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 . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

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INTERESTINGBUT SADMokhtar Ben ChehamStudentMetlili (Algeria)

I read with interest thelast few issues of your magazine, in par-ticular the dossier on teachers (Sources,No. 82) which was both interesting andsaddening. I would like to thank you foryour excellent work.

I also appreciate your editorials. Thespirit in which they are written and theircontents offer a calming and rare insightinto the latest problems and issues.

THE REGULARSJuan Gonzalez DiazPresident of the “Ramon Rubiera” CentreLos Palos (Cuba)

The information pro-vided in your magazine is always wellreceived. The members of our informa-tion, documentation and literature re-search centre are regular readers.

LOOKING AHEADOlga DassiouArchaeologistThessaloniki (Greece)

Your magazine offers amodern view on the subjects raised. I par-ticularly like the “Focus”,“Planet” and“Looking Ahead” sections.

SCARY STORIESJacqueline CrettéDialogue and Cooperation AssociationParis (France)

I was particularly in-terested in Source’s issue “The Trials andTribulations of Teaching” (No. 82). Ourassociation brings together teachers fromaround the world, especially primaryschool public teachers. We regularly hearstories of the growing problems facingthem: lower and lower salaries, discred-ited teachers, badly equipped schools...The current trend of privatization is af-fecting the most vulnerable groups; poorparents can only send their children tobadly maintained and overcrowdedclassrooms, as is certainly the case inIndia and Africa.

A MILESTONENicolas Cosio SierraArab-Islamic Study GroupHavana (Cuba)

I would like to thankyou for your excellent editorial entitled,“The Power of Symbols”, in issue No.83. As you pointed, Haram El-Sharif isone of Islam’s three holy sites. Jerusa-lem, the seat of monotheism, has alwaysrespected the holy sites of Islam, andshowed consideration to Judaism andChristianity.

Other international institutions andorganizations have hushed up the profa-nation resulting from the state of Isra-el’s construction of the archaeological“tunnel” heading to one of the most sen-sitive and mystic places in Jerusalem. Inthis light, your editorial, which reaffirmsUNESCO’s postulates, is like a mile-stone for the understanding of history byfuture generations.

UNESCO Sourcesis available on

Internet

under the headings:new or publications

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

✉✉✉

✉✉✉✉✉✉

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KEEP IT UP!V.BhunjunSecretary of Northern UNESCO Club Action NetworkTriolet (Mauritius)

UNESCO Sources re-flects the Organization’s activities at thegrass-roots level and thus addresses amost valuable partner. It keeps one up-dated with UNESCO’s orientation and sohelps with efficient planning and effec-tive action on the part of UNESCOclubs. Keep it up!

I N S I G H T

3. . . . . .

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.

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Pages 6 to 16

PLANET:

Education• REORDERING PRIORITIES . . . . . . . . 18

Science• UNDER THE MICROSCOPE . . . . . . . 20

Education• MEN AT RISK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Culture• REEL NIGHTMARES . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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

René L E FORT

Cover photo: ©SYGMA/StephaneCompoint

Education forLatin American adults now!

From out of themurky depths.

Saving Asia’s film heritage.

PARADOXICAL

UNDERWATER HERITAGE,A TREASURE TROVE

TO PROTECT

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

T he demons t r a t i on s t ha t i gn i t ed t h e Repub l i c o f Ko r ea i n

r e c en t week s made head l i n e s a r ound t he wo r l d . Be cau se

o f t h e i r magn i t ude , o f c ou r s e , bu t a l s o be cau se t h e c oun t r y

ha s been s o e c onom i ca l l y s u c c e s s f u l t ha t s u ch s o c i a l d i s c on -

t en t c ame a s a s u r p r i s e .

A f t e r t h e wa r, S ou t h Ko r ea f i gu red among t he wo r l d ’s

poo re s t na t i on s . Ha l f a c en t u r y l a t e r, and a f t e r s e ve ra l

i n c r ed i b l e y ea r s whe re t h e annua l g r ow th r a t e nudged 10%

(and i s s t i l l a h ea l t hy 6%) , t h e r epub l i c i s one o f A s i a ’s f ou r

“d ragon s ” , a membe r o f t h e much env i ed c l ub o f “new l y

i ndu s t r i a l i z ed c oun t r i e s ” , who se b i g c ompan i e s c an o f f e r

s a l a r i e s on pa r w i t h t ho s e pa i d i n t h e Un i t ed K i ngdom.

The p r e s s i s t hu s a sk i ng : “ doe s t h e r i g i d i t y o f t h e l abou r

marke t po s e a ma j o r ob s t a c l e t o t h e r e t u rn o f buoyan t

g r o w t h ? ” Howeve r, i t h a s l a r ge l y i gno red ano the r ma j o r

que s t i on , v a l i d i n S ou th Ko r ea a s i n many o t he r c oun t r i e s :

why s hou l d emp l oyee s g i v e up ha rd -won advan t age s wh i l e

t he e c onomy i s boom ing?

The ma in a r gumen t i s t ha t g l oba l i z a t i on , wh i c h t h e Repub l i c

o f Ko r ea ha s c e r t a i n l y r eaped t he bene f i t f r om , i s t o day

wo rk i ng aga i n s t i t : e l s ewhe re , on i t s d oo r s t ep and f u r t he r

a f i e l d , l a bou r c an be had mo re c heap l y. I f t h i s a r gumen t ,

wh i c h i s w i de l y g i v en c r eden ce and e s pe c i a l l y i n t h e i ndu s t r i -

a l i z ed wo r l d , i s a c c u ra t e , t h e e f f e c t s w i l l b e deva s t a t i ng . F o r

t he r e w i l l a lway s be c heape r l abou r e l s ewhe re . And t h i s

be cau se t h e c omb ina t i on o f g l oba l i z a t i on and s c i en t i f i c and

t e chno l og i c a l p r og r e s s engende r s s ay s ome , and a c c ompan i e s

s ay o t he r s , an ex t en s i on o f ex t r eme pove r t y by demand i ng

eve r c heape r me thod s o f p r odu c t i on .

I n o t he r wo rd s , un che cked g l oba l - s c a l e c ompe t i t i o n ha s i t s

b r i gh t and da rk s i d e s . Undoub t ed l y a powe r f u l s p r i ngboa rd

f o r g r ow th t ha t c an gene ra t e eno rmou s wea l t h , i t w i l l ,

s oone r o r l a t e r i f ma i n t a i ned i n i t s p r e s en t f o rm , a l i gn

cond i t i on s and s a l a r i e s t o t ho s e t ha t t h e poo r e s t a r e f o r c ed

t o a c c ep t . And t h i s know ing t ha t t h e r e w i l l a lway s be e ven

poo re r s upp l y o f wo rke r s a va i l ab l e . Pa radox i c a l , n o ?

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

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

4. . . . .

THE PROTECTIONOF CULTURAL PROPERTYIN THE EVENT OFARMED CONFLICTAn essential reference fordecision-makers, policy-plannersand other experts dealing withcultural property, the book offersa detailed but clearly writtenanalysis of The Hague Conven-tion 1954 - still the only uni-versal legal instrument in thisarea.The author begins by tracing theconvention’s roots, looking backto the 1863 Lieber Instructionsinsisting that American armedforces try to spare “charitable”property like that belonging tohospitals and “classical works ofart, libraries, scientific collec-tions or precious instruments”.Reviewing the pre-paratoryconferences and consultations,the book moves on to theconvention itself with an article-by-article commentary alsofocusing on the rules forapplying it and its protocol -illustrated by references to sourcematerials and examples of howand under what conditions theconvention has been invoked inthe past 40 years.

● The Protection of CulturalProperty in the Event of ArmedConflict by Jiri Toman,Dartmouth/UNESCO 1996,525 pp., 220 FF.

THE TRADITIONAL MUSICOF HERAT“Khorasan is the oyster-shell ofthe world and Herat is thepearl,” reads a proverb, tellingof the 15th century Persian

BOOKS

UNESCO publications andperiodicals can be purchased atUNESCO Publishing bookstoresat Headquarters and throughnational distributors in mostcountries. In each Member State,books and periodicals can beconsulted at a UNESCOdepositary library.For further information or directorders by mail, fax or Internet:UNESCO Publishing, 7 place deFontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP(France), tel.: (+33 1) 01 45 6843 00, fax: (+33 1) 01 45 6857 41, Internet:http://www.UNESCO.org/publishing.

PERIODICALS

COMPACT DISCS

capital of a vast empire underTimurid rule. Since then, the cityhas experienced a steadydecline, punctuated by violentconflicts, like the Soviet bomb-ing campaign in 1979.However, traces of its goldenpast are still found in traditionalforms of expression, like music.The music of Herat is a richblend of genres. While that ofthe 15th century Timurid courtwas closely related to thecontemporary Arab-Persianmusic of the Middle East, 20thcentury trends found inspirationin Hindustani music. Weddingdances, chants to the ProphetMohammad, prayer calls andlullabies, the CD’s 14 recordedpieces are played mainly onthe 14-stringed dutâr (long-necked lute), the hand-pumped Indian harmoniumand tabla drums.

● The Traditional Music ofHerat. Musics and Musicians ofthe World. UNESCO/AUVIDIS.Price: 145 FF.

THE UNESCO COURIERContrary to what many think,television has not killed radio -on the contrary, millions ofpeople around the worlddepend daily on this media.Entitled, “Radio - A Future forSound”, the February issue ofThe Courier looks to communi-cation specialists, programmedirectors, journalists andresearchers in presenting some“chronological milestones” forthis media born just 100 yearsago. Used as a mouthpiece tospread lies, as seen in the SovietUnion during the 1970s, theradio can serve as a lethal“weapon”. But it can also be anessential building block fordemocratic development, asseen with the rise of communitystations enabling peopleexcluded from the “informationsuperhighways” to make theirvoices heard.

NATURE AND RESOURCESTake a step back to consider our“ecological footprints” -meaning the amount of land

needed to provide for ourconsumption needs andassimilate our waste. Urbanfootprints usually span morethan ten times the city’s surfacearea. Indeed, if everybody livedlike today’s North Americans, itwould take at least another twoplanets to produce the resourcesneeded and absorb the waste ofsuch a space-hungry lifestyle.This issue looks at our urbanfootprints in exploring cities asecological systems dominated byhuman activity. The issue (Vol.32, No. 2) presents a series of15 brief articles written byresearchers, educators andplanners on the ways sciencemay help to resolve urbanchallenges like poverty, diseaseand environmental degradation.Flying with the photographs ofYann Arthus-Bertrand, we takean aerial view of settlementsfrom Kenya to Oman, beforehitting the streets to explore thecolourful social fabric envelop-ing city-life, from the sharedspace of Abidjan, to thelaminated Sao Paolo and thefrayed places of Sofia. Thedossier closes with a look atwater resource managementand youth recycling activities indiverse cities.

relations between people andthe physical environment are inconstant flux.The articles explore the majorchanges that have transformedthis discipline - from collapsingintellectual “partitions” artifi-cially dividing human andphysical geography to newcartographic techniques likeremote satellite sensing.The issue also examines theimpact of the informationrevolution in offering newinsight in understanding theways people are transformingthe planet’s surface, beforeenvisioning a future worldshaped by climate change inanticipating societal responsesto looming environmentaldangers.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALSCIENCE JOURNALGeography, “a subject in con-siderable ferment”, is the focusof the latest issue (No. 150), thefirst of a two-part series lookingat the environmental dimension.Six authors describe how thisfield has gone about organizingknowledge in a world in which

P E O P L E

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

5. . . . . .

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JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE:THE FORCE OF CHARACTER

KEVIN MACKS:YET TO LOSE A ROOF

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● The President of GuatemalaALVARO ARZU and Guatemalanguerilla leader ROLANDOMORAN are the winners ofUNESCO's Felix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, awarded onJanuary 22nd in recognition of

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Before the fevered energy ofhis penniless supporters de-

manding justice or the glazed lookof diplomats attending the awardceremony of the biennialUNESCO Prize for HumanRights Education, Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide knows how towork a crowd. Instead of lettingrip with fire and brimstone, theformer priest seems to deliber-ately keep his voice down, usinghushed tones not to address hisaudience, but to get people to lis-ten.

“On the threshold of the thirdmillennium, one of the challengeswe must face consists of sharingwith everyone the bread of edu-cation. We cannot remain passive

building to house Radyo Timoun,a radio station run by and for thecountry’s street children and im-poverished youth.

Recounting the injustices ofa world in which the poorestcountries devote twice as muchof their budgets to the militaryrather than to health and educa-tion while the richest fail to rein-vest cold war dividends in peaceand development, Mr Aristide re-cited what the sophisticated au-dience in Paris could probablyhave recounted by rote. But hemesmerized - with the force ofhis character overshadowing hisunimposing physique.

Born to a poor family in1953, he should have joined theranks of Haiti’s illiterate peas-ants. Instead, he earned a univer-sity degree in psychology, be-came fluent in five foreign lan-guages while pursuing his theo-logical studies with the Salesianorder. But he made a major de-tour - finding inspiration not justin the scriptures but the slums ofthe poorest country in the west-ern hemisphere.

The combination proved ex-plosive - resulting in a fiery brandof activism and faith which lefthis church in ashes after an at-tack by the Tontons Macoutesand his expulsion from his reli-gious order. It also led to hispresidential election, exile anddramatic return in 1994.

Today, another force seems tohave taken hold - a political so-phistication leading him to onceagain make history as the coun-try’s first democratically electedleader to constitutionally handpower over to another in Febru-ary 1996.

Amy OTCHET

On Christmas eve 1971, Al-thea roared into Townsville,

Australia, leaving a trail of dam-age amounting to $65 million. Asthe cyclone screamed, KevinMacks huddled with his wife,three young children and dog inthe hallway - the most secureplace in the house. “We were justas frightened as everybody else,”recounts the architect, “terrifiedin fact”. But Althea singledMacks out, leaving him as “thebloke who didn’t lose a roof”. Allof the buildings he designed(through his private firm) re-mained standing, a claim not oneother building professional in thearea could make.

The storm also offered proofof his long-standing argument:“that making a building securefrom cyclone or strong wind dam-age is relatively easy and addsonly six % to the overall cost”.Macks began organizing work-shops on “how many nails tobang in and where”, which didn’tjust attract the locals but interna-tional experts trying to cope withthe region’s tempestuous climate- from cyclones in Sri Lanka tofloods in China.

Working as a consultant withUNESCO since 1985, Macks hasadded landslides, earthquakesand even bushfires to his reper-toire, sharing his expertise in re-ducing the risks of catastrophe byoffering training classes, architec-tural designs, evaluations andbooks like "The A.B.C. of Cy-clone Rehabilitation" (seeSources, No. 86).“I work like aconduit, translating the engi-neer’s high falutin’ wind codes tolocal craftspeople. Architects andbuilders have a similar language.So we can go to a country, keep

our eyes open and quickly under-stand local building methods in-stead of trying to implant somecopy-cat designs. You don’t takea magazine and pick a roof shapeon page 94 - do this and you endup with a camel with six humps.”

For Macks, Bangladesh haspresented the greatest challengeand satisfaction. He has beenworking with UNESCO and thegovernment for more than a dec-ade to train people to design safeschools and other public build-ings. “The poorer villagers livein mud huts with thatch roofswhich melt in big floods. So dur-ing a storm, a safe school couldserve as a haven for the entire vil-lage.” In 1970, floods thereclaimed some 400,000 lives. Yetin 1991, the death-toll was lessthan half, even though the popu-lation had doubled. “The lessonout there is hope,” he says. “Peo-ple say, ‘Give up! You can’t beatit.’ But I say, if Bangladesh - oneof the poorest countries in theworld - can make such progressin 20 years, why can’t you?”

A.O.

before the people (of Haiti), 85%of whom are illiterate, but fortu-nately, not stupid,” said theformer president on 8 January atHeadquarters. “We must educatethe children and speak to them oftheir rights, but at the same timewe will have the joy of listeningto their voices,” he said in accept-ing the prize worth $10,000,which the Aristide Foundation forDemocracy will use for a new

their role in ending theircountry's 36-year old civil war.The jury, said its president,Henry Kissinger, hoped that theinternationally backed peaceagreement signed last Decem-ber 29th “would be the model

that should be followedeverywhere where civil andethnic conflict are causing suchenormous human suffering.”The 800,000FF (about$160,000) annual prize, namedafter the late president of Côte

d'Ivoire, honours “people,institutions or organizationswhich have contributed signifi-cantly to the promotion,research, safeguarding ormaintaining of peace”.

THE MECHANICAL ARM OF A REMOTE OPERATEDVEHICLE (ROV) RETRIEVES OBJECTS FROM THE

TITANIC , NOW OWNED, BY DINT OF THE “FINDERSKEEPERS” LAW BY THE MANHATTAN-BASED RMS

TITANIC, INC. (Photo © RMS Titanic, Inc.).

ALL

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U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

F O C U S

7. . . . . .

UNDERWATER HERITAGE,A TREASURE TROVE TO PROTECT

T h i s m o n t h ’s d o s s i e r

Modern technology has opened the gates of a new world under the Earth’s oceans; a world that haspreserved several chapters of human history in the form of harbours, cities, temples, statues andshipwrecks that have been sunk after losing a battle with the elements or by the cannon fire of anenemy (see below). However, this technology, brought to the world’s attention with the discovery ofthe Titanic (p. 14) is not only being used to explore this realm, but also to pillage it. Sites are workedover by treasure hunters - from unwitting sports divers and fishermen to major commercial outfitsled by adventurers such as Bob Marx (p. 9). Profiting from a less than watertight legal situation(pp. 10-11) they remove valuable artefacts and destroy evidence essential for the archaeologist tounravel the story behind these sites and which can yield up so much about our past, as witnessed bythe excavation of the Mary Rose (pp. 12-13), the Wasa (p. 15) and the Alexandria Lighthouse (p. 16).UNESCO has been called on by the archaeological and legal communities along with numerous MemberStates to help rectify this situation by preparing an international convention for the protection of thisvast underwater treasure trove.

In 1589, a flotilla of English corsairs com-manded by the Duke of Cumberland sank

the Nuestra-Señora de Guia off the coast ofTerceira in the Portuguese Azores Archi-pelago in the mid-Atlantic. The Spanishgalleon had taken on a cargo of gold in theMexican port of Veracruz and was on itsway home. This was the era when Spanishand Portuguese galleons regularly returnedfrom the New World and the West Indiesladen with gold, silver and precious stones,making an obligatory stopover in the Azoresbefore reaching their homeport on the Ibe-rian peninsula.

“The Nuestra Señora was only one ofhundreds of ships registered as sunk inPortuguese waters during this golden ageof adventurers,” wrote journalist JavierGarcia in a recent article published in theSpanish daily, El País. According torecords at the National Museum of Arche-ology in Lisbon, some 850 ships have goneto the bottom of the seas surrounding theAzores since 1522. At least 90 of them wereSpanish galleons and another 40 of themPortuguese Indiamen.

These wrecks constitute “one of the mostoutstanding underwater archaeologicalsanctuaries on the planet,” Garcia con-tinued, time capsules that could providea remarkable view of life as it was back

then, complete with all of its trappings. Thearchaeologists know this. But so do thetreasure hunters, who now have access toincredible technology allowing them toreach depths that up until recently theoceans had forbidden to human beings.

At least six international companies,representing the treasure hunters’ bigleague, set up base in Portugal with the aimof exploiting this immensely rich heritage,expecting to profit from laws passed in1993 that, according to Portuguese archae-ologist Francisco Alves, welcomed themin. UNESCO expressed its concern at thetime and the archaeological communitygirded itself for battle. The laws were ef-fectively blocked and, according to Alves,are about to be changed.

T H E B O T T O M L I N EBut none of these companies wouldblatently say they were in it for the booty.Thus, a “better knowledge of our past, theway ships were built and armed; an under-standing of historical and cultural devel-opment; and the contribution of importantarcheological objects to national and re-gional museums,” is the stated goal of theArquenauticas company, directed by Vice-Admiral Isaias Gomes Teixeira. Howeverthe bottom line is that these “explorations”

must be paid for, and they don’t comecheap. “You can’t do archaeology and huntfor treasure at the same time,” argues MPaulo Montero, a marine archaeologist fromthe Angra Do Heroismo Museum inTerceira. “Treasure hunting is driven bycommercial logic; time is money, so theyhave to work quickly to raise as many arte-facts as possible and sell them. An archae-ologist can spend 10 years or more study-ing and excavating a ship, conserving itsobjects and publishing findings. We gainan enormous amount of information andknowledge from this work. With treasurehunters, all of this is lost; records are notkept and artefacts are spread around theworld in private collections. This is tragic,for humanity as a whole and especially forPortugal; where there is no knowledge,there is no memory.”

A similar situation exists in the Philip-pines, another stopover for the Spaniards,and an important maritime trade link withSoutheast Asia for more than 1,000 years.“We cannot even begin to count the wrecksin Philippine territorial waters ... it wouldnot be surprising if there were thousandsof them,” says Wilfredo Ronquillo, headof the archaeology division of the na-tional museum in Manila. “The Museumhas a permit system for joint underwater

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

D o s s i e r

8. . . . . .

archaeological projects with organizationsor companies wanting to do so. Under thissystem one-of-a-kind items go to the gov-ernment and the rest are divided on a 50-50 basis. The weakness is that there is verylittle control. Some enterprising foreign-ers even contact fishermen and show themtradeware ceramics they are interested inbuying. Now a lot of fishermen are look-ing for these underwater cultural resourcesand destroying sites as a result.”

The same story is heard in the Carib-bean, and the seas surrounding the coun-tries of Southeast Asia, off Viet Nam, Ma-laysia and Indonesia. In Turkey, a surveyconducted in 1974 concluded that there wasno classical age wreck off its coasts thathad not been interfered with.

“D ID I H EAR $16 M I L L ION?”That treasure hunting has become big busi-ness is further evidenced by sales at the in-ternational auction houses. Christie’s hasbecome the world specialist in what it calls“material recovered legally or under licensefrom historical shipwrecks”. In 1986 itraised $16m from the sale of 3,786 lots ofChinese porcelain and gold ingots from whatwas called the “Nanking Cargo”, salvagedfrom the Dutch-flagged Geldermahlsen,wrecked in 1752 in the South China Sea.And in 1992, the sale of porcelain knownas the “Vung Tao Cargo,” raised from awreck off the southern coast of Viet Nam,brought in almost $7.2 million.

An increasing number of countries arebecoming aware of the urgency of the situ-ation. But the means to contain treasurehunters are limited and the issues involvedcomplex. To fill the gaps and provide aframework for dealing with these issues,UNESCO, the UN Office of Legal Affairs,Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law ofthe Sea (DOALOS) and the InternationalMaritime Organization (IMO) have begunworking on an international convention toprotect underwater cultural heritage. “Thisis not a new field for UNESCO,” saysLyndel Prott, the head of the Organization’sInternational Standards Section. “In thelate 1950s we expressed concern about un-derwater heritage and set out guidelinesfor underwater archaeological excavation,essentially covering activities in inland andterritorial waters of states. Technologicaldevelopments since then, and the spreadof sport diving have greatly increased thethreat to underwater sites to the pointwhere further regulation is urgentlyneeded.”

The International Law Association(ILA) has presented a draft to UNESCOwhich could be used as the basis for aneventual convention. But what exactlywould it aim to protect?

According to the ILA draft “underwa-ter cultural heritage means all underwa-ter traces of human existence includingsites, structures, artefacts and human re-mains, together with their archaeologicaland natural contexts, as well as wrecks,

such as vessels, aircraft, other vehicles orany part thereof, its cargo or other con-tents, together with its archaeological andnatural heritage.”

“This definition was designed to helpadministrators and courts to decidewhether something is covered by the con-vention,” explains Graham Henderson,Chairman of the International Council onMonuments and Sites’ (ICOMOS) Interna-tional Committee on Underwater CulturalHeritage, and Director of the MaritimeMuseum of Western Australia. However ithas its limits. “It only applies to heritagewhich has been lost or abandoned and sub-merged for at least 100 years. It would beup to states parties to introduce nationallegislation covering sites underwater forless than this. But it would leave the Ti-tanic, which sank in 1912, unprotected,”said Henderson. “Neither does the draftapply to any warship, military aircraft, na-val auxiliary, or other vessels or aircraftand their contents owned or operated by astate.”

The Titanic also illustrates anothermajor problem, that of heritage sunk ininternational waters.The ILA draft pro-poses three solutions: one is for states tocontrol the activities of their nationals; an-other is to forbid the use of their ports toservice vessels enaged in excavation byimproper methods; and the third is to for-

bid entry to their territory of artefacts im-properly raised.

In terms of the types of activities thatcan be carried out on a site, the ILA sug-gests that as a first option, underwater her-itage should be preserved in situ. It pro-poses that public access be encouraged, andthat non-destructive techniques, non-intru-sive sampling, be given preference to ex-cavation. It insists that investigation be ac-companied by adequate documentation.

The treasure hunters argue that thisapproach benefits very few, that while awreck lies buried no-one gets to share itsknowledge or contents, and that archaeolo-gists, research institutes and governmentsdon’t have the means to pay for excava-tion, especially in deep water.

However the public interest generatedby the discovery of such a dramatic sliceof history can often overcome these prob-lems. Consider Turkey, where underwaterexcavations at Bodrum led to a tripling ofthe region’s population and made it one ofthe country’s most visited sites; or the Wasawreck, which is the biggest touristdrawcard in Sweden bringing $300 pertourist per day to the national economy;the Western Australian Maritime Museumwith a quarter of a million tourists per an-num; and the wreck of the Mary Rose inthe U.K which has been visited by morethan four million people. On the other hand,the commercial recovery of theGeldermahlsen’s porcelain not only led to thedestruction of the wreck, but the $16 m raisedfrom the cargo’s sale was a one-off profit.Had it been placed in a museum, it mayhave raised this amount annually for thelocal community, and allowed the interna-tional community to share the discoveryof this window on the past.

Sue WILLIAMS

L E A V E I TT H E R E ,S AY T H EA R C H A E O L O G I S T S( P h o t o ©S Y G M A ) .

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U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

F O C U S

MARX IS THE NAME, TREASURE’S THE GAMEHe’s been tagged “plunderer”, “scoundrel”, “swindler”, but also “the most important explorer ofour times” with “enormous experience” and “fabulous” knowledge” of Spain's colonial period.

D o s s i e r

9. . . . . .

Bob Marx, the world’s most successfultreasure hunter, is a man marine ar-

chaeologists love to hate: a reason in hisown right, they would say, for a conven-tion protecting underwater heritage.

Marx, 60, has spent 40 years scouringthe ocean bottoms for the treasure galle-ons that sailed between the New World andthe Old and the trading vessels that broughtspices from Asia to Europe as well as greatcargoes of bullion and porcelain.

“I have discovered more wrecks andraised more treasure than anybody else,”he boasts. Few would contest this. By hisown count he has “looked at” some 2,500wrecks scattered around the globe. He hasworked in 62 countries, often as a consult-ant for the government and national ormaritime museums, and was among thefirst to use high technology on wrecks.Locked away in a cabin in remote Sas-katchewan (Canada), he taught himself oldSpanish so that he could study the Spanishmaritime archives detailing the routestaken by the treasure fleets and the cargoesthey carried. The Spanish governmentdecorated him in the 60s after he recon-structed Columbus’ caravel, the Niña II,and duplicated the 1492 voyage from Spainto San Salvador.

A DETA I LA born adventurer driven by a boyhoodpassion for shipwrecks and nautical history,his CV reads like an Indiana Jones moviescript. It lacks however, any formal quali-fication in archaelogy. Marx considers thisan irrelevant detail and argues that his vastexperience more than makes up for the lackof any diploma.

“When I started there was no suchthing as marine archaeology,” he says de-fiantly. “And I worked out pretty quicklythat if I wanted to pursue my obsession withshipwrecks and nautical history, I had tofind the means to fund such ventures. Work-ing a wreck can cost between $30,000 and$40,000 a day. That means private inves-tors who expect a return for their money,and that means a share of the goodies.”

He denies allegations of often havingtaken a larger share of these “goodies” thanwas his due. “The normal split is 75% forus and 25% for the government in whose

waters we work. The country also gets allunique objects found.” At the same timehe staunchly defends his methods of exca-vation and recovery for which he is regu-larly attacked by the specialists.

“Everybody in this game works witharchaeologists these days and they tell ushow things should be done. And the tech-nology we use allows for a precision pre-viously unheard of. We can do three dimen-sional grids of a site, for example, pinpoint-ing exact locations of objects - although this

is obviously much more difficult whenwrecks are spread over several kilometresas is often the case.”

Motivated, he says, more by theexcitment of discovery and the knowledgegained than by the treasure (“I’m a mil-lionaire, I don’t need the money”), he hasconsistantly argued for the protection ofunderwater cultural heritage. A long list ofarticles with titles such as “Shipwrecksshould belong to the state so valuable datawill be preserved”, “Why Cádiz must besaved”, “The Disappearing UnderwaterHeritage”, admirably present the case forsafeguarding wrecks and other sites suchas the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica(where Marx served as director ofexacavation for the government in King-ston). He argued, alongside of the “grand-father” of underwater archaeology, GeorgeBass, and explorer-technologist RobertBallard, who worked on the Titanic, forthe rewriting of American shipwreck lawsto ensure their protection from treasurehunters. “The concept of ‘finders keep-ers’ should never apply to shipwrecks or

anything old which one might find underthe sea. It has always been my belief thatshipwrecks and other underwater finds be-long to all of mankind...” he told the USsubcommittee on oceanography during areview of America’s abandoned shipwreckact in October 1985. A bluff to gain recog-nition from the archaeological communityor win favour (and excavation permits) withgovernments claim his critics. His deter-mination to get his own way, his contemptof red-tape and “nationalism”, the way he

uses friends in high places to gain influ-ence (and change laws, as happened in theAzores) is renowned to the point where manygovernments have now closed their doors tohim.

Nonetheless he makes a valid pointwhen he suggests that the archaeologicalcommunity should work more closely, withand not only better inform people like him-self who have access to the technology andfinance, but also and especially with sportsdivers or even fishermen who often don’tthink twice before lifting a curious objectfrom the seabed.

Just how far he is prepared to go thoughto adapt his methods of work (both on thediplomatic front and underwater), remainsto be seen. When asked what he thoughtabout a convention that basically aimed atcurtailing his activities, he gave a sur-prised laugh, paused for a few secondsand then replied most sincerely “but Iwork as an archaeologist, why should itaffect me?”

S.W.

M A R X ( R I G H T )W I T H A D I V E RA N D A H A U L O FE A R T H E N W A R EW A T E R J A R SR E C O V E R E DF R O M A M A N I L AG A L L E O N ( P h o t o© P h o e n i c i a nE x p l o r a t i o n s ) .

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

LEGAL LOOPHOLES...

D o s s i e r

10. . . . . .

Present laws do not adequately protect underwater heritage. A brief look at the history of the lawof the sea shows why.

Prior to 1958, coastal states enjoyed sov-ereignty over their internal waters, ex-

tending to the low-water line, and over theadjacent belt of territorial sea (in mostcases) to three nautical miles from the low-water line. The only other maritime zoneover which they had any kind of jurisdic-tion or control was the contiguous zone,situated adjacent to the territorial sea andof variable breadth. It was not relevant tocultural heritage. At that time, the idea ofclaiming sovereign rights over the conti-nental shelf was still in its infancy and thearea lying seaward of the three-mile limitwas generally regarded as the high seas.Under the general principle of the freedomof the high seas, states and their citizens werefree to engage in any activities not forbid-den by specific rules of international law.

Then, the coastal state needed only toadopt national legislation applicable out tothe three-mile limit of the territorial sea toprotect specific sites. However, the adventof SCUBA during the Second World War,and its increasing use by divers from thelate 1950s, opened up a gap between tech-nology and law which has not been closed.

RESPONS IB L E EXPLORAT IONApart from SCUBA, sonar, remote-oper-ated vehicles, underwater video camerasand manned submersibles have now openedup the whole of the world ocean, includ-ing, in particular, the outer continental shelfand the deep sea-bed. It is precisely in theseareas that much of the still-to-be exploredcultural heritage is situated. For chemicaland biological reasons, wrecks in deeperareas tend to be exceptionally well pre-served and it is all the more necessary thatnew law should be put in place to ensuretheir responsible exploration.

Since the 1950s there have been twomajor conferences which codified and de-veloped the law of the sea. The GenevaConference in 1958 produced four Con-ventions on the Law of the Sea but madeno reference to underwater cultural heritage.It did give general recognition to the con-cept of the legal continental shelf but ac-corded to coastal states only “sovereignrights” enabling them to explore and exploitthe “natural resources” of the shelf, a termclearly excluding cultural heritage.

The second conference was the ThirdUnited Nations Conference on the Law ofthe Sea (UNCLOS III) which produced theUN Convention on the Law of the Sea in1982. The UN Convention runs to 320 ar-ticles but only two of them concern under-water heritage.

Article 149 covers “all objects of anarchaeological and historical nature foundin the area”, that is, the sea-bed of theoceans lying seaward of the outer limit ofthe continental shelf - a zone for which theConvention established a sea-bed miningregime to be administered by an interna-tional authority. Article 149 is a well-

intentioned attempt, based on Greek andTurkish proposals, to ensure that objectsfound in this area “shall be preserved ordisposed of for the benefit of mankind as awhole, particular respect being paid to thepreferential rights of the state or countryof origin, or the state of cultural origin, orthe state of historical and archaeologicalorigin”. Although an early draft accordeda regulatory role to the authority, the finalversion of Article 149 omitted any referenceto the authority and no clue is given as tohow in practice such objects are to be pre-served or disposed of for humanity’s benefit.

The only other relevant provision isfound in Article 303. This article embod-ies the admirable - but somewhat general -principle that states have the duty to pro-tect objects of an archaeological and his-torical nature found at sea and have tocooperate for this purpose. It also employsa very complicated legal fiction to enable

the coastal state to punish treasure hunterswho remove objects from the sea-bed ofthe contiguous zone, which may extend outto a maximum of 24 nautical miles fromthe coast. Unfortunately, 303 also goes onto say that nothing in the article affects thelaw of salvage or other rules of admiralty.This, of course, raises considerable dif-ficulties for the substantial lobby whichfeels that salvage law (which allows thesalvor to recover a reward for saving goods“ in peril of the sea”) should have no placein relation to cultural heritage.

It would be quite misleading to givethe impression that no law exists for the

protection of the underwater cultural her-itage other than the framework articles ofthe UN Convention. A great many coun-tries have legislation to protect historicshipwrecks and other relics in territorialseas. More recently, a number of stateshave assumed legislative powers to con-trol underwater excavation - whether on thecontinental shelf, the exclusive economiczone or the contiguous zone. The difficultis that there is little uniformity in this leg-islation and no censensus on the underly-ing rules of international law.

Obviously this is an intolerable situa-tion and action is urgently required to closethe gap between the threat which technol-ogy has created and the degree of protec-tion the law provides.

Prof. Edward BROWNDirector, Centre for Marine Law and Policy

U.K.

S C U B AC H A N G E DE V E R Y T H I N G( P h o t o ©G A M M A /B r i a n R o m a n ) .

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U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

F O C U S

11. . . . . .

D o s s i e r

...MEAN FINDERS KEEPERSBut how to decide who owns what or whether a wreck has been abandoned? The subjecthas already been at the heart of several big legal battles.

It is undisputed that states have controlover wrecks and sites found in their ter-

ritorial waters and many exercise it. But thisdoes not mean the state can claim owner-ship.

Where the state is not involved - in in-ternational waters for example - the ownerof a wreck may prohibit work on the siteor claim any artiefacts raised. But who isthe owner?

Consider the S.S. Central Americawhich sank in 1857 some 160 miles off theSouth Carolina coast (U.S.A.) with itscargo of gold bullion, then worth a milliondollars. She lay at a depth of about 2.4 kms.The remains were located in 1988 byColumbus-America Discovery Groupwhich raised a number of artefacts and alarge quantity of gold. Action by the Groupin American courts to be declared theowner of the gold was opposed by some31 British and American insurance organi-zations who argued they had paid claimsmade by the owners at the time of the sink-ing. The court upheld this, even though thedocumentation was minimal - much hav-ing disappeared or been destroyed over theyears.

ABANDONEDOne question in that case was whether theinsurance companies had abandoned theirproperty. The US court held that they hadnot, taking the view that abandonment canonly be shown by an express statement bythe owner to that effect. Columbus-Americawere thus salvors. The court held that theyshould get 92.7% on the sale of the insuredgold and could keep all the other gold andartefacts.

For over 100 years the insurers haddone nothing to recover the gold. For some,that in itself would constitute abandonmenteven though for most of that time the tech-nology did not exist to reach the wreck. Inthe case of the Lusitania a British Courtheld that the contents of this famous wreckhad been abandoned following 67 yearswith no attempt at recovery. Spain hasnever enforced title to the wrecks of itstreasure fleets in the Caribbean or the Ar-mada wrecks of 1588. But The Netherlandsclaims, as successor in title, all wrecks ofvessels that belonged to the Vereenigde

Oostindische Compagnie (VOC, i.e. theDutch East India Company). This becamea matter of issue in Norway in the early1970s following the discovery of gold andsilver coins from the Akerendam, whichsank off Runde Island in 1725. The gov-ernment of The Netherlands claimed it stillhad title to the wreck and eventually a ne-gotiated settlement resulted in it getting10% of the coins.

The same issue arose when the remainsof VOC ships were found off Western Aus-tralia. The Australian government consid-ered that the passage of 300 years or so with-out any attempt to locate the vessels consti-tuted abandonment. The Netherlands disa-greed. The issue was resolved by the 1972Agreement between Australia and The Neth-erlands Concerning Old Dutch Shipwrecks.Under this, The Netherlands transferred “allits right, title and interest in and to wreckedvessels of the V.O.C. lying on or off thecoast of the state of Western Australia andin and to any articles thereof to Australia”.An annex to the Agreement provides fordistribution of excavated material and itsreassembly if necessary for research.

These issues disappear as one goes fur-ther back in time. It is unlikely that an

owner will come forward for a Phoeniciangalley! But there can be other problems,particularly if the wreck lies outside terri-torial waters or another zone which a stateclaims to control (for example, Australiaand Ireland claim control of wrecks on theircontinental shelves).

What happens if two groups of exca-vators claim to have discovered the site andboth want to work on it independently?One or both groups could go to a court andask to be declared the owner of any arte-facts raised from the site. For example, acourt in Virginia has conferred salvor-in-possession status of the Titanic to R.M.S.Titanic Inc. - an American corporation -and granted it exclusive rights over anyartefacts it raises from the wreck eventhough the wreck itself is hundreds of milesfrom the territory of the United States ofAmerica. In spite of this decision, the cor-poration could have difficulty keeping per-sons having no contact with the UnitedStates from the site.

WARSH IPSMany states claim sovereign immunity fortheir warships, military aircraft and associ-ated artefacts. Broadly, this means that per-mission of the flag state should be soughtbefore any activity takes place affecting thesite, even if it lies in the waters of anotherstate.

This raises a number of issues. For ex-ample, how far back in time does it extendand what exactly is a warship? Up until1856, privateers - private vessels commis-sioned by letters of marque and reprisal toseize enemy ships and cargo - often sup-plemented conventional naval forces. It isnot known how a claim to sovereign im-munity for the wreck of such a vesselwould be met.

The issues discussed above make it dif-ficult to foresee how a wreck site will betreated so as to preserve the informationcontained in it and the artefacts not of com-mercial value. Those drafting an interna-tional convention on the subject will needto consider such matters.

Patrick O'KEEFEConsultant in cultural heritage law

and management

M A K I N G A C L A I M ?( P h o t o © S Y G M A / O . F r a n k e n ) .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

F A C T S I N P H O T O S

12. . . . . .

THE RAISING OF THE MARY ROSEThe excavation and salvage of the 16th century Tudor warship, the Mary Rose, show howunderwater archaeology should be done. It also shows that such a task is a long-term undertaking,

The Mary Rose was built between 1509 and 1511 and served in Henry VIII’snavy for 34 years until she sunk off the south coast of England on July 19th,1545. The French claim one of their cannons sent her to the bottom, but otherevidence indicates she may simply have been overloaded or mishandled.

Early salvage attempts failed and the wreck was forgotten. She wasrediscovered in 1971 and the outline of the hull gradually exposed and surveyed(left). Only when this had been completed - seven years later - was a trenchopened up across her bows giving archaeologists their first view of her interior.They struck it lucky. Many of the crew’s personal possessions as well as theship’s stores were preserved in situ. The hull was also shown at this point to besalvageable.

The Mary Rose Trust was then formed in January 1979 “to find, to record,to excavate, raise, bring ashore, preserve, report on and display for all time inPortsmouth, the Mary Rose.”

“Although the aim was to raise the hull if at all possible,” explains ChristopherDobbs from the Trust, “the decision to go ahead with the salvage operation wasnot taken until January 1982 when all necessary information to make thedecision was available. Even after that there were various cut-off dates whenthe decision to halt, survey and backfill could still be taken.”

The warship was finally raised on October 11th, 1982 (below). An esti-mated 60 million television viewers worldwide watched her come to the surface in the first ever live broadcast from underwater. Theinitial lifting was carried out over a period of eight hours to avoid any suction effect. When the process of gently detaching the hull fromthe silt was complete, a giant floating crane carefully transferred it underwater into a purpose-built cradle positioned on the sea-bednearby. Once secured to the cradle the whole package, weighing 580 tons, was raised and towed ashore. As soon as it broke the surface,the water inside the hull was pumped out to reduce the load on the structure.

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U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

F A C T S I N P H O T O S

13. . . . . .

Over 19,000 artefacts were collected fromthe Mary Rose (right). But she has contrib-uted much more than this, adding volumesto our knowledge of ship design and con-struction from the Tudor period and thelife and times of a warship’s crew.

The excavation has also honed exper-tise in maritime archaeology. Five hun-dred amateurs trained by a small team ofqualified professional diving archaeolo-gists made 28,000 dives between 1979 and1982 alone. Their work helped prove thatit is quite possible to excavate and recordunderwater sites to the same quality as onland.

Up until 1982, the Mary Rose projectcost some £2.8 million ($4.5m), financedby private sponsors - who contributedequipment, time and expertise - as wellas the fund raising activities of the MaryRose Trust and visitor income. So farmore than 4.25 million people have beento see the wreck and her remarkablecontents.

A member of the conservation team in-spects main deck timbers at the stern of theship (left), which now stands upright (stillin its salvage cradle) in a specially builtshelter over a dry dock not far from whereshe was originally built. For 12 years afterher dramatic exit, during which time thehull was turned upright and the deck struc-tures replaced, the Mary Rose was con-served by constant spraying with chilledfreshwater. In 1994, active conservationwas begun using the water-soluble waxpolyethylene glycol which, over 10 years,will eventually replace the water in theship’s timbers and coat the hull. The wreckwill then be slowly air-dried to remove anyremaining moisture. Strict hygiene is nec-essary to prevent wood decay or micro-biological contamination.

The building in which the Mary Rose ishoused includes air-conditioned viewinggalleries to screen visitors from the con-servation chemicals.

that can generate enormous public support which doesn't need to be a drainon the government's coffers.

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U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEAToday’s technology has opened up the ocean depths; a cause for great excitment and added caution.Witness the controversial salvage of the Titanic.

D o s s i e r

14 . . . . . .

No ship better illustrates the promiseand pitfalls of technological progress

than the Titanic. Hailed as unsinkable, theluxury liner hit an iceberg on her maidenvoyage in 1912, killing some 1,500 peoplein the worst maritime disaster of the time.But in 1985 the wreck re-emerged in a spec-tacular example of what naval know-howcould do in civilian hands.

Teaming up with Infremer (InstitutFrancais de Recherche pour l’Exploitationde la Mer), American experts led by RobertD. Ballard, an oceanographer and former

naval officer, discovered the wreck 380miles off Newfoundland (Canada) by tow-ing over the a sea-bed four-metre robotnamed Argo. (The French team tried usingside-scan sonar to find the ship, but whilethe reflected sound waves can span largeareas, the resulting images are fuzzy.) Morethan four km down, Argo’s video camerasbeamed up images over fibre-optic linesof the ghost ship, broken in two with thebow and the stern lying about a half-mileapart.

Triumphant, Ballard and the team re-turned in 1986 with Alvin, a Navy submers-ible, capable of carrying three people todepths of 4,000 m. Originally designed tofind wrecked planes and plant deep micro-phones, Ballard used the craft to energizeand direct Jason Junior. Known as ROVs,these remotely operated vehicles haverevolutionized deep-sea exploration, withoperators using video screens and joysticksto direct them from surface vessels orsubmersibles. Ballard focused Jason’svideo and still cameras with high intensity

lights to provide an intimate glimpse of thelost liner. The floating eye and other cam-eras moved in and out of the ship, photo-graphing thousands of objects lying in theooze of the debris field - coal, fine china,wine bottles and pairs of shoes.

Ballard initially called for the recov-ery and restoration of artefacts strewn be-tween the stern and the bow, arguing thatthey should be restored as a memorial tothe dead. He later reversed his position, assurvivors and Titanic societies around theworld branded it grave robbing.

His French partners, however, returnedin 1987, joined forces with a New Yorkbusinessman, George Tulloch, who formedthe company RMS Titanic Inc. Under in-ternational law, the team won salvage rightsto the liner’s hulk by being the first to re-cover artefacts using the French submers-ible Nautile. The craft’s mechanical arms,each capable of lifting about 115 kilos, re-covered some 4,000 artefacts, often by at-taching them to lift bags filled with dieselfuel or syntactic foam, which floats butdoes not compress at great depths.

Pledging to neither sell the artefacts nordisturb the main wreckage, RMS TitanicInc. restored and exhibited many of themin Europe, with a North American debutscheduled this April. “If those items are leftdown there, eventually they’ll disappear,”said Charles A. Haas, a Titanic historian.“Government funding of deep-sea archae-ology is zero. It’s essential that corporatefunding of one form or another be found.”

The technology required for the exca-vations certainly commands a steep price.

Having spent $20m, RMS Titanic Inc. isanxious to turn a profit through a range ofmerchandising angles. The Bass Ale com-pany, with 12,000 bottles having gonedown with the ship, has paid $250,000 sothat its sweepstakes winners could watchan expedition in August 1996. Money alsolies in deep cinematography, with the ca-ble tv Discovery Channel paying $3m foraccess to the expeditions.

T O W I T N E S S T H E E V E N TAs expensive and astonishing as it is, thistechnology still doesn't guarantee that awreck and its contents will not be damaged.On 31 August 1996, RMS Titanic Inc. triedto raise the largest piece of the sunken lineryet: a 8m x 7m section of the hull, weigh-ing about 14 tonnes and bearing four port-holes and the remnants of four others. Theteam attached four large diesel-filled rub-ber bags to the hull plate and within sev-eral hours, it had floated to about 60 m be-low the ocean surface.

The plan was to lift the section onto aship heading to New York Harbour, sym-bolically ending the doomed voyage thatbegan 85 years ago from Southampton,England. Two cruise ships came to witnessthe event, with passengers paying as muchas $6,000 per place in a cabin. But whenthe seas became rough, the salvagers de-cided to tow the hull about 80 miles awayexpecting smoother and shallower waters.But still far from the new destination, twoof the balloons broke loose, setting free thehull section, and the Titanic hit the bottom,once again. But “they’re planning on go-ing back,” said Philip S. Pennellatore, aspokesman for RMS Titanic.

Perhaps these are normal setbacks. Butthe Titanic is such a cultural icon that thejolts should sound alarms and spur discus-sion. Submersibles, ROVs and sonar scanshave launched us into the space age of deepsea exploration. The question remains,however, as to who will use these tools andwho will benefit from what they uncover -a question rich in new kinds of promise andperil.

William J. BROADAuthor of The Universe Below(to be released in April 1997)

M A N Y B E L I E V ET H A T T H EC E L E B R A T E DW R E C K I SC U R S E D( P h o t o ©S I P A P R E S S ) .

ALL

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U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

F O C U S

15. . . . . . .

WASA GOES DOWN, CAN COME UP!

D o s s i e r

Despite steep initial costs, the sunken failure that was the Wasa has become a startling successattracting millions of visitors and dollars to one of Stockholm’s most unusual museums.

I t has been called a monument to theSwedish sense of humour. With cannons

gleaming, the crown of the Swedish ar-mada, the Wasa set off on 10 August in 1628to teach the enemy Poles a lesson. Crowdslined the shore on the clear, almost wind-less day. But within minutes of starting hermaiden voyage, the mighty warship sud-denly sank, marking one of the biggest fi-ascos in Scandinavian history.

More than three centuries later, theWasa is once again bringing in the crowds,this time as a major tourist attraction.Raised and restored with extraordinarytechnological finesse, the Wasa is now thefocus of Sweden’s only self-sustainingmuseum. Attracting more than 750,000visitors each year, the Wasa Museum ofStockholm earned a total income of fivemillion dollars in 1996.

UNDER THE B E L LYMajor salvage efforts didn’t get underwayuntil 1956 when a Swedish petroleum en-gineer, Anders Franzén used a home-madecore-sampler to locate the ship, which hewas convinced was well preserved, sparedfrom the devastation of shipworm by thecold brackish water. After divers confirmedhis predictions, the government with thesupport of private industry began prepara-tions to raise it. It took three years for diversto string steel cables through tunnels blastedwith water jets under the belly of the 1,400-ton craft. Other divers removed the ship’smasts, spars and rigging. By pumping tonsof water through two pontoons, the wirespulled taut, thereby raising the Wasa in1961, as the tv cameras rolled and histori-ans and archaeologists cheered. At the timeit was the world’s oldest wreck to re-emerge, beating Lord Nelson’s famous Vic-tory by 130 years.

However, the trick lay not just in lift-ing the ship, but preserving it. Setting thevessel under the constant jets of a sprin-kler system, experts invented and then ap-plied the “glycol-method”, impregnatingthe black oak with polyethylene glycol for17 years to prevent it from shrinking andcracking as it dried. Some 580 tons of wa-ter evaporated, during the process.

“The Wasa has provided us with awealth of new facts about shipbuilding and

craftmanship at the time,” says KlasHelmersson, the museum’s acting director.While a letter to King Gustav Adolph IIdescribed the catastrophe historians havenever been able to get to the bottom of whyit occurred. One long-lived theory was thatthe Wasa’s 64 cannons were leftunfastened, sinking the ship as they rolledacross it. Today, we know that the stonesfilling the keel didn’t weigh enough to sta-bilize the vessel.

“But most importantly,” saysHelmersson, “we have the opportunity todig very deep into a precise time period.”Indeed, the Wasa offers a window onto thepast, illuminating the life of the 17th-cen-tury sailor and the horrible scenes of a des-perate, drowning crew. Teams of archae-ologists have explored every nook andcranny of the veritable time-capsule, com-plete with 500 sculptures and such ordi-nary objects, as watches, games, forks,shoes, a bible, carpenter’s tools and Swe-den’s oldest clay pipes. They have alsouncovered remains from 25 of the 50 menand women who went down with the ship,including the skeleton of a seaman, stillcarrying his leather money pouch.

Up until 1990, the Wasa Museum washoused in a basic aluminium buildingwhich slowly rusted with the 98% humid-ity need for the ship’s restoration. But in1990, a brave new museum awaited: amodern building crowned by three masts,complete with cinemas, computer rooms,

replicated captain’s quarters, sailors’ cab-ins and a cannon deck.

“Swedes are finally discovering this pe-riod, specifically the years around 1628,which brought major changes to the soci-ety,” says Helmersson. “Under GustavAdolf II, Sweden rose to be a major powerin Europe.”

The hundreds of displayed artefacts letalone the ship are enough to fire the im-agination. Not only can kids piece together

the life of a long-gone mariner - from hisbarber’s tools to his boots - they can buildtheir own ships on computer screens, see-ing that if the real Wasa, 69 meters longand reaching as high as 51.5 meters, hadbeen only about 0.4 meters wider than itsoriginal 11.3, the accident probably wouldnever have happened. For the large masts,heavy cannons and insufficient ballast madefor a treacherously wobbly design.

The Wasa’s belated triumph raises newquestions and expectations about salvag-ing in the Swedish archipelago in the Bal-tic Sea. Historians know of twelve sunkenwarships from the 16th and 17th centuries,six of them not yet located. Between the coldbrackish water protecting them fromshipworm and the Swedish laws protectingthem as national antiquities, chances lookgood of finding and benefiting from yet an-other treasure trove of history.

Petter KARLSSONStockholm

W H E N T H ES H I P R E A C H E DT H E S U R F A C E ,E V E R Y K I L OO F W O O DC O N T A I N E D1 . 5 K I L O SO F W A T E R( P h o t o ©W a s a M u s e u m ,S t o c k h o l m ) .

F O C U S

U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

D o s s i e r

SWIMMING WITH THE SPHINXESThe ruins of the seventh wonder of the world, the Alexandria Lighthouse, could soon rivalthe pyramids as a tourist drawcard... underwater.

16. . . . . .

The waters around Pharos, off the coastof Alexandria, Egypt, are peopled by

strange creatures. Dive down six or eightmetres and you’ll find yourself face to facewith sphinxes and colossal statues of menand women. It’s easy to forget the brilliantlycoloured fish swimming gaily among theenormous stone blocks...

Underwater archaeologists swimaround just as blissfully, overjoyed by thecertainty of having discovered what re-mains of the seventh wonder of the world:the Alexandria Lighthouse. Diving buffswill soon be able to share their enthusiasmif a project to turn this unique site into anunderwater archaeological park takesshape. The project will be discussed by ar-chaeologists, marine environment special-ists and decision-makers at a multidisci-plinary workshop in Alexandria from 7 -11 April, initiated by the University of Lille(France), UNESCO and the SupremeCouncil of Egyptian Antiquities (SCA).Launched by Hassan El-Banna of the Al-exandria University and Selim Morcos, aUNESCO consultant, the project is aimedat preserving the relics in situ.

EARTHQUAKESThe story of Pharos begins in the third cen-tury BC, when Ptolemy II built the light-house on an idea of his father Ptolemy I. Itrose some 100 metres in a kind of court-yard of colonnades, set on a square basesurmounted by an octagonal level, then athird cylindrical level. At its summit was alantern crowned with a statue of Poseidon.From the fourth to 15th centuries AD, how-ever, the mighty structure was destroyed bya series of earthquakes. When the Arab trav-eller Ibn Battuta visited Pharos in 1349, hefound it “in such a state of ruin that it wasimpossible to enter”. Over a century later,the Mameluke sultan Ashraf Quaitbay builta fort on the site.

What happened to the lighthouse? Cer-tain parts were recuperated and integratedwith the fort. But there was little interest,until recently, in knowing more about themain building and the statuary which layunderwater. In the early 1960s an amateurdiver, Kamel Abul Saadat, pressured thenavy to bring up a colossal statue of aPtolemaic queen with the features of Isis.

At the request of the Egyptian antiqui-ties authorities, a preliminary study spon-sored by UNESCO was conducted by theBritish underwater archaeologist HonorFrost in 1968. It proved to be a false start;the site fell back into oblivion because of alack of specialized archaeologists and thefact that the area was in a military zone.

It was only in the 1990s that the light-house resurfaced. While shooting underwa-ter scenes for a film on Hellenistic Alex-andria, the Egyptian director Asmaa El-Bakri noticed a concrete dike being built

on top of the ruins to protect Fort Quaitbay.The subsequent press campaign led theSCA to suspend work and give the greenlight to an archaeological mission to savethe vestiges. Begun in 1994 under the di-rection of Jean-Yves Empereur, head of theAlexandria Study Centre, the mission hasthus far classified over 2,000 pieces. Fundswere contributed by the Institut françaisd’archéologie orientale (IFAO) and Gedeon- a multimedia company which has pro-duced a documentary in cooperation with theLouvre Museum, the cultural foundation ofElf Aquitaine and Electricité de France.

The profusion of objects superposedfrom different periods - Pharaonic,Ptolemaic and Roman - complicate the job.But a computerized analysis of maps of thesite and examination of each block has ena-bled them to distinguish two categories offindings. According to Empereur and Jean-Pierre Corteggiani, an IFAO Egyptologist,the presence of sphinx and hieroglyphicinscriptions can be explained by the

Ptolemaic practice of reusing Pharaonoicvestiges, generally taken from Heliopolis(near Cairo). Some of these, mixed withHellenistic and Roman elements wereprobably thrown into the sea at the end ofthe Roman period and at the time of theMamelukes to protect the port of Alexan-dria from enemy attack.

The other category of findings consistsof much heavier blocks of granite - 49 to69 tonnes. The fact that some were brokeninto two or three pieces indicates that theyfell from a great height. Empereur’s team

is convinced that these are remnants ofthe lighthouse. Several dozen pieces havealready been raised, restored and are cur-rently on view in the open-air amphithea-tre of Kom el Dikka, in Alexandria.

The discoveries opened new perspec-tives for Egyptian archaeologists. Just twomonths ago, the CSA created a departmentof underwater archaeology. Nonetheless,the project under consideration is makingwaves. The archaeologists want to disman-tle the concrete dike to salvage the ele-ments of Pharos underneath but the Egyp-tian antiquities department is turning a deafear. The department has also stopped theraising of more vestiges after being accusedof privileging a pre-Islamic site to the detri-ment of the Mameluke fort. Hopefully, theApril meeting, which will bring together allthe actors concerned, will be able to poursome oil on the troubled waters.

Sophie BOUKHARIwith Hala HALIM, Alexandria

H O W I T U S E DT O L O O KA C C O R D I N GT O T H EA R C H A E O L O -G I S T S( P h o t o ©G E D E O N / E XM A C H I N E /S Y G M A ) .

An invaluable guide to safe diving in the most varied experimental and

environmental conditions.

SCIENTIFIC DIVING also provides information on administrative

matters.

➠

Price: 200 FFBest Publishing Company/UNESCO Publishing

Second edition

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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 . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

P L A N E T

E d u c a t i o n

18. . . . . .

REORDERING PRIORITIESLatin America can no longer afford to side-line adult education,delegates conclude at regional conference.According to conservative statistics, on theeve of the 21st century 17% of Latin Ameri-can adults are illiterate. In Brazil alone thereare more than 25 million of them. The prob-lem is tending to worsen because social in-tegration into the workforce and commu-nity life increasingly requires an ability toacquire, update and utilize knowledge thatgoes beyond a rudimentary command ofreading, writing and arithmetic, as pointedout by UNESCO’s International Commis-sion on Education for the 21st Century,chaired by Jacques Delors.

The Regional Preparatory Conferencefor the Fifth International Adult EducationConference (COFINTEA V) held inBrasilia (Brazil) from 22-24 January wasmarked by bitter criticisms of the educa-tion policies pursued by Latin Americangovernments. In the opinion of a largenumber of specialists meeting in the Bra-zilian capital, results are modest evenwithin initiatives specifically designed foryoung people and adults outside the for-mal education system. According to thestrongest critics, the problem is due to the“neoliberal concepts that have taken overthe continent”.

P O L A R I Z E DGovernment representatives tried to avoidan ideological debate but recognized thatthe efforts being made are inefficient. In anumber of cases they admitted that the edu-cation of citizens over school age is not apriority for governments, which instead fo-cus on standard basic education. The po-larization of the debate became clear at thestart of the conference, in statements madeby Carlos Nuñez, the president of the LatinAmerican Adult Education Council(CEEAL) and by the authorities of the hostgovernment.

Nuñez was among those who attributedthe deficiencies of adult education and thedeterioration of a number of social indica-tors in the region to the application ofneoliberal concepts. According to him, theconcentration of effort on the formal edu-cation of children and the neglect of youngpeople and adults has led to “the creationof an army of individuals who lack thewherewithal to obtain employment in a glo-balized economy”.

“The general improvement seen inschool availability and the number of yearschildren spend there, has not reduced theneed to offer additional or complementaryinstruction for thousands of young peopleand adults whose education, although bet-ter than that of their parents, is insufficientto meet the new requirements of the labourmarket and of society,” acknowledged Bra-zil’s education minister, Paulo Renato deSouza.

B A S I C E D U C AT I O N F I R S T“Brazil’s position,” stated de Souza, sum-ming up the policy of many Latin Ameri-can governments, “continues to be that theprimary objective of educational policy isto offer adequate instruction at the right ageand as part of basic education, surmount-ing truancy and the need for pupils to re-peat courses, and increasing the percent-age of pupils who complete their basic edu-cation. This policy will eliminate, to a largeextent, the need to provide juvenile andadult education, except as a form of con-tinuing education.”

In the opinion of Jorge Werthein,UNESCO’s representative in Brazil, “adulteducation here is closely associated withthe extreme poverty and social exclusionof vast sectors of the population. It consti-tutes a social obligation for the benefit ofthose who have never entered the educa-tion system or who have very limitedschooling. In that sense, adult educationbecomes something eminently temporaryand transitory.”

Werthein, supported by the representa-tives of several countries, advocated crea-tive and well-structured action by state,non-governmental and private institutionsto overcome educational deficiencies, par-ticularly where young people and adults areconcerned. Quoting the UNESCO’s Direc-tor-General, Federico Mayor, he told theconference that “UNESCO has undertakento work for the poorest, for those most ex-posed to social exclusion, for those whoare most disadvantaged in terms of accessto knowledge, and for the most vulner-able”. In the opinion of the NGO repre-sentatives however, the young people andadults of today need and are entitled tospecific educational programmes however

●

“ I t i s b o t h a hymn t o l i f e i n g l o r i ou sc o l ou r s and a d i r ge e voked by t he 48p i c t u r e s o f v i c t im s . T he pho t og raph s we r ea s s emb l ed a f t e r t h r ee mon th s ’ s ea r ch i nt he Sao Pao l o s han t y t own s , ” exp l a i nedA l ex Pe i r ano Cha con , d e s c r i b i ng t h e 1997ca l enda r he de s i gned t o d r aw a t t en t i ont o t h e p l i gh t f a c i ng s o many o f B ra z i l ’sc h i l d r en . P r odu ced by t h e pub l i s he rG ra f i c o s Bu r t i , t h e c a l enda r ’s p r o c eed sw i l l g o t owa rd s UNESCO ’s p r og ramme f o rB r a z i l i a n C H I L D R E N I N N E E D .S e l e c t ed f r om among 2 ,000 pa i n t i ng sdone by c h i l d r en i n 70 s c hoo l s andcen t r e s i n 15 o f t h e c oun t r y ’s s t a t e s , t h e13 wo rk s c on t r a s t pho t og raph s o fc h i l d r en a s s a s s i na t ed i n t h e l a s t twoyea r s . An exh i b i t i o n a t Headqua r t e r sp r e s en t ed mo re t han 150 o f t h e c h i l -d ren ’s wo rk s f r om 21 Janua r y t o 13Feb rua r y.

T H E C A L E N D A R I S P R E S E N T E D T O T H E M O T H E RO F O N E O F T H E M U R D E R E D C H I L D R E N .( P h o t o © S a m u e l I a v e l b e r g / C A M E R A 1 ) .

▼

Entitled “UNESCO and the WorldSummit for SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT”,this anthology presents papers,speeches and working documentsprepared for the conference.From education for all to unemploy-ment and social exclusion, the sectionscover diverse facets of this broadsubject.

☛ Sector of Socialand Human Sciences

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

P L A N E T

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19. . . . . .

E d u c a t i o n

difficult it may be to plan and implementthem. They also affirm that because of cer-tain structural aspects of Latin Americansocieties that cannot be altered in the shortterm, not even the most successful schoolsystems are capable of preventing theemergence of new contingents of under-educated young people and adults.

According to the non-governmentalspecialists, government policies are not ca-pable of providing adequate responses totwo different aspects of the problem of edu-cating young people and adults in LatinAmerica, who require different policies

delegates and NGO representatives. Thus,while it reaffirms the inescapable responsi-bility of the state to guarantee access tobasic education of good a quality for eve-ryone, the text also upholds the need “tocreate institutional mechanisms that makeit possible to link together the different au-thorities and actors involved in education”,including NGOs.

A P E R M A N E N T P R O C E S S

specially designed to deal with them. Theseaspects are the imbalances that have so farprevented large sectors of the populationfrom moving into the modern way of life,and the typical post-modern transforma-tions that threaten to produce a new kindof social exclusion like that occurring indeveloped countries. There is a need to edu-cate the citizen who cannot find employ-ment because he is illiterate or has littleschooling as well as the worker who isthreatened with losing her job because thesystem of production requires other kindsof knowledge and skills. In neither of thetwo cases does formal education ad-equately meet these needs. In this sense,improving formal education systems wasnot a solution.

Despite their differences, the partici-pants managed to produce a final documentwhich reflected the views of government

H E R C H I L D R E N H A D B E T T E R L U C K( P h o t o U N E S C O /

E d u c a t i o n M i n i s t r y o f C o l o m b i a ) .

●

Ce l eb ra t i ng t h e 1 ,700 th ann i v e r s a r y o ft he f ound i ng o f SPL I T ( C r oa t i a ) , anexh i b i t i on he l d a t UNESCO , 6 t o 16Janua r y, t r a c ed t he c i t y ’s many f a c e s -f r om t he pa l a c e o f t h e Roman Empe ro rD i o c l e t i an t o c on t empo ra r y a r c h i t e c t u r e .W i t h a r t e f a c t s d ep i c t i ng da i l y l i f e andd re s s o f t h e d i s t an t pa s t t o mode rnpa i n t i ng s and s c u l p t u r e s , t h e s howp re s en t ed t he c u l t u r a l and h i s t o r i c a lwea l t h o f t h i s c i t y, i n s c r i b ed on t heWor l d He r i t age L i s t s i n c e 1979 .

M A R K O M A R U L I C , FAT H E R O F C R O AT I A NL I T E R AT U R E ( P h o t o U N E S C O / M i c h e l C l a u d e ) .

▼

About 25 leading scientists, healthexperts, engineers and other special-ists in disaster reduction met withabout 30 representatives of variousinternational organizations at theeighth session of the Scientific andTechnical Committee on the Interna-tional Decade for NATIONAL DISASTERREDUCTION (1990-1999). Meeting atHeadquarters from 20 to 24 January,they focused on the role education canplay in promoting prevention.“A strategy that puts the main accenton relief action is essentially short-sighted,” said the director-general,Federico Mayor. “What we need towork for is a significant shift frompost-disaster response to pre-disasterprevention.”

In addition to calling for the integration ofjuvenile and adult education in a permanentand institutionalized process, the documentadvocates: the revival of the practical know-how acquired by teachers in the workers’education movement; an extension of thescope of juvenile and adult education; thepreparation of flexible, diversified andparticipative curriculums; the use of massmedia; and the creation of programmes spe-cifically designed for the training of juve-nile and adult education personnel. The con-ference also considered that appropriate fi-nancing from different sources should besecured for adult education on the basis ofequity and of affirmative action for the ben-efit of underprivileged social groups. It alsoexpressed itself in favour of a review of theconcept of literacy teaching and of a guar-antee of the right to education of girls andyoung women, particularly those in specialcircumstances, such as teenage mothers.

The question of gender in education re-ceived special attention from participants,who recommended that governments adoptmeasures and mechanisms to secure com-pliance with the agreements reached at theinternational UN-sponsored conferencesheld in Cairo in 1994 (on population) andBeijing in 1995 (on women), especiallymeasures to put an end to sexism in what istaught, to guarantee equality in organiza-tion, participation and leadership in collec-tive activities.

Given the importance of adult educa-tion, the Brasilia conference also proposedthe establishment of regional citizens’ ob-servation posts to monitor agreementsreached at the remaining regional confer-ences and the main event itself, the FifthWorld Conference on Adult Education,which will be held in Hamburg, Germany,next July.

Carlos MILLERBrasilia

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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 . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

P L A N E T

S c i e n c e

20. . . . . .

UNDER THE MICROSCOPEInstead of blowing their own horn, eminent scientists ask,“where did we go wrong”.“ If ever there was a century of science, it isthis one,” announced the Indian physicistMambillikalathil Menon, at the inauguralsession of UNESCO’s International Scien-tific Advisory Board (ISAB), composed of56 of the world’s leading scientists andpolicy experts, including seven Nobel lau-reates. From 20 to 21 January, the boardbrain-stormed about possible themes andobjectives of a world science conferenceplanned by UNESCO for 1998-1999.

From a walk on the moon to an ap-proaching map of the human genome, achorus of voices fawned over science’sachievements. But the back-patting soonwore thin, as speakers turned to the flip-side of the century’s breakthroughs.

“We are responsible in the view of thepublic for Hiroshima, Nagasaki and na-palm,” warned Ernesto Carafoli, presidentof the International Cell Research Organi-zation. “We’re now supposedly in the pro-cess of genetically engineering newHitlers,” continued the Italian biochemist.“We need to convince people that we arenot as evil as they see us.”

T O M O R R O W ’ S W I Z A R D S

Nature Conservation Agency. “Over theyears, we have promised and provided an-swers which we should have doubted... Wehave over-sold ourselves and science to ourpolitical masters.”

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The re c en t l y r e v i s ed “D i r e c t o r y o f t h eI n t e rna t i ona l Ne two rk f o r I n f o rma t i on i nSC I ENCE AND T ECHNOLOGY E du ca -t i on” ( IN I S T E ) p r ov i de s ba s i c p r o f i l e s o f260 pa r t i c i p a t i ng na t i ona l , r eg i ona l andi n t e rna t i ona l o r gan i za t i on s i n vo l v ed w i t ht ea che r t r a i n i ng , ou t - o f - s c hoo l andcu r r i c u l a r a c t i v i t i e s i n t h i s f i e l d a t t h ep r ima ry and s e c onda r y l e ve l s .Add r e s s e s , c on t a c t p e r s on s , g eog raph i c a lc o ve rage , s t a f f s i z e , wo rk i ng l anguage s ,pe r i od i c a l s and o t he r da t a a r e i n c l udedi n add i t i on t o s e ve ra l i n dexe s mak i ngt h i s an ea sy - t o - u s e r e f e r en c e gu i de .

☛ IN I S T E S e c r e t a r i a t -D i v i s i on f o r t h e Renova t i on o f

Edu ca t i ona l Cu r r i c u l a and S t r u c t u r e s

▼

With painted banners spanning threemetres, posters and photographsaccompanied by poetry, a total of 250artistic works illustrating the theme“FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE” weredisplayed at UNESCO from 6 to 16January.Marking the 50th anniversary of theUnited Nations as well as the atomicbombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,the multidisciplinary exhibitiondisplayed the commitment to peace onthe part of artists from some 20countries around the world.

( P h o t o U N E S C O / M i c h e l C l a u d e ) .

“ O N T H E O T H E R H A N D ,M Y R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y T O S O C I E T Y

M A K E S M E W A N T T O S T O P R I G H T H E R E . ”

But “there is no place to discuss thesedoubts and ambiguities,” reminded ProfPaolo Fasella, a specialist in experimentalmedicine and biochemistry, pointing to Eu-rope’s recent “mad cow” scandal in whichdecision-makers didn’t ban the consump-tion of tainted meat on the grounds of in-conclusive scientific results. For Fasella,it is a classic example of the “serious cri-sis” in which “public opinion and govern-ments don’t fully understand the limits ofscience. Governments make decisions forpolitical reasons which they would thenlike to attribute to science because it makesthe public feel more secure.”

“Conveying scientific facts to the po-litical sector is especially difficult in thisera of professional politicians, who havespent their entire career planning electoralstrategies,” said the British engineer and con-sultant Martin Lees. “They just don’t knowhow to manage risk.” As a case in point,Fasella harked back to 1983, when LucMontagnier sought assistance from Euro-pean officials for his AIDS researchproject. It took him three years to win sup-port. “We need to convince governments thatit is more expensive not to do science”.

Here again, science is at a disadvan-tage, as “religion doesn’t call for public

One speaker after another piped in with talesof the bad rap science is getting: people nolonger respect scientists or their work,thanks in part to the media’s sensationalmisrepresentation, providing the perfectcover for politicians to slash budgets, whichin turn forces researchers to compromisetheir intellectual curiosity for commercialinterests, thus, sacrificing the long-term in-terests of humanity. The “crisis” has evenhit the school systems - from primary touniversity levels - now incapable of pro-viding the quality science teaching neededto attract, let alone train, future wizards. Theconclusion: it’s time to highlight science’scontributions with a world conference.

Or is it? Recalling the early praise, DrKhotso Mokhele, director of South Afri-ca’s Foundation for Research Develop-ment, asked, “why do we now need to makea case for it? Why has religion succeededwhile science has had so much difficulty?Where did we, the scientists, go wrong?”

“Religion always provides answers, butscience doesn’t,” offered Dr Peter Bridge-water, chief executive officer of Australia’s

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

P L A N E T

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21. . . . . .

S c i e n c e

funding,” pointed out Wadi Haddad of theWorld Bank. Scientists from rich and poorcountries alike decried governments’ grow-ing resistance to fund research projects,leaving industry to not just foot the bill,but order the results.

But remember, warned Lees, “govern-ments are cutting back on everything - edu-cation, health and so many other fields,including science... Instead of pleading formore money, we need to change percep-tions. Just as we saw with environmentpolicy, we need to move from public financ-ing to a system of incentives,” with, forexample, financing schemes matching pri-vate investment with public funds.

Mokhele couldn’t have agreed more. “Icannot keep going back to my governmentand asking, ‘give me more money.’ We needto examine ourselves,” he said, pointing,for example, to in-fighting (“physics is stilldefending itself against chemistry as towhich forms the essence of life”) and prob-lems communicating with the “outside”.

“The labour movement, for example, isanti-science because it takes jobs away,”said Mokhele. “Obviously, it’s not as sim-ple as that. But has organized science at-tempted to bring labour into the debateconcerning science for the future? Scienceis an absolutely joyful experience, but Ithink we’ve gotten too caught up in it.”

“Part of the answer to ‘where did wego wrong’, lies in recognizing that thingsare not as bad as we tend to suggest,” ex-plained the American physicist DonaldLangenberg, who is also the chancellor ofthe University of Maryland. “Every surveytaken in the US suggests that scientists andscience are at the top of the prestige list.Now we are seeing that some people are

getting a little weary of hearing us whine.During the cold war, it was easy to arguethat science was needed to defend our wayof life against ‘them’. And ‘they’ argued thesame.” That’s no longer the case. “But sci-entists still insist, ‘if only we could get poli-ticians in our room to see what we do best’.Instead, we have to see what they have toteach us.”

This is why “a world science confer-ence should not be a conference of scien-tists,” according to Langenberg, but mustinclude significant representation of thepolitical and industrial sectors, the mediaand non-governmental organizations. Any-thing else would be “Alice in Wonderland”,said Lees, “because that’s where the moneyand power lies”.

For while things may not be so bad incountries like the USA, there are still is-sues like gene patents to be resolved. Mostimportantly, “science still doesn’t exist forbillions. From what I understand, just $60million is spent on malaria research, whichis insufficient in comparison to the suffer-ing involved. Eighty percent of researchand development goes on in industrializedcountries, with the results rarely reachingthose developing,” he said. “At the sametime, we all are at risk in the losing battleagainst microbes, as seen with the ebolavirus... We must reach out to the people whomake the decisions. Otherwise the conferencecould be a success in reaching an internalconsensus, but a tragedy in terms of concreteaction.

“People everywhere are looking atproblems with the environment, urban mi-gration and family-related issues, and say-ing, ‘we’ve got it all wrong!’ Science is nowfeeling this debate - and just maybe we cando something to resolve it.”

A.O.

“I feel it is essential to emphasize the importance of basic sciences - whichare too often neglected by decision-makers and politicians seeking short-term successes and benefits,” said Federico Mayor in his opening addressto ISAB on 20 January. The Director-General created the open-endedboard, to advise UNESCO on strategic science issues and to recommendactivities promoting, sharing and applying scientific knowledge. WithWerner Arber, the Swiss microbiologist and Nobel laureate as president,ISAB also has the mandate to propose themes and objectives of a worldscience conference, which should call for a few “very clear proposals thatwill be a challenge for decision-makers to adopt”, said Mr Mayor.

A B S O L U T E J O Y

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P r i d i ng i t s e l f a s t h e “ c r ad l e o f humanc i v i l i z a t i on” , A f r i c a l a y s c l a im t o be i ngt he p l a c e whe re s ome o f t h e ea r l i e s tt e c hno l og i e s we r e f i r s t d eve l oped . Ye tt oday, i t l a g s f a r b eh i nd i n t e r ms o fSC I ENCE AND T ECHNOLOGY .E n t i t l e d “ Towa rd s S c i en t i f i c and Te chno -l og i c a l L i t e r a c y f o r A l l i n A f r i c a ” , t h ebook pub l i s hed by UNESCO ‘ s r eg i ona lo f f i c e i n Daka r ( S enega l ) s hed s l i g h t ont he way t h i s f o rm o f edu ca t i on ha s beenpe r c e i v ed on t he c on t i n en t f r om t heco l on i a l p e r i od t o t h e p r e s en t andsugge s t s s t r a t eg i e s s o t ha t e ve r y A f r i c ancan “be equ i pped w i t h t h e ba s i c s k i l l sn e c e s s a r y t o unde r s t and , exp l o r e andexp l o i t j u d i c i ou s l y t h e phy s i c a l env i r on -men t and r e s ou r c e s ” .

▼

Part of the project “EDUCATION FORALL: Making it Work”, a new series ofthematic portfolios presents conciseissue-papers and case-studies featur-ing innovative and successful teachereducation initiatives in developingcountries worldwide.From democratic education work-shops in Chile to a “self-help actionplan” in Zambia, the first dossieroffers diverse alternatives in moving“towards a new paradigm of teachereducation”.

☛ ED/EFA Education Sector

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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 . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

P L A N E T

E d u c a t i o n

22. . . . . .

MEN AT RISKIn the Caribbean, the education gap between boys and girls iswidening rapidly, with the girls way out in front.Educating girls and women is a top priorityeverywhere for organizations like UNESCOwhich has fought long and hard to convincegovernments and male populations of theensuing benefits to the rest of society. How-ever, in the Caribbean it’s the men who lagbehind, to the point where alarm bells areringing.

In his book, “Men at Risk”, the head ofthe Education Department at the Univer-sity of the West Indies and long-time

economic power and the highest payingjobs are still male-dominated.

Why is this? Outside school, boys arefreeer while girls are more closely disci-plined, staying at home to look afteryounger siblings and helping with domes-tic chores. Also, schools do not provideboys with positive male role models. Al-most 90% of all teachers from the earlychildhood level to junior high are women.At the senior secondary level they account

(Car

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UNESCO consultant, Professor ErrolMiller points out that the Caribbean is oneof the few regions in the world where thereare more illiterate men than women. In Ja-maica, for example, 31% of men are illit-erate compared to 19% of women. Themale:female enrolment rate is more or lessevenly distributed at the pre-school and pri-mary school levels. However, in the finalyear of primary school, girls move ahead,due to higher drop-out and repetition ratesamong boys.

In the traditional secondary schoolswhich have a more academic programmethan others at this level, girls outnumberboys three-to-one. This pattern continuesin higher education. Some 63% of studentsenrolled at the University of the West Indiesin 1993/94 were women.

Girls also do better in examinations atthe end of primary and secondary levels. Atthe pre-university level both genders performequally. However, at the University of theWest Indies more women are awarded diplo-mas than men, with 82% of the degrees inarts and general studies, 60% in law and 53%in medicine.

As a consequence, Caribbean womenare gradually replacing men in managerialand professional occupations, even though

●

Be cau se “ t he wa t e r and t he ea r t h i n v i t eu s t o d r eam ing s d r i f t i n g t o c r ea t i on” , t h eUNESCO Cen t re o f Tr oye s ( F r an ce ) i so r gan i z i ng an i n t e r na t i ona l v i s ua l a r t sc ompe t i t i o n en t i t l e d , “EARTH ANDWATER ” . You th f r om 3 t o 25 yea r s o l dc an c ompe t e (w i t h i n s e t age c a t ego r i e s )by s ubm i t t i ng t h e i r wo rk by 15 Ma r ch1997 . A l l f o rms o f exp r e s s i on ( d r aw ing ,pa s t e l s , p a i n t i ng , pho t og raphy, s c u l p t u r e ,eng rav i ng , e t c . ) u s i ng any ma t e r i a l( c a r dboa rd , wood , po l y s t y r ene , ea r t h . . . )a r e a c c ep t ed .

☛ UNESCO Cen t r e L ou i s F r an ço i sHô t e l du Pe t i t L ouv r e

B . P. 279

▼

Just what is the ASSOCIATED SCHOOLSProject (ASP)? How does it work andto what end? What kind of majorprojects are there and how can youget involved? A practical manualentitled, “Key words for participatingin the UNESCO Schools Project”answers all of these questions. Eachsection contains examples, illustrationsand suggestions on how to become anactive member of the ASP network.Readers can add relevant material inusing the “open” guide like a personalhandbook.

for 75% of teaching staff.

T H E C O N S E Q U E N C E SThe main risk of such a situation is the iso-lation and exclusion of men from societyand development initiatives. Frustrated,many turn to drugs, violence againstwomen, gangs and criminal activities. AndErrol Miller is convinced that the phenom-enon is not limited to the Caribbean, but isalready visible in the United States and thecountries of the ex-Soviet Union. He evengoes so far as to argue that these social pat-terns are forerunners of similar changes thatwill eventually come to the rest of the mod-ern world.

Jamaica has taken a number of initia-tives to ensure gender equity at all levelsof the system. The University of the WestIndies, for example, has launched a pro-gramme known as “Fathers and company”aimed at making fathers more aware oftheir family responsibilities and the factthat their attitude has an enormous influ-ence on their sons’ education. UNESCO,as well, is taking a grass-roots approach.Its Education and Skills Training PilotProject, launched in the village ofBlackstonedge (Jamaica), made a consid-erable impact on the young men there.Originally drawn up as a project for out-of-school girls and women, at the requestof the community’s unemployed men, itwas expanded to include them. Apart frombasic literacy and numeracy, the learnerswere trained in needlework, crafts and ag-riculture.

The situation should not be takenlightly. An in-depth study of the phenom-enon should be done and parents and teach-ers provided with special training in howto educate their children in a spirit free ofgender stereotypes.

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 7 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 7

P L A N E T

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23. . . . . .

UNESCO SOURCES is a monthly magazine publishedby the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul-tural Organization [tel: (+33 1) 45 68 16 73; fax:(+33 1) 45 68 56 54]. English and French editionsare produced at Paris Headquarters; the Spanish edi-tion in cooperation with the UNESCO Centre of Catalo-nia, Mallorca 285, 08037 Barcelona, Spain; the Chi-nese edition in cooperation with the Xinhua NewsAgency, 57 Xuanwumen Xidajie, Beijing, China; thePortuguese 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. Assistant Man-aging Editor: C. Mouillère. Spanish edition:E. Kouamou (Barcelona), L. Sampedro (Paris). Lay-out: G. Traiano, F. Ryan. Circulation and Secre-tariat: D. Maarek.

Photoengraving and printing in UNESCO Work-shops. Distribution by UNESCO's specialized services.

C u l t u r e

REEL NIGHTMARESFilm archivists and directors like Lester James Peries of Sri Lankasound the alarm as Asia’s cinematic heritage disentegrates.The father of Sri Lankan cinema is inmourning. The first to entirely shoot a full-length film in his native country and in hisnative tongue in 1955, Dr Lester JamesPeries has lost all seven of his documenta-ries and five of his 20 features like “TheMessage”, an epic tale of the island’s Por-tuguese occupation in the 16th century. Thenegative is “gone”, lost to sprocket dam-age, and legend has it that the last copy ofone of the most expensive and popularSinhalese film ever produced lays buriedin a jungle temple.

“You can go mad if you don’t reconcileyourself to the loss,” says Peries. “Youthink you have a permanent art medium tofind that it is as perishable as vegetables.To preserve films, you need more than justan air-conditioned room, you need dehu-midifiers and experts checking the reels.Preservation is an art unto itself.”

Despite an impressive cinematic his-tory, Asia’s archives are young comparedto those in Europe and North Americawhich date back to the 1930s. Accordingto a UNESCO survey conducted in 1995 -1996 by Australia’s National Film andSound Archive, the “greater part” of Asia’sfilm heritage, especially that before 1960,is lost. In Indonesia, for example, copiesof only 36 of the 371 films produced in the1950s are in the archives. India’s archiveshave just 23 of the 1,080 made in the 1920sand 260 of the 1,929 from the 1940s.

The region’s humid climate is the mainculprit, speeding up decomposition espe-cially for the early nitrate films. The moveis on to transfer them onto acetate. This is

but a temporary solution, as the colours tendto deteriorate. Digital technology offers alonger-term option, but is now financiallyout of the question, to the chagrin of 60 ofthe region’s film archivists who met atUNESCO’s initiative in Beijing (China) lastOctober. Besides, they say, even with the mostsophisticated technology, you cannot restorewhat you don’t have. Many of the countries’films and documentaries belong to private dis-tributors. In Japan, for example, the govern-ment-sponsored film archive has less than atenth of the country’s feature productions.

“It’s a national disaster in Sri Lanka,”says Peries. “I lost a classic child’s filmbecause my distributor lost the negative hekept under his bed when he moved house.Many producers are paranoid and think,‘Hmm. Why are the archivists so interestedin these films? I better hold on to them.’Directors are also ignorant. My wife,Sumitra (also a renowned filmmaker) andI air-conditioned a room in our housewhere we stored our films in metal cabi-nets. Later we found them eaten by ter-mites.”

Lobbying for a proper national film ar-chive since 1957, Peries senses “commit-ment” on the part of Prime MinisterKumaratunga, whose deceased husband wasa movie star. In the meanwhile, UNESCOhas just offered Peries $15,000 to restorethree of his films. “It’s a small but impor-tant start,” says Peries, “You expect to showyour work at least to the next generationand you find it survives just a decade.”

A.O.

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UNESCO w i l l s uppo r t t h e NAZARETH2 0 0 0 P ro j e c t , announ ced D i r e c t o r-Gene ra l F ede r i c o Mayo r on 20 J anua r ywh i l e mee t i ng a t Headqua r t e r s w i t h t h et own ’s Mayo r Rames J a ray s i . T heO rgan i za t i on w i l l o f f e r t e c hn i c a l expe r t i s ei n r e s t o r i ng Naza re t h ’s c u l t u r a l anda r chaeo l og i c a l h e r i t age and i s en cou rag -i ng t h e c r ea t i on o f a museum.L i k e B e t h l e h e m 2 0 0 0 ( s e e S o u r c e s , N o .86 ) , t h e p r o j e c t i s w i t h i n t h e f r ameworko f a c t i v i t i e s t o c e l eb ra t e t h e t u rn o f t h ec e n t u r y.

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France became the first northernmember of the European Union to jointhe Convention against ILLICITTRAFFIC IN CULTURAL PROPERTY on 7January. The ratification “confirms thecommitment of French professionalssuch as museum curators, police andadministrators, with whom UNESCOalready has excellent cooperation, tostop the illegal trade,” said theDirector-General. France is the 86thcountry to ratify the Convention on theMeans of Prohibiting and Preventingthe Illicit Import, Export and Transfer ofOwnership of Cultural Property of1970.

A K I S SF R O M P E R I E S ’“ T H E T R E A S U R E ”( P h o t o ©A l l r i g h t sr e s e r v e d ) .

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

SOURCESU N E S C O

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“Societies in Transition - CHALLENGES FOR THE MEDIA” will be discussed by the Inter-

governmental Council of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) at its

17th session at Headquarters, 17 to 21 March. At Headquarters from 19 March to 16 April, “Places of

Power, Objects of Veneration” of the INUIT OF CANADA will come to life through an art exhibition

and photographs by Canadian Norman Hallendy who will give a related lecture on 24 March. International

Day for the ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION will be commemorated

on 21 March. With World Water Day on 22 March, the first WORLD WATER FORUM will draw

top-ranking decision-makers, experts, representatives of governmental organizations and NGOs to Marrakech

(Morocco) from 20 to 25 March to explore ways of managing this precious resource in the 21st century.

Governmental experts will meet at Headquarters from 24 to 27 March to review The Hague Convention 1954

intended to PROTECT CULTURAL PROPERTY in the event of armed conflict. A group of

some 20 international experts will meet at Headquarters , 24 to 28 March, to lay the conceptual and philo-

sophical foundations of the project “UNIVERSAL ETHICS”, which will submit a major report in

1998 based on a series of consultations. In preparing for the World Conference on HIGHER EDU-

CATION to be held in 1998 at Headquarters, a regional consultation for Africa will be held in Dakar

(Senegal), 1 to 4 April. About 150 sociologists, doctors, political scientists and others will meet at Head-

quarters, 1-4 April for a colloquium on DRUGS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, examining

production, consumption and trafficking within the region and by looking at countries like Brazil, China and

India. An international conference on TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION AND NA-

TIONAL DEVELOPMENT will be held in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), 6 to 8 April.

What can be done to help street children pursue their education? OUR NEXT DOSSIER presents a

series of projects involving these kids and adolescents, their families, teachers and those who they generally

run into the most, police officers.