingInterreligious Dialogue”.The most recent UNESCO General Conference(last November and December) invited theDirector-General to “envisage ... activitiesconcerning the contribution of religion to theestablishment of a culture of peace and thepromotion of interreligious dialogue.”

L O O K I N G A H E A D ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

SOURCESU N E S C O

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Part of the Associated Schools’ BALTIC SEA PROJECT, a consultation gathering representatives

from the nine countries concerned is scheduled from April 16 to 20 in Sonderborg (Denmark). In Shanghai

(China), a workshop on integrated COASTAL MANAGEMENT and the sustainability of coastal

cities in the Asia-Pacific is scheduled for April 20 to 22 through the International Oceanographic Commission.

In Durban (South Africa), the seventh conference of MINISTERS OF EDUCATION OF

AFRICAN MEMBER STATES will be held from April 20 to 24. On the same dates, the

consultative committee on health and CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT will hold its annual meet-

ing at Headquarters to coordinate the actions of international and non-governmental organizations. With

EDUCATIONAL REFORM a key issue for the five Central Asian nations and Mongolia, some 20

governmental experts will focus on budgetary issues in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), April 21 to 24. The

UNESCO/Francoise Gallimard Prize will be awarded on April 23, World BOOK AND COPYRIGHT

Day. About 150 teenagers will meet with scientists on April 23 and 24 at Headquarters to discuss the

theme, “FUTURE SCIENTISTS : Men and Women”. In light of the 50th anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, about 30 UNESCO chairholders on HUMAN RIGHTS , de-

mocracy, peace and tolerance will meet in Stadtschlaining (Austria) from April 23 to 26. The 154th session

of the EXECUTIVE BOARD will take place at Headquarters from April 27 to May 7 to review the

follow-up on the General Conference’s resolutions. On World PRESS FREEDOM Day, May 3, the

UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize will be awarded at Headquarters. In Vienna (Austria), about 30 experts will

study proposed revisions to the 1954 HAGUE CONVENTION for the Protection of Cultural Prop-

erty in the Event of Armed Conflict from May 11 to 13.

Celebrating our 100th ISSUE, UNESCO Sources will proudly present a radically new format. Three

mini-dossiers will explore: ways of conserving marine environments, higher education in the Arab States and

the changing status of teachers - the central theme of the new World Education Report.

(Dates and places are subject to change).