unesco courier august

Howyouthdrive

changeYoung people in the world:

so different and so alike

Monique Coleman

Mobile revolution

Gigi Ibrahim

Spring of outrage

Alfredo Trujillo Fernandez

Miracle Weapons

Serge Amisi

When poetry is louder than a bomb

Nate Marshall

Moonlight stars

Carol Natukunda

A young sughar

Noshan Abbas

Rebels with a cause

Jens Lubbadeh

Prescriptions for a sick planet

Zhao Ying

Green architecture

Carlos Bartesaghi Koc

Revolution: one of the

great feats of civilization

Khaled Youssef

CourierTHE UNESCO July-September 2011

United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization,

ISSN 2220-2285e-ISSN 2220-2293

Pierre ArlaudMathieu Ponnard

(France)

Merlijn Twaalfhoven (Netherlands) Zhao Ying

(China)

Hiroki Yanagisawa (Japan)

Emna Fitouri(Tunisia)

Gigi Ibrahim Khaled Youssef

(Egypt)

Ingebjørg Bratland (Norway)

Silvia Bellón(Spain)

Atti Tata(Togo)

Majd ShahinBetty Shamieh (Occupied Palestinian Territory)

Carlos Bartesaghi Koc(Peru)

Ruth Pérez López(Mexico)

Monique Coleman Nate Marshall(United States)

Noshan Abbas Khalida Brohi

(Pakistan)

Josephat Gitonga(Kenya)

Carol Natukunda (Uganda)

Barbara Mallinson (South Africa)

Serge Amisi (Democratic Republic

of Congo)

OUR AUTHORS

“Five years away from the 2015 target date for achieving the MillenniumDevelopment Goals, it is more important than ever to encourage youngpeople to dedicate themselves to achieving a more just and sustainableworld,” wrote Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, in her messageon the occasion of the launch of the International Year of Youth (August2010 – August 2011) and of International Youth Day (12 August) .

Proclaimed in December 2009 by the United Nations GeneralAssembly, the international year puts the accent on dialogue and mutualunderstanding. It aims to promote the ideals of peace, respect forhuman rights and solidarity between generations, cultures, religions andcivilizations.

During the year a large number of young people have been strivingto build a more just world, starting with the “Arab Spring”. All over theworld, they have been speaking out, demanding a place in theircountry’s future. The 7th UNESCO Youth Forum, "How youth drivechange", to be held from 17 to 20 October 2011, will provide them withan opportunity to discuss their experiences, present their projects andexchange ideas.

Since its creation, UNESCO has considered youth a major priority. Its Youth Programme aims to promote opportunities foryoung people to be given greater responsibilities and to see their role in society recognized.

From February 2010 to February 2011, the Organization jointly chaired the United Nations Interagency Network on YouthDevelopment, alongside the United Nations Programme on Youth. It was in this capacity that UNESCO participated in thecoordination of the International Year of Youth.

International Year of

Youth 2010–2011

Iris Julia Bührle Jens Lubbadeh (Germany)

Mila Zourleva(Bulgaria)

Selen Demir(Turkey)

© G

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CourierTHE UNESCO July–September 2011

United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization

64th year

2011 – No. 3

The UNESCO Courier is currently a quarterly published in

seven languages by the United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization

7, place de Fontenoy 75352, Paris 07 SP, France

Free subscription to the Courier on line:

www.unesco.org/courier

Director of publication: Eric Falt

Editor-in-chief: Jasmina Šopova

[email protected]

Managing editor: Katerina Markelova

[email protected]

Editors:

Arabic: Khaled Abu Hijleh

Chinese: Weiny Cauhape

English: Cathy Nolan

French: Françoise Arnaud-Demir

Portuguese: Ana Lúcia Guimarães

Russian: Irina Krivova

Spanish: Francisco Vicente-Sandoval

Intern: Vanessa Merlin

Photos: Danica Bijeljac

Design and layout: Baseline Arts Ltd, Oxford

Printing: UNESCO – CLD

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+ 33 (0)1 45 68 15 64 . [email protected]

Web platform: Chakir Piro and Van Dung Pham

With thanks to: Mila Zourleva

Articles and photos credited UNESCO may be reproduced

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the credit line reads “Reproduced from the UNESCO

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Articles express the opinions of the authors and do not

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freely. Photos must carry the following caption: © UNESCO

and photographer's name. For high resolution, please

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of the countries and territories concerned.

T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R . J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 . 3

Editorial – Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO 5

REPORT: HOW YOUTH DRIVE CHANGE

Young people in the world: so different and so alike 7Interview with Monique Coleman by Katerina Markelova

An act of survival Emna Fitouri 9

Mobile revolution Gigi Ibrahim 11

Spring of outrage Alfredo Trujillo Fernandez 13

Youth, once upon a time 15

Young Czechs want to have their say – Mathieu Ponnard 16

My best friend Obami – Barbara Mallinson 18

Serge Amisi and his miracle weapons 20Interview by Selen Demir

Locked in the cycle of violence – Mila Zourleva 22

When poetry is louder than a bomb – Nate Marshall 23

Different dreams, yet… 25A conversation with B. Shamieh, M. Twaalfhoven, I. Bratland and M. Shahinby I. J. Bührle et K. Abu Hijleh

JR, art and the impossible – Jasmina Šopova 30

Patrimonito in Togo – Katerina Markelova 31

Wonders of creativity – Silvia Bellón and Pierre Arlaud 32

Sport: only a starting point 33

Youth Olympic Games 33

Moonlight stars – Carol Natukunda 34

The young sughar from Balochistan – Noshan Abbas meets Khalida Brohi 36

An undeclared revolution – Hiroki Yanagisawa 39

Rebels with a cause – Jens Lubbadeh 40

Prescriptions for a sick planet – Zhao Ying 44

Life in the bike lane – Ruth Pérez López 46

Green architecture – Carlos Bartesaghi Koc 48

OUR GUEST

Revolution: one of the great feats of civilization 50Interview with Khaled Youssef by Khaled Abu Hijleh

MILESTONES

UNESCO welcomes 53Hillary Clinton, Ban Ki-moon, Forest Whitaker, Shashi Tharoor...

“Mordabella”,

mixed media,

2009. By

Lebanese artist

Ghassan

Halwani.

In this issue

4 . T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R . J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1

“Our focus doesn’t have to be onchanging the whole world, justchanging our world.,” says Americanactress and singer Monique Coleman,appointed United Nations “YouthChampion” for the International Year ofYouth 2010–2011 (pp. 7-8). That isexactly what young people are doing tochange the things that need changing.

At the beginning of 2011, they roseup against existing political regimes,first in Tunisia (pp. 9-10) then in Egypt(pp.11-12), giving the rest of the world agood lesson in democracy. Socialnetworks spread the movement toother countries in the region, alsorousing European nations such as Spain(pp. 13-14). Their tools, theirs slogansand their goals are practically the sameeverywhere. They are fighting for jobs,social justice, free education and healthcare, freedom of expression and aboveall democracy. The inspiring news of the“Arab Spring” went around the world,

held up as a symbol of a peacefulrevolution led by youth.

Elsewhere in the world, youngpeople mobilize in different ways, as forexample the students in Czechoslovakiawho have decided to “chip in” and havetheir say in their country's affairs (pp. 16-17), or the South Africanbusinesswoman who created a socialnetwork for disadvantaged schools (pp.18-19), and the young people who arehopeful they can vanquish racism,xenophobia discrimination and conflictthrough the “miraculous weapons” of art(pp. 21-30).

One common denominator issolidarity, illustrated in the activities ofyoung volunteers, scouts and athletes,but also in the heartrending stories ofthe Ugandan “stars” (pp. 34-35) and ayoung Pakistani sughar (pp. 36-38). Asfor Japanese youth, who displayed greatgenerosity during the March 2011disaster, they have precipitated radical

changes in the old value system centeredon economic growth (pp. 39-40).

Finally, we are not surprised todiscover that young people are seriouslyconcerned about the future of theenvironment. Particularly sensitive toclimate change issues, the newgenerations are capable of waging waragainst various forms of ecologicalinertia. From the European Union toChina, Mexico and Peru (pp. 40-49),thousands of young people are usingtheir diverse talents to work for ahealthier planet.

To conclude this issue producedentirely by young writers we askedEgyptian filmmaker Khaled Youssef togive us his views on “Arab Spring”(pp. 50-52).He shares his vision of theevents that rocked his country in thebeginning of the year and their impacton the world, society and internationalpolitics. ■Jasmina Šopova

They number more than a billion and most ofthem live in developing countries. The worldpopulation of 15- to 24-year-olds representsmore than a billion hopes for a better future,more than a billion ideas to change the world inconstructive ways, more than a billion potentialsolutions to the problems of today. With orwithout academic degrees, free or determined tobecome free, young people are reinventingculture, taking control of the new media,recreating how we relate to each other. Yet few ofthem are able to enjoy a carefree youth. Most ofthem are battling every day against the obstaclesof poverty, unemployment, climate change,restricted access to education and health care.How to participate fully in creating the future,when one is excluded from the decision-makingprocess? We must help them and support theirambitions by giving them access to the immenseresources of education, science, culture,communication and information.

The mighty wind of “Arab Spring” has amazedus with the capacity of young people to widenthe horizons of possibility. The year 2011 -proclaimed by the United Nations as InternationalYouth Year (August 2010 – August 2011) – will beremembered as the year young people chose totake up the torch of human dignity.

The Organization immediately mobilized toprovide support to these societies in theirtransformation, at a turning point in their history.In Tunisia and Egypt, UNESCO focuses on training

journalists, distributing educational material,helping to reinforce freedom of expression andmedia reform in view of upcoming elections. Iwent there, to Cairo, to hear what the needs wereand to reinforce UNESCO’s intervention in itsareas of competence. The celebration of WorldPress Freedom Day on May 3 in Tunis, co-organized by UNESCO, opened up debate andled to a major discussion on young people’s keyissues, such as the role of the internet and socialmedia in the fight against censorship. Last June,our Organization was the first to launch a seriesof seminars in Egypt as a forum for discussion oncivic engagement and democracy

Culture is a strong foundation for the newdemocratic society. Young Egyptians proved tobe particularly concerned with safeguardingtheir culture during the demonstrations,spontaneously forming a human chain aroundthe Library of Alexandria to protect it fromlooters. UNESCO wants to encourage thisconsciousness among young people, thecollective maturity they displayed. It will supportit in the long term through the “Youth Heritage”initiative, which will allow the heirs to a uniqueheritage to immerse themselves even more inthe ancient values it conveys and to use it as aninstrument of social cohesion and innovation.

In the same vein, I will launch a Heritage andDialogue initiative at the next Summit of theHeads of State of South East Europe that will takeplace in Belgrade next September 2011. The Serb

I On her first official visit to

Croatia on 21-22 May 2011,

UNESCO Director-General

Irina Bokova (in white jacket)

opened the first South-East

Europe World Heritage Youth

Forum in Porec, to mark the

International Year of Youth

2010-2011. © U

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EditorialIrina Bokova

L Scene from “Silent

Evolution”, underwater

installation by British

artist Jason deCaires

Taylor, shown during the

2010 United Nations

climate change

conference (COP 16) in

Cancun, Mexico. Young

divers posing with

submerged statues call

attention to a climate

change threat: rising sea

levels.

© J

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capital was the theatre of a decisive revolution tobring democracy to the region: the revolutionled by the young Serbs of the Otpor (Resistance)movement, which instigated the fall of theregime of President Slobodan Milošević. Morethan10 years after this event, as the regioncontinues along the path to reconciliation anddemocracy, UNESCO wants to give young peoplethe means to fulfill their ambitions, mobilizing allthe forces of culture to help them shape projectsto promote dialogue and mutual respect. This isthe primary purpose of UNESCO’s Young People’sWorld Heritage Education Programme.

UNESCO was the first UN agency to defineand develop specific youth programmes. WorldWar II had just ended and UNESCO was alreadyinvolved in organizing work camps for younginternational volunteers to help in thereconstruction of Europe. Today it is byimproving the quality of education for all, byreinforcing protection for pupils and schools inareas of conflict, by providing better professionaltraining that we create the conditions for abrighter future. It is also by helping to establishties between young people in different parts ofthe world based on shared values of humanrights. For this purpose our Organization has justproduced a short film with the participation ofpupils from UNESCO Associated Schools inAlbania, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada,France, Indonesia, Lebanon, Uganda and theDominican Republic. The scenes of theseschoolchildren freely expressing their viewsabout gender, diversity, violence and exclusionprovide vital educational material that isavailable to secondary schools throughout theworld.

Youth are a force for progress all over theworld. Let us enable them to speak out, toparticipate fully in social and political life, to raiseour awareness and open blocked horizons. This is

the goal UNESCO pursues through its YouthProgramme, which supports civic engagementand social innovation.

A Joint Programmatic Commission on Youthfacilitates cooperation between UNESCO andNGOs. The Commission is made up of youngpeople and it is particularly involved in preparingUNESCO’s Youth Forums. These events have beenheld every two years since 1999 to enable youngpeople to submit recommendations to nationalauthorities and incite them to implement theirideas and follow them up, in cooperation withgovernments, civil society and the UnitedNations system. This year the 7th UNESCO YouthForum, 17-20 October 2011, will be a wonderfulopportunity to hear what young people from allover the world have to say and to discover theirneeds and their points of view.

How youth drive change is the topic to bediscussed by the young representatives ofUNESCO’s 193 Member States and civil society.The culture of peace, good governance andeconomic opportunity will be examined fromthe perspective of young people’s participation.Achievements and lessons learned from theInternational Year of Youth will also be reviewed,notably the results of the High-Level Meeting onYouth organized by the UN in July 2011.

In anticipation of this important event,UNESCO will launch an on-line preparationcampaign in July, to enable young people to givetheir opinions and suggest the subjects theymost care about. The results of these discussionswill nourish the Forum’s debates in October.

UNESCO has always considered youngpeople key partners in creating a world withmore justice. Youth is always calling on us toinnovate, to invent. Every day brings us moreexamples of this positive momentum. I hope thisissue of the UNESCO Courier will inspireeveryone to action. Enjoy reading it! ■

“In the nobility of

your spirit,

in the exuberance

of your youth,

in the quality of

your contacts,

in the unsullied

idealism that you

possess,

in the dedication to

our common

humanity that you

bring … I find the

hope of mastering

the challenges of

the difficult

transition ahead,

to complete the

revolution you

have initiated and

of building the

better Egypt that

your actions have

made possible.”

Ismail Serageldin

Director of the

Bibliotheca

Alexandrina

12 February 2011

J Graffiti representing a fist,

symbol of Otpor (Resistance),

the Serb youth movement that

brought down President

Slobodan Milošević’s regime in

2000. The symbol was

adopted by young insurgents

in Egypt. Photo taken 8 April

2011 in Mohammed

Mahmoud Street leading to

Tahrir Square, the epicenter of

the revolution in January

2011.

© M

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You were appointed Youth Champion

by the UN in November 2010. Three

months later you were off on a world

tour. What was your goal?

This trip is as much personal as it is forthe advancement of the Year. At somepoint in life it is important to get out ofyour own comfort zone, the things youare familiar with, and to see somethingnew through the eyes of someone else.Living in America I felt that I had alimited view of the rest of the world. Asthe Youth Champion and as a human Icouldn’t ever talk about poverty if Ihadn’t seen that with my own eyes. Icouldn’t talk about young people’samazing achievements if I hadn’t metyoung people doing exceptional things.

so different and so alike

As “Youth Champion” of the

United Nations, American

singer and actress Monique

Coleman, 31, has the mission

of bringing to life the themes

of the International Year of

Youth (August 2010-August

2011), which are dialogue

and mutual understanding.

She intends to make that

mission more than a

statement and to give young

people the opportunity to

express their ideas and

opinions.

MONIQUE COLEMAN was interviewed by Katerina Markelova

International Year of Youth http://social.un.org/youthyear/

K April 2011: A convivial moment on Monique Coleman's tour of India. (Photo by Gimmemotalk)

Young people

intheworld

© G

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Our focus doesn’t have to be on

changing the whole world, our

focus can be just on changing

our world.

J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 . 7

The role of youth in Arab uprisings is

huge. Did it change your vision of your

mission?

The first stop on the tour was initiallyintended to be Tunisia. And the day Iwas intending to leave was the day theunrest started to break out. But forsecurity reasons we had to modify theitinerary. One of my missions while I amon this trip is to try to give voice toissues before they exacerbate andbecome an uprising. One thing that Ican do right now while traveling is get asense of what these issues are, bubblingunderneath the surface, to bring somelight and awareness.

These young people are reactingnot only to their lifetime of pain buttheir families’ and their parents’ lifetimeof pain, war and torment. I don’t thinkthey are being destructive. They can’t beblamed for reacting in the way that theyknow how, but I would like to look fornew peaceful ways. I’d like to remind usall of Martin Luther King, Gandhi andNelson Mandela.

I was in the Philippines last Februaryon the day that they celebrated the 25thanniversary of the peaceful revolution(that ended the Marcos dictatorship).They were able to have a revolutionwith women, pregnant women and

children, who were all standing up forthe same thing, and nobody got killed.These are the kind of revolutions I wantto start.

In your on-line talk show “Gimme MO”,

you emphasize the power of the

internet to give young people a voice.

“Gimme MO” is indeed a platform foryouth. It’s a place where I talk aboutthings that people don’t bring muchattention to and try to give a differentangle. I also interview celebrities,experts, people that I meet out in theworld.

The main purpose of this show is tohelp young people see that even thepeople you look up to share similarinterests and are basically the same, andto break stereotypes. When I was inAustralia I interviewed a young Muslimrefugee who is living in public housingin Melbourne. She is 21, she wears a veil,and she completely rejects the

stereotype according towhich Muslim females areoppressed and don’t havetheir own voices.

Are the young people

you meet on your trip all

the same, or are they

different from one

country to another?

Young people areactually very similar.(laughs) The biggestdifference is that indeveloping countriesthe young people areextremely aware ofworld issues. They haveto be, because thoseissues live on theirdoorstep, theyapproach them ontheir way to school.

Whereas in developed countriessometimes we can be less aware of theglobal issues. We sometimes tend to bebogged down in our own personalthings.

What are the most pressing issues

young people have raised?

In places like Australia the big thing isself-esteem, to help young people feelbetter about themselves. Suicide is ahuge issue.

In Bangladesh it’s almost theopposite. I had a student saying: “How doyou expect to bring awareness to thepeople in developed countries who arewilling to take their own life while we arestruggling here just to survive.” And thatwas really powerful. That said it all.

The thing that remains the same isthat every young person is looking for aplace in the world. I try to explain tothem how limitless the possibilities are,to convince each of them they have somuch value and potential, regardless oftheir state, their social-economic class,their religious background, their level ofprivilege or disadvantage. We all haveobstacles that we have to overcome. It’sup to us to overcome those things. Andonce we have overcome them, it’s soimportant that we liberate our globalbrothers and sisters.

Our focus doesn’t have to be onchanging the whole world, our focus canjust actually be on changing our world.Because if every person focused on theircommunity or village, then collectivelywe would change the whole world. Once the Year is over, do you want to

continue to support young people

throughout the world?

Absolutely, this is simply the beginning! Iintend to put much of my focus in“Gimme MO”. I would like to see it moveinto a television platform, as well as aninteractive internet place employing newtechnologies.

In my acting career I would like toplay roles that help enhance and movethis movement forward. I think thatentertainment and art is an incredibleway to deepen any message. Often,when I talk to people about why theydecide to make a difference, why theybecome a part of an organization, whydid they became passionate aboutsomething, they tend to trace it back to abook or a song or a movie. So, I wouldlike to continue to create such artisticopportunities for inspiration. ■

J Monique Coleman on the

poster for her on-line youth

talk show “Gimme MO”.

Young people are reacting not

only to their lifetime of pain but

their families’ and their parents’

lifetime of pain, war and

torment.

© B

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8 . T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R . J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1

An act of survival

A scene from the

Tunisian revolution.

Tunis. Late January

2011.

In the eyes of student Emna Fitouri, the Tunisian youth uprising in January 2011 was more

than just a revolution – it was a matter of life and death for a whole generation.

EMNA FITOURI

On 10 January 2011, I saw on Facebookthat people were getting ready todemonstrate in Tunis. My classmates andI arranged to meet outside the Ministryof the Interior on 14 January. Wedemonstrated for three days, on AvenueHabib Bourguiba and in Place de laKasbah, in the city centre. We arrangedeverything on Facebook, like mostyoung Tunisians. That is why a lot ofcommentators have called ours a“Facebook revolution”. But the realitywas much more complex. In fact thesesocial networks were just a tool thatyoung people used to get started, totrigger a change in society, to fight

against unemployment and other formsof humiliation, to stand up for humanrights and dignity.

Having said this, it would be wrongto play down the role of internetcompletely, because it has proved to bean awesome instrument in thedemocratisation of Arab countries, whilereflecting the diversity of their politicsand culture. And a powerful weaponagainst censorship. Now, no one can say“It’s me. I’m in charge.” The internet willstop them, by providing opportunitiesfor constructive debate. It is alsoteaching us what “debate” really means.

The previous revolution in Tunisiaended with a “revolutionarydictatorship”, with well-known results.Today we are part of a non-violent,

“civilized revolution”, which is headingtowards democracy.

But it is not all so civilized – themedia and analysts have made a lot ofthe “peaceful” character of thisrevolution, because young people tookto the streets unarmed. We need tochoose our words carefully. Peaceful, forwhom? For the people who crouched infear day after day, as the bullets flew?For the soldiers and policemen whowere torn between their professionalduty and personal convictions? For theyoung demonstrators who had neverseen so much blood flow? The hell wewent through may not have been asdeadly as that of our brothers in Libya,Yemen and Syria, but we still wentthrough some terrible moments.

T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R . J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 . 9

© N

ass

er

No

uri

Emna Fitouri, 21-year-old Tunisian, is

in her second year at the Preparatory

Institute for Literary Studies and

Humanities in Tunis, where she is

studying French. She is a scout captain

in Hammam Lif, a suburb in the south

of Tunis.

© M

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K Vox pop. Tunis, 27 January 2011.

© H

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I saw dead bodies; I was terrified; Ifainted because of the tear gas…Hundreds of people from Sidi Bouzid –the town where Mohamed Bouazizi sethimself on fire on 4 January, triggeringthe revolution – came to the Kasbah inTunis, to join the demonstrations in thecapital. Some brought their wives andchildren. They were cold, hungry andmiserable. I helped the scouts bringthem food and blankets and assistedthe doctor in charge of the scouts’medical service.

But more than anything, I shouted.For days on end. With all my might, Ishouted “GET OUT!” until Ben Ali left. Iwanted to put an end to a regime thathad made youth its most vulnerablevictims.

Instead of being the driving forcebehind the economy, we had becomeits scapegoat. That explains why we, theyoung people, were the first to rise up.In fact, we were trapped. On the onehand we were receiving what was

supposed to be one of the besteducations in Africa, but, in reality, it wasnot adapted to the needs of an ever-changing market. Meanwhile, theregime did not allow us to get jobs andkeep them. Continuing education, whichallows employees to keep their skills upto date, does not exist in Tunisia. Forexample, in the IT world, when thetechnology changes, companies simplyget new software engineers andtechnicians! Job insecurity has become adisease, just as oppressive as theimpossibility for young graduates to findwork in the first place. I wonder if there isa single family in the entire country thatdoesn’t have at least one unemployedgraduate at home.

The unstable education system andthe extremely cynical economic policymade the younger generation feelabused, exploited and suffocated. Ourfirst uprisings were acts of survival. Ourfuture actions will be part of a processof building a new country. ■

You lived in the United States between

2000 and 2008. You returned to Egypt

at the age of 22 and you were

immediately engaged in the socio-

political arena. Had you already been

an activist in the U.S.?

Yes, I was much more involved duringmy stay in the USA in local issues suchas immigration laws. I joined a groupthat was fighting for illegal immigrationrights because police officers wereenforcing immigration laws which were

discriminatory. I was also involved inmany activities that supported thePalestinian cause. So whenever there isa demonstration or an anti-war call, Iwould be definitely a part of it.

But to be honest, I was far frombeing involved in what was happeningin Egypt at the time due to my rare visitsto Egypt. I also was not aware politicallyenough because I lived abroad from theage of 14 to 22. I was not aware of theEgyptian opposition movement since it

was completely ignored in themainstream media. So, unless you wereliving here and being part of it, youwould really know nothing about it.Even people living nearby did not knowabout it. Only close activists, journalistsand the political community knew whatwas going on.

GIGI IBRAHIM was interviewed by Khaled Abu Hijleh

You can follow Gigi Ibrahim on Twitter at:http://twitter.com/Gsquare86

T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R . J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 . 1 1

Mobilerevolution

At the height of the revolution in Egypt in January 2011, a young woman mobilized crowds

on Facebook and Twitter, kept the internet community around the world informed,

organized street rallies and waved banners, her mobile telephone always within reach.

Gigi Ibrahim, 24, is a perfect example of the high tech generation Arab revolutionary. Not

all of Gigi’s compatriots who marched in the streets had computers at home – far from it –

yet social media played a crucial role in organizing this historical event that is changing

the world. And not just the Arab world.

The 24 year old young Egyptian activist Gigi Ibrahim

during the Egyptian revolution in 2011.

© Al Jazeera English

I got in touch with the Egyptianactivists the first time when I got backfrom the USA in 2008. Then, I took acourse on social mobilization under theauthoritarian regime at the AmericanUniversity of Cairo (AUC). I startedlearning politics and participated in theprotests in 2009 - 2010 where I metmany activists. This is how I got involvedin the framework of the revolutionarysocialists.

social youth group or a political groupto a popular movement with politicaland economic demands.

We started with 100 people, then webecame thousands and thousands ofpeople chanting against the regime.People kept going in increasingnumbers to Al-Tahreer Square in the citycenter.

When we arrived in the square,people were chanting the same chantsthe Tunisian people chanted, “Peopledemand the removal of the regime”. Wedid not necessarily plan for this thoughwe hoped it would happen.

Sometimes, we made fun of whatwe were doing, saying, “ooh, we areplanning for a revolution on Facebook!”Nobody believed it would turn out theway it did. But thankfully it did, becausepeople were fed up and so oppressedthey would do anything to get theirfreedom.

What was the role of the social media

in these events in Egypt, and what was

the role of the young citizen

journalists?

Before the revolution, social networksplayed a really important role. Theywere not the means of the revolutionbut they were definitely the tools thatwere used to communicate.

Under an authoritarian regime,every piece of news, every newspaperand every mass media is of crucialimportance. Citizen journalism becomesactivism. Sorting out the truth,providing information about thesubjects that the State tries to censor,was very important.

It was our only means, before therevolution, to expose and explain whatwas happening on the ground. Manypeople never heard of protests or strikesthat were going on. It was only throughthe social networks, that stories reachedthe independent media and theinternational press like Aljazeera. Thesetools were important to expose thetorture cases at the police stations.Many of them were videoed by cellphones. All these abuses were disclosedby the means of Flickr, Facebook andTwitter because they were uncensoreduntil the government began shuttingthem down.

It should be said that the peoplewho went into the streets and carriedout the revolution did not have accessto tools such as Facebook and Twitter or

even a computer. They went into thestreets and risked their lives to get goodhealthcare, good education and a betterfuture for their children.

Although the people who carriedout the revolution had nothing to dowith these tools, social networks wereessential in mobilizing people and ingetting the attention of theindependent and international media.

As a young Arab woman, don’t you

think Egyptian women’s participation

in the 25 January uprising started

breaking down the wall of Arab

traditions?

I disagree. Women have always been apart of any mobilization or revolutionwhether in the Middle East or anywhereelse in the world.

This time in Egypt, women wereleading strikes, chants and protests andgetting arrested and being tortured. Inmy experience in the Egyptian uprising,there was no difference between menand women within the mobilizationprocess or protests.

However, women struggle also fortheir rights as women. But then they arefaced with a counterattack by peoplesaying this is not the right moment. Butwhen is the right moment then?* This isnot so unique to the Middle East: in theUnited States, United Kingdom andeverywhere else, women struggle fortheir rights too.

Do you think young people in other

countries may be inspired by the Arab

revolutions as a model of a peaceful

popular struggle to bring about

changes in their own homelands?

We have already seen such youthmovements not only within the regionbut also in other countries. There werebig marches in London on 26 March thisyear. There were banners and sloganssimilar to the Egyptian ones.

The Arab world has always beenstereotyped and defined as a backwardand violent region and a home ofterrorism. This time the Arab world washeld up as an example of democracythat comes from the bottom up andbrings about real change through thepower of the people exerted in apeaceful way. ■

* See our article on this topic ,“Now or Never”, aboutthe Italian demonstrations of 13 February 2011 inthe April-June 2011 issue of the Courier, “Womenconquering new expanses of freedom”.

Could you describe your role in the 25

January protests?

I had joined a handful of politicalmovement groups who called for massdemonstrations on 25 January. Wecoordinated the timing, place and thecontent of the demands.

Our major demand at that point wasthe arrest of Habib Al-Adly, the Ministerof the Interior. We were calling for thisbecause of the death of Khaled Said on6 June 2010 (Note, the young man wasbeaten to death by police.) Otherdemands were to dissolve theParliament, elected at the end of 2010,and to establish a minimum wage.Street protests were our way of bringingthose demands to the popular front.

After the Tunisian uprising, Arabpeople started to believe in their abilityto bring changes through streetprotests and through a peacefulrevolution. This was also our intention:to promote our movement from just a

L The mobile phone has become an essential tool in

the struggle for democracy in Egypt

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1 2 . T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R . J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1

Since 15 May, Spain has been living in a climate of demonstrations and protests that have

taken most of the world by surprise. This “Movimiento 15-M” – or more simply, these

“indignados” – have left us wondering what exactly they might want? Isn’t Spain an

advanced, democratic country, not to be compared with Tunisia and Egypt? Yet on a closer

look, many Spaniards feel no one is listening to them and the established system is simply

denying them a future. And it is for this future that young Spaniards have decided to fight.

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ALFREDO TRUJILLO FERNANDEZ

The Spring

The protests broke out spontaneously.“No one saw it coming”, admittedCristóbal Ramírez, a 27-year-old Madrid-based journalist, born in Cadiz. It allstarted on 15 May, with ademonstration in Madrid organized bythe Democracia Real Ya (True DemocracyNow) and Jovenes Sin Futuro (Youth withNo Future) movements. Then theystarted to put up tents, which spreadacross the country. As the days went by,the demonstrators, who calledthemselves the indignados (indignantones), saw their essentially youngnumbers swelled by pensioners,workers of every sort, cleaners,granddads with their grandsons andfamilies with toddlers.

This indignation is the direct resultof the serious economic crisis hitting thecountry. Unemployment in Spain hasreached record rates for WesternEurope: 20.6 % in the first quarter of2011. And among the young, the figurehas skyrocketed to 44.3 %. In 2007,before the crisis, just 8.3 % of thepopulation were unemployed.

Nevertheless, even in the years ofeconomic prosperity, there were some

J "Spring", collage and gouache, 2011, by

Slobodan K. Bijeljac, French painter born in Bosnia-

Herzegovina. Created specially for this issue of the

UNESCO Courier. Visit his website:

http://bijeljac2.free.fr/

J U LY S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 . 1 3

through the forest of tents andtarpaulins that have sprung up in thecity centre. “I am shocked to see howhard it has become for citizens to getthemselves heard,” she says. “In my view,all they want is to be listened to andtaken seriously...”

Vitor Peiteado, a 32-year-oldpolitical commentator from La Corogne,sees the anger behind the wave ofprotests. “There is a reaction ofindignation at the crisis, which theworkers did not cause, and yet, oddly,they are the ones paying the price.”Vitor, like hundreds of other youngSpaniards over the past few years, hadto go abroad to look for opportunitiesand a salary he cannot get in his owncountry. He is delighted at what ishappening: “For the first time, peopleare saying that the problem is to befound in the system itself, and that thisdemocracy, where we only get to voteevery four years, like the existingeconomic system, just isn’t working.”

Miriam also emphasises that themain objective is to obtain “bettercitizen participation, which could beencouraged using the newtechnologies.” Everywhere, in all themeetings and debates, people are alsorepeatedly saying that the politicianshave to represent the interests of thepeople, not those of the banks and largecorporations. The movement is alsodetermined to keep the parties andtraditional unions away from theirprotests, reinforcing their popular,grassroots and, in a sense, “anti-system”character.

The future will tell

But there has been no clear formulationof the movement’s objectives, or of howto go about meeting them. For Miriam,this is because the process is still in itsearly stages. “The question of ‘how’ isstill being worked out. We are in thephase of realising that things have tochange, the reflection phase. Bydiscussing and debating the issues, wewill end by knowing what we have todo,” she explains. Cristóbal thinks that it

is time to change a system, which atpresent “is doing nothing about theproblems facing the poor.” Vitor admitsthat many of the ideas are still “verygeneral” and that the demands remain“vague”. But, he adds, “it is the first time,for almost half a century, that amovement this big questions thelegitimacy of the liberal partisandemocracy.” Olivia thinks that theabsence of detail and clarity is areflection of the crisis itself and the scaleof the problems facing Spain. And, sheconcludes, “There are so many problemsto solve that we don’t know where tostart.”

In a sense, it is possible this lack ofdefinition is the outline of a movementthat will, in the near future, have clearobjectives and a well-traced roadmapfor reaching them. And, who knows, willperhaps serve as an example for‘indignados’ to follow in other Europeancountries also suffering from the crisis,and sharing the same democratic spiritas Spain. But if the energy of the firstweeks starts to fade, the Movimiento 15-M could be lost in the sands of time, andjust become another anecdote in thisspring of hope and indignation, 2011. ■

It is the first time, for almost half

a century, that a movement this

big questions the legitimacy of

the liberal democracy founded

on particracy

warning signs that the machine wasgrinding to a halt. In August 2005, in aletter to the editor published in thedaily newspaper, El País, a young womanfrom Barcelona coined the word“mileurista”. It refers to the youngSpanish graduate, bristling withdiplomas, multilingual, usually with aMaster’s degree, and yet barely earning1000 euros a month – the stigma of awhole generation, better qualified thanever before, that feels exploited in theworkplace and neglected by the system.

In politics, before and after the 2008economic crisis, the past few years havebeen peppered with cases of corruptioninvolving members of the majorityparties. But almost none of them werebrought to trial. It is hardly surprising,therefore, that in a survey carried out in2009 by the Centre for SociologicalResearch (CIS), six out of ten Spaniardsfelt that corruption was somewhat orvery common among both Federal andlocal politicians. And, in the same poll,the majority of the sample admittedthey had little confidence in the politicalclasses or the system.

Economic crisis, political corruption,loss of confidence in the democraticsystem – these are the main ingredientsof the cocktail that led tens ofthousands of indignados to take to thestreets across the country.

At last, my country is waking up

On 15 May, Miriam Blanco, a 30-year-oldwoman from Madrid, heard of the firstprotest at the Puerta del Sol. “At last”,she thought, “my country is waking up!”With several degrees and speaking fourlanguages or more, Miriam has since thevery beginning been a member of thecommittees that were formed. “Theytold us: ‘you are the future’. But we areneither the future nor the present,” shesays heatedly, trying to explain thereasons for their indignation. “We are nolonger afraid. We have nothing left tolose, as we have no future, and neitherdo our children,” she adds.

“People have had enough,” saysCristóbal, who over these past weekshas joined many of the indignadodemonstrations in the Puerta del Sol.“We want a change in the system, sothat power comes from the citizens - atrue, more participative democracy,” hesays. And, every day, Olivia Waters, a 27-year-old English woman who has beenliving in the capital for five years, walks

L Spanish journalist Alfredo Trujillo Fernandez, 31,

works on the editorial team of UNESCO’s website

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One year after May 1968,

the UNESCO Courier

devoted an issue to “Youth

1969”*, this “youth in

ferment”, an “angry

generation” of dissent and

enthusiasm, and the

“malaise” of young people

in different parts of the

world. In many ways, “the

wave of protest and dissent

from world youth” in 1968

resembled the events of

“Arab Spring” 2011. The

following brief excerpts

from the article “The crisis

of modern society” prove

the point.

Youth, once upon a time…

L "We asked to be heard. You refused....” This excerpt from the special issue “Youth 1969” was the caption for the

photograph on the back cover, reprinted here..

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With their need for absolutes, theyoung are less than ever able totolerate the injustices and disorder ofthe world.

René Maheu, Director-General of

UNESCO

Youth have now achieved the statusof a distinct community. This has led tothe most basic conflict of all: it stemsfrom youth's determination to win fromsociety the status and esteem theydeem to be their right.

Modern information mediafamiliarize youth with different cultureswhile ignoring frontiers. On a worldscale, a sort of international "youthculture" seems to have sprung up.

Young people display theirdisapproval of racial segregation andlinguistic discrimination, they protestagainst the paternalism and the livingconditions they must endure, they haverisen up against social conformity, theyhave denounced the myths of ‘productionfor production's sake’ and ‘consumptionfor consumption's sake’.

They want freer, franker andwarmer human relations than what theyget from us. They are afraid that thenational and international system intowhich they are being driven containsgrave injustices to which they do notwant to be party.

*Find this issue in our archives:

www.unesco.org/courier

Their names are Jan, Jana and Jirka andthey are in their early twenties. Theywere all at one time or another involvedin Czech youth NGOs. This meant theycould express their opinions on a rangeof subjects, either within theirorganizations, in their town or – whynot – Europe-wide. Until reality caughtup with them... It was practicallyimpossible for them to be heard atnational level! “So we decided to changethings,” explains Jan Husak, 23, studyingEuropean affairs in Brno, the country’ssecond largest city, and coordinator of aproject that began in 2010. “Until then,only active members of an institutionlike the national children’s and youthparliament – in other words, youngpeople already involved in thedemocratic process – could expresstheir opinion,” he adds. But other youngpeople were left out...

Obviously, Czech youth does notface the same problems as those in acountry like Uganda, but this does notmean they are not discriminatedagainst. “There were a few bad

YoungCzechswant to havetheir say“Kecejme do toho!” [Let’s chip in!] is a project started by

three young Czechs. Their idea is to give fellow citizens aged

16 to 26 the chance to express their opinion on matters

affecting them directly. It’s a lab for new ideas and a real

step forward for democracy for Czech youth.

MATHIEU PONNARDexperiences...” says Jan. “Some youngpeople sent round a petition anddemonstrated against a decision thataffected them directly – theintroduction of a new nationalbaccalaureate. But, even though one ofthe priorities of the Czech Republic’syouth policy is to involve them, thepoliticians didn’t even have the grace toaccept the petition! To paraphraseShakespeare, I concluded there was“something rotten in the State ofDenmark” – except it was the CzechRepublic!” It was this incident that led tothe creation of Kecejme do toho – itsfounders wanted to show thatpoliticians can and must accept, at leastout of courtesy, young people’s right toexpress their opinion nationally, inaccordance with the principles ofdemocracy.

Since then, Czech youth has beenasked its opinion on a number of issuesconcerning their age-group, theirproblems and expectations – rangingfrom higher education fees, the right tovote at 16, hazing and bullying atschool, the legalisation of cannabis, sexeducation and jobs for teenagers, tocontroversial “baby drop boxes”. Since

2005, Statim, a foundation forabandoned children, has been installingthese boxes around the Czech Republicso that desperate mothers can leavetheir unwanted babies safely anddiscreetly.

Like everywhere else, these youngpeople, whether unemployed, studentsor those with regular jobs, useFacebook, Twitter and the internet tocommunicate and act collectively.

How does it work?

In practical terms, the young people firstof all vote on a given topic, usinginternet and social networks. Kecejme dotoho! then looks at the arguments “for”and “against” and gathers informationthat will be useful later on in discussionsas part of public debates held all overthe country.

During this second stage, theorganizers are happy just to facilitatethe discussion until a common positionis agreed. Through Kecejme do toho!young volunteers are also invited toorganize these workshops anddiscussion groups themselves, in theirclassrooms, youth clubs or simply in acafé.


given direction... But that would not bedemocracy. Compromise iscompromise.” Jan is categorical.“Personally, I see our organization as avery good school for democracy withthe creation of this compromiseposition and its subsequent progress.But we are still only at an experimentalstage! My original commitment wasbased on a theory that made sense...And I wanted to see if this theoryactually worked in reality. The mainthing is to prove that we live in ademocratic country, that if we dosomething, we can obtain results,educate and prove through positiveexample it can work, and we can raisethe level of youth involvement innational issues.”

A laboratory for democracy

Kecejme do toho! is an independentorganization that receives no fundingfrom private sponsors or politicalparties. It is supported by a platform ofyouth NGOs and the Czech Council forChildren and Youth. The organizationhas received a promise from theMinistry of Education, Youth and Sportthat the results of its final conferenceswill be taken into account just like aninternal report on youth opinion. “This isexactly what we wanted,” says Jan,enthusiastically. “We wanted youngpeople using the principles ofdemocracy to be heard by the officialpolitical system and for their opinion tobe considered alongside other points ofview.”

The Kecejme do toho! experiment isreceiving support from the European“Youth in Action” programme and bythe European Commissionrepresentatives in the Czech Republic –a European dimension that itscoordinator does not disown. “We arealso part of the European Union‘Structured Dialogue with Young People’initiative,” he says, “which extends over18 months and three presidencies(Spain, Belgium and Hungary), on thetheme of youth employment. We held adiscussion on this subject and prepareda report with the Ministry to present tothe EU. It was gratifying to see most ofthe results of our discussions beingused within the European politicalprocess. Similarly, our results are nowbeing discussed by the Commission, the

European Parliament, and the UnitedNations Economic and Social Council(ECOSOC)... This is a great source ofsatisfaction!”

For the time being, Kecejme do toho!is still unique, in a country where youthhas always stood up to those in powerand tried to change things. So far, theorganization has linked up only withpartners in Slovakia, to create points ofreference in a neighbouring country.But this original initiative, involving acountry’s entire youth population,deserves to be replicated everywhere,so that a nation’s young people canhave their say on issues that concernthem. ■

Mathieu Ponnard, 34, is a French

journalist currently living in Prague.

J Poster for European Youth Week, 15 to 21 May 2011

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In a third stage, those young peoplewho are interested are invited to apublic discussion, alongside politiciansinvolved in the issue, as well as the headof a secondary school. Having discussedthe issue with these experts, the youngpeople are then able to finalize acommon position, which is then put tothe vote over the internet.

In the final phase, the results of thevote are presented to the media,politicians and specialists in aconcluding conference, where theyoung people once again have anopportunity to question the decisionmakers. The results are then passedonto government, members ofparliament and senators.

“On quite a few issues, my personalposition is not very different to the finalposition adopted at the end, and whichis often fairly wide-ranging. Sometimes Iwould like to nudge a position in a

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L Jan Husak, 23, founder of “Kecejme do toho!”


The main thing is to prove that

we live in a democratic country,

that if we do something, we can

obtain results.

I grew up in the leafy suburbs ofJohannesburg, and had the privilege ofreceiving a private education. Being ayoung white learner at a private schoolmeant that I was somewhat shelteredfrom the pain that South Africa wasgoing through towards the end ofApartheid, but I cherish, as dearly as allmy fellow South Africans, moments likeMandela’s release and inauguration andthe World Cup in 2010, that havedefined our new democracy as well asour national spirit ever since.

I had always imagined starting myown business, but it wasn’t until aftercompleting my Bachelor of BusinessScience at the University of Cape Townand spending five years in London’scorporate world, that Obami was born.Back then (2007), Obami was an openand generic social networking site, butafter Facebook opened up beyond itscollege networks, I decided to targetObami to schools.

Obami is now a social learningnetwork that provides a communicationand learning platform for teachers,learners and their parents. It combinesnetworking tools similar to those foundon sites like Facebook withcomprehensive learning managementtools like those found on Moodle (anopen source learning platform), all fromwithin a safe environment – it isintended in large part for children.

The platform was originally built inLondon, but on a trip back to South

Africa in 2008, I made the decision tomove Obami home – if it could work inAfrica, it could (theoretically) workanywhere. And more importantly, if itdid work, it would make an enormoussocial impact in a place that needs itmost.

BARBARA MALLINSON

L A young girl doing school work outside her home in

a South African shanty town.

In 2008, the young South

African Barbara Mallinson,

created Obami, which has

since become the best

friend of pupils in schools

around her country. Neither

black nor white, Obami is

virtual; it is helping to

improve the quality of

education and thus the

quality of life. Obami’s

creator tells her story.

Obami©

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My best friend

South Africa, a beautiful nation witha remarkable mix of rich cultures, stillstruggles with socio-political challengesa full 17 years after the birth of its newdemocracy. HIV/AIDS, crime, weakinfrastructure and maladministrationare just some of the reasons why SouthAfrica is one of the world’s poorestperforming nations with regards toeducation standards. In 2010, only23.5% of leavers qualify for furthereducation, according to an officialreport in January 2011.

At 0.68, South Africa’s GiniCoefficient is one of the highest in theworld (the figure was published byBloomberg agency on 25 February2011). As this coefficient can vary from 0to 1 with 0 representing perfect equalityof incomes, the figure is an alarmingsign reflecting a nation of greatextremes. Unskilled labour is inabundance, while skilled labour –especially in the medical, engineering,IT, financial and technical fields – is insevere shortage due to majorunderperformance of mathematics andscience within the education sector. Thishas only been further amplified bySouth Africa’s “Brain Drain” endemic,where a sizeable proportion of thecountry’s professional workers haveemigrated over the past two decades.

Using Obami

It’s an ominous situation, one that canonly be resolved from the bottom up.My vision was, and still is, to use Obamiin bringing about social change,starting with education.

Obami supports three critical areasof education: resource distribution,teaching and learning practices, as wellas performance measurement. Teacherscan create, share and access educationalresources using rich media contenttools, while the latest web 2.0 enhancedinterfaces (using Ajax technologies, forinstance) facilitate interaction andcollaboration between and amongstthem, the learners and the learners’parents, using the model of blogs andsocial media. The system alsoincorporates an assessment applicationfor the continual measurement of alearner’s performance.

I have striven to offer Obami toschools for free. My motivation fordoing so? So that each and every childcan one day access a quality educationthrough Obami, no matter what

background they come from. Costs arecurrently being supported throughprivate funding, and I have beenfortunate to receive valuable support inthe form of free hosting from thecountry’s biggest Internet ServiceProvider, Internet Solutions. I am alsocollaborating with existing NGOs in theschools sector – Edunova, who provideInformation and CommunicationTechnology (ICT) training tounderprivileged communities, andSiyavula, who create high qualityeducational resources.

Challenges

However, I am also very aware of thechallenges I am taking on. Besides thepersonal sacrifices that my husband(who now works alongside me) and Ihave made in running our ownbusiness, Obami faces significantexternal factors. The very market thatstands to benefit the most from Obamilacks infrastructure and internetaccessibility. In 2009, only 23% of SouthAfrica’s 25,000 government schools hada computer centre, and it is estimatedthat today, less than 20% of all publicschools are connected to the internet.

In stark contrast, nearly all of SouthAfrica’s 2,000 private schools were setup with connected computer facilities. Itmade natural sense for me to targetObami’s offering to the independenteducation sector at first. My strategy: tocapture the small, but highly connectedgroup of schools, here and abroad, andleverage their competitive advantages(i.e. skilled teachers, quality educationalresources, etc) for the good of all.Already, less privileged schools havebeen able to quickly access qualityeducational resources created by othersthrough the platform.

But even in reaching the mostconnected of schools, Obami has faceddifficulties. Schools are yet to embracethe web 2.0 revolution like social,business and niche communities have,perhaps because of online safetyconcerns – school decision makers havea responsibility to act as gatekeepers towhat is unknown territory. It has takenme time to convince them of Obami’ssocial learning relevance and itscommitment to providing a safeenvironment. Now that the product isproving itself, with more than 40registered schools, things have becomeeasier.

As for connectivity, change ishappening within the continent.SEACOM, Main One, EASSy, and WACS,all undersea cable systems connectingAfrica to the digital highway, are set toexponentially boost Africa’s connectivityand bring internet access costs down.Mobile currently dominates Africa’sinternet access mediums, and willcontinue as such – it is a giantdeveloping consumer market. Forschools though, falling hardware costs(through increased cloud computingservices), will provide a real chance ofbeing able to set up technology centresand bridge the digital (and educational)gap.

Obami was awarded a spot as one ofthe world’s Top 10 Most InnovativeTechnologies for 2011 by Frenchorganisation Netexplorateur, inpartnership with UNESCO, Air France,Deloitte, Orange and a number of otherlarge organisations, and I was pleased tohave been selected as one of the “Top200 Young People to Take to Lunch” in2010 by one of South Africa’snewspapers, the Mail & Guardian. It’salways an honour to receive recognitionfor Obami – even though it still has somuch further to go. Every milestonethat Obami reaches will only aid in thequest to improve education standardsand connect more schools across thecontinent with rest of the world. ■

K Barbara Manlinson, now 30, is the creator of

Obami, a networking platform for South African

schools.

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“Ladj Ly, as seen by JR”. From the series

“Portrait of a generation” and reprinted by

courtesy of JR, specifically to illustrate this

article.

It is 1997 in the Democratic Republic

of the Congo. A young boy is working

in the fields alongside his brothers.

Armed men appear out of nowhere.

His brothers run faster than he does.

He is taken away. He is made to wear

a uniform and smoke cannabis; he is

given a gun and ordered to shoot. He

obeys, as if playing a game of war. His

name is Serge Amisi, and, today, he is

a young man of about 25 – he doesn’t

know the exact year he was born.

Demobilized in 2001, on the death of

DRC president Laurent-Désiré Kabila,

Serge felt lost. It was hard to get back

into civilian life, but, luckily, he

discovered his talents as an artist. He

was able to regain his inner freedom.

He started a new life. Today, Serge

wants to help the 200,000 – 300,000

child soldiers worldwide to do the

same. He dances with his puppets,

makes sculptures and writes – for

himself, for them and for us all.

You were not even 10 years old when

you were taken away and forced to

fight with Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s army.

Up until 2001 you were a child soldier, a

kadogo. How do you look back on this

period?

The image I have of the war is nothinglike the way I saw it at the time. When Iwas taken away, I was scared. We wereseparated from our families and I soonunderstood that they would not let ussee our loved ones again. Although wewere children, we were expected to giveour lives for the nation. I got into therhythm of the army and got used to thepeople and the life there.

We didn’t know anything aboutpolitics. We were simply taught warfareand to obey orders. We became soldiers.We saw ourselves as belonging to thesame family and had a lot of fun.

Serge Amisi and hisSERGE AMISI was interviewed by

Selen Demir

* Les armes miraculeuses (Miracle weapons) is thetitle of a collection of poetry by the Martinican poetAimé Césaire (1913 – 2008). ©

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You had fun! Weren’t you afraid you

would be killed?

We knew we were going to die, butsometimes we thought death was forthe dying, not for us. We smoked jointsand saw ourselves as actors in aSchwarzenegger film, as if death weren'treal. We were the stars of the army,because the adults found the child-soldiers very entertaining.

But we missed being able to play.They paid my wages, but I had nothingto spend it on, except maybe some toysoldiers. |And when the war startedagain I put my uniform back on and gotready to play at fighting for real.

I learned to live without fear orhumility. I couldn’t live like that today.When I see myself in the army, it’s as if Iam looking from the outside. I don’trecognize that child, because I am sodifferent now.

Did you have dreams, or did you stop

yourself from even thinking about

them?

We didn’t have time to think. We didn’tthink about the future. We didn’t eventhink we might grow up one day. Wewere there to fight in the war, and that’sall there was to it.

What do you think about the soldiers

who forced you to fight and who

continue to do the same thing to other

children today?

At the time we thought we were helpingthe nation and were fans of PresidentKabila. He was like a father for us and weliked him a lot. We didn’t particularlyblame the soldiers, as they had given usa power over adults that children do notusually have. We were always competingto see who was the strongest. Thecivilian world was unknown to us. Wehad power, why let it go?

I still don’t know enough aboutpolitics to understand why the warstarted and why these soldiers took usaway. But I do know that if you love yourcountry, you have to protect thechildren. Who will free the country fromwar if the children spend all their time inthe army? I am not angry, but I do notagree with the soldiers either. I feel sorryfor them, more than anything. Theydon’t know what they are doing.

miracle weaponsToday you can see that you were being

manipulated. Do you feel you’ve freed

yourself from this military

programming?

I found it hard to get back into civilian life.I was demobilized in 2001 and became acivilian again. But I still thought like asoldier. It is thanks to the Espace Masolo [aresource centre for artists andcraftspeople, set up in Kinshasa in 2003,the capital of the Democratic Republic ofCongo, by the Congolese artists MalvineVelo, Hubert Mahela and LamberMousseka] that I learned how to getalong better with other people. That’swhere I discovered art and found myfreedom and independence again.

During the war you were a musical

entertainer much appreciated by your

comrades. Did singing help you put up

with the situation?

Yes, I loved to sing and make peoplelaugh. Before the army, my elderbrothers used to sing me songs and tell

“People say we are war children, child-soldiers, kadogos, but we were

children in the war. I didn’t want to be in the war, I was made to carry

a gun, and I no longer had my parents or my family, I only had the

army and my gun, my gun that I was told was my mother and father.”

Serge Amisi, Souvenez-vous de moi, l'enfant de demain, Vents d’ailleurs, 2011K Scene from a performance of “Congo my body” at

the Parc de la Villette in Paris (France), in 2010

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stories. In the army, some of the soldiershad children that they missed. They usedto call on me to lift their spirits. My littlevoice and child’s size made them laugh. Iwas a kind of mini-star all on my own,which made some of the other childsoldiers jealous. I loved to act and couldimagine myself as an artist.

What art forms do you use today?

I am a dancer, puppeteer and sculptor. Ihave an idea for a solo project where Icombine all three art forms. Meanwhile, Iput on a play [Congo My Body] with myfriend Yaoundé Mulamba, who I knewbefore the army and who was a childsoldier with me. In the past few years wehave played in different places in Europeand DRC. I still can’t earn a living fromart, but I hope to find a studio where Ican work. I also have other projects,simply as an artist, not as an ex-child-soldier, and I am in contact with youthgroups in Mozambique and Germany.

How did you feel about performing in

front of other people when you first

started as an artist? Were you afraid?

I was afraid I would shock people and notbe able to deal with that. I was even afraidI’d be threatened or judged. When I cameto France at the end of 2008, I suddenlyfelt shocked by my own past and I startedto think about it a lot. I had the impressionI was reliving everything in my head. NowI feel more at peace and avoid thinkingtoo much about it so that I can move on. IfI could have, I wouldn’t have gone to fightin the war. I try not to feel guilty, by tellingmyself that it was not my fault, that theadults forced me to go and drugged me. Ihave managed to distance myself from allof that with the help of a few people whohave given me a lot of support. One day Iwas given some notebooks and I startedto write my life story, just for myself.

Last March, your book, Souvenez-vous

de moi, l’enfant de demain [Remember

me, tomorrow’s child], came out in

France, published by Vents d’ailleurs.

What message do you want to pass on to

today’s young people?

I published this book [using the notes hewrote in Lingala in the notebooksbetween 2004 and 2008] to leave arecord of what happened and to showyoung people what I went through as achild and what others went through orare still going through in other parts ofthe world. This could be useful to them. ■

Serge Amisi was interviewed in April 2011 in the Courier office by Selen Demir, 18,

a French-Turkish student at the University of Paris IV (France). This is her first magazine

interview.

Locked in the cycle of violence

Some 28 million children are deprived of education because of armed conflictaround the world. “Armed conflict remains a major roadblock to humandevelopment in many parts of the world, yet its impact on education is widelyneglected,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. War destroys not onlyschools and educational infrastructure, but also the hope and ambitions ofwhole generations.

The 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report “The hidden crisis:Armed conflict and education” points out that the problem is not only theconflict itself, but also what comes along with it.

Children drop out of school or their parents forbid them to go. There areconstant threats to children and teachers in and outside school boundaries. Theyounger generation is terrorized, raped and kidnapped. Many abducted childrenare put into the armed forces to fight. If they want to live and see their familiesagain, they have to go and kill. Rape is often used as a war tactic and in certaincountries the young are particularly targeted because they are defenseless.

“I was just coming back home from the river to fetch water,” says Minova, 15,South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Two soldiers came up to meand told me that if I refuse to sleep with them, they will kill me. They beat meand ripped my clothes. One of the soldiers raped me. …My parents spoke to acommander and he said that his soldiers do not rape, and that I am lying. Irecognized the two soldiers, and I know that one of them is called Edouard.”(Human Rights Watch, 2009).

While it is evident that armed conflicts undermine education, it is lessobvious that the failures of education can fuel conflicts. Yet an educationalsystem that fails to provide young people with the knowledge and skills toavoid unemployment and poverty, as well as the requisite tools to learn “livingtogether” and respect for other people, becomes an underground source ofhatred and discord.

Mila Zourleva, 22, Bulgarian student and intern, UNESCO Division of PublicInformation

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It isn’t a place exactly. Technically itwould be defined as an event. Moreaccurately it could be described as acommunity. Perhaps though it would bebest characterized as a spirit that foralmost three weeks at the close ofwinter each year inhabits a growingnumber of educators, students, poets,and spectators throughout theChicagoland area. It’s Louder Than aBomb, the Chicago Youth PoetryFestival.

Louder Than a Bomb (LTaB) startedin 2001 as a poetry slam of 8 highschools in what co-founder Kevin Covalcan only describe as a “rat-infestedbasement.” By the time I begancompeting in Louder Than a Bomb as a13 year old the competition had grownto 15 teams (mine being the only teamrepresenting a middle school). It was in

The marquee event of LTaB is stillthe poetry slam. A poetry slam is anOlympic-style poetry contest wherewriters present original work withoutthe aid of music or props. The slam is,by nature, ridiculously subjective in itsjudging and there is a saying at LTaBthat the best poets never win. While tomany outside of the community thissounds like an egregious injustice, thesecret of the slam is that it is a gimmick.Slam uses the ruse of competition toelevate the visibility of the art and voiceof young people.

Poetry against segregation

This work would be important in anyplace but in the city of Chicago it is anessential labor. Chicago is a remarkablysegregated city. In the city Dr. MartinLuther King once called “the northernmost racist city” there is still a culture thatrarely puts people of different racial orsocioeconomic backgrounds in the same

Creating community in a city notorious in the past for segregation, elevating the visibility

of young people’s art and voice, filling the silence of misunderstanding…. These are a few

of the achievements of the poetry slam with the resounding name of Louder Than a Bomb,

where Chicago’s budding poets get together.

NATE MARSHALL

Whenpoetry

2003 and I vividly remember walkinginto the opening event of the weekend,an event known as “Crossing the Street”and seeing a life-altering scene. Insidethe dark room I saw teenagers of allcolors gathered around in celebration ofthemselves. The air was filled with thesmell of free pizza and the thump of hip-hop music and I was mesmerized by theenergy in the room.

The part of the scene that mostdrew me was a large and growing circleof students in the background. As Ibordered on the outskirts of the group Iheard the voices of young peoplerhyming. More than simply recitingmemorized lyrics they werespontaneously composing raps, songs,and chants. As I watched this freestylecipher for a few minutes, I was struck bythe radical democracy of the circle.Everybody who wanted an opportunityto rhyme got one. Skill was the onlymeasure by which everyone was judged.

Poet, rapper and essayist Nate

Marshall, 21, reciting his work

at the poetry slam “Louder

Than a Bomb” in Chicago

(USA).

© Siskel/Jacobs Productions

is louder than a bomb


room. LTaB’s demographic is so bizarrebecause it defies the tendency towardsthe monolith that is ever present inChicago. LTaB does important work everyyear bringing students from all differenttypes of backgrounds to gather, listen,and learn from themselves and eachother.

Chicago’s literary legacy is anenviable one and that is evident in thework of the students. To hear a studentlike Kush Thompson from the troubledOrr High School on the West Side ofChicago speak passionately about theunfair body images that a “Mattelbranded” (makers of the Barbie doll,notably) society propagates is anamazing thing. It’s even more amazing tosee her share the stage with studentsfrom marquee magnet schools andwealthy suburban schools that canidentify with her story. This discovery ofcommonality among students is creatinga new culture in the city.

Even as Chicago in the past few yearshas experienced a rash of youth violenceLTaB has remained an amazing exampleof safe space. In 10 years of operationLTaB has never experienced a violentincident, even as they draw students fromacross the invisible yet very real lines thatseparate different neighborhoods andgang territories. Despite the increasinglysteep competition, which now includesover 70 teams and 30 individual poets,the spirit of community remains intact atLTaB. The cipher is still one of the mostcommon occurrences at LTaB and it is notuncommon after a bout to see thecompeting teams trading notes andlaughs at a local fried chicken restaurant.

Bomb debris

In 2007 US filmmakers Greg Jacobs andJon Siskel noticed this spirit. During thenext year they followed three individualsand one team on their journey inpreparation for LTaB. I was lucky to beamong those they decided to follow.From the hundreds of hours of footagethey built a documentary film to offer aglimpse into the lives of a few studentsand the way in which the slam has been alife-shifting experience for the youngpeople involved.

The documentary has garneredpositive reviews from famed film criticRoger Ebert, Variety Magazine, and the LATimes among others. Film festivals acrossthe U.S. and Canada have selected“Louder Than a Bomb” and it has won

awards at many, including Palm Springs,Chicago, and Austin. The film will be airedin the fall of 2011 nationally on the OprahWinfrey Network as a part of herdocumentary of the month club. The LTaBfilm has even inspired an offshoot eventin Tulsa, Oklahoma. In April of 2011 I wasable to travel to Tulsa with Kevin Coval tohelp organize the first annual LTaB Tulsa.

Erika Dickerson, 2009 LTaB All-Star,loves the platform of the festival as anopportunity to “build community andnetwork with one another as well asprofessional artists.” Cydney Edwards, atwo-time LTaB All-Star, said “Louder Thana Bomb was a venue for me to align

“If you’re not here during thefirst week of May, then you’re

not in best place. Louder Than aBomb is the coolest place on

the planet. “Adam Gottlieb, contestant from

2005 to 2008

Nate Marshall, 21, is a poet, rapper

and essayist. Main character in the

award-winning feature-length

documentary “Louder Than a Bomb”, he

was a finalist of the Chicago Literary

Guild’s Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic

Award 2010. His work has been

published in several poetry

anthologies. He is finishing his BA in

English and Afro-American studies at

Vanderbilt University in Nashville (USA).

myself with peers of mine from all overChicago and mold my craft.” Thesestudents, some of the champions of theslam, represent the small section of theparticipants who will pursue their literaryart as a career. For so many otherstudents, there is less focus on craft, butthat is perfectly fine. Louder Than a Bombproduces great art, and elevates that artin ways that it would not be otherwise,but the most pressing work that LTaBdoes is elevate young people. Byempowering them to use their words andlisten to each other, LTaB empowersstudents to analyze and challenge theworld that they live in and its injusticesand shortcomings. As 2011 LTaB IndySlam Champion Malcolm London saidabout the work of the festival, “thisdoesn’t stop at LTaB.” These studentscreate community where segregationexisted for their parents. They fill thedangerous silence of misunderstandingwith a symphony of stories.

The power of LTaB is that sense of thestory, that sense of imagination, andstudent using it to tell a willing audienceabout the world they live whileempowering them to build the worldthey dream. ■

L Scene from the film “Louder Than a Bomb”.

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L Poster from the latest Louder Than a Bomb event.

Differentdreams, yet...They come from different countries, have different occupations, speak different languages,

yet they have much in common: youth, art, a desire to connect with other cultures. Until

recently, they’d never even met: UNESCO brought them together. They were awarded the

title of “Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue between Arab and Western Worlds”. Among

them, Betty Shamieh (USA/Occupied Palestinian Territory), Merlijn Twaalfhoven

(Netherlands) and two members of the Talent 2008 project, Ingebjørg Bratland (Norway) and

Majd Shahin (Occupied Palestinian Territory) answered our questions to share their

convictions, projects and passions with our readers.

Interview conducted by Iris Julia Bührle and Khaled Abu Hijleh

View of the Morro da

Providencia favela in

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,

with photos from JR's

August 2008 project

“Women are Heroes”

covering walls. © Courtesy of JR:

http://jr-art.net/


How can the artist contribute to

building peace and mutual

understanding between people around

the world?

Betty Shamieh: Artists illuminate thecommon humanity that we all share.What is wonderful about theatre is that itshows us how similar we are, not onlyacross the globe but throughoutgenerations. It shows us not only how weshould coexist peacefully, but also why.When one sees a work of art, particularlya work of theatre where a story that waswritten in the time of the Greeks still hasresonance today, it becomes clear thatwe do have a recognizable butindefinable human essence.

Ingebjørg Bratland: I think that music isthe language of the heart and when wedo not speak the same language, we cancommunicate through music. The worldcan sometimes seem very violent, so it isgreat to come together and play music,which is something that we arepassionate about. It is a break from theworld that we are living in, a kind of freespace.

Majd Shahin: Music is the language ofthe nations. I think music is the way tomake other people understand what youare and what you feel.

Merlijn Twaalfhoven: In my projects, Iusually avoid to use the word “peace”because the term is surrounded by manyexpectations, but also by moments ofdisappointment or even frustration.However, you can reflect about what areconditions for peace. In my opinion, onecondition for peace is contact betweenpeople. Therefore, I wanted to stimulatecontact and make people curious. Art isan excellent way to make people curious,not to give answers but to createopenings. When something is open,when something is not exactly fixed,people want to continue because theywant to learn more and look for thetruth. And that is what I believe can be acondition for a road to peace andunderstanding. I am happy when I leavea place and people have many questions.

What kind of difficulties you have

faced in your projects? How did you

overcome them?

B.S.: One difficulty when you deal withchallenging subjects is that you need tobe able to not fully articulate your

And by doing that it became clear. But Imade many mistakes on the road bymaking it too complex and byexpecting others to have the samedreams. Everyone has different dreamsbut once you start realizing, once youjust start doing, then people getinspired and feel connections.

How do you define your role as an

artist in the social and political life of

your own country?

B.S.: I think the role of the artist in anysociety is to inspire. What I hope toinspire in the people in the countrywhere I live, which is America, is a realdesire to be a citizen of the world, adesire to know about other cultures andto see different perspectives.

When you live between twocultures, it is also very important toshow the similarities between them.Many works of Western artists about theMiddle East, for instance, focus on theplight of women. I live in America wherewomen also have little political,economic and artistic power. Therefore,I feel that one of the things I need to doas an artist is to talk about how women’ssituations across the globe are similarbecause it is very easy to look at othercultures, but people sometimes forgetto look at their own. As I live in twoworlds, it makes me question howdifferent cultures really are at their base.

M.S.: My country, Palestine, has a lot ofmessages and a lot of dreams that wewant to send to the whole world. I thinkthat in my music I can do this. Of coursethe messages are different inside andoutside Palestine. Outside, you have toclarify a lot of things about yourcountry; inside, you have to support thepeople. The reactions to this have beenquite different, but I feel proud of mycountry’s cultural richness which I canshow to the world.

I.B.: Outside we only hear aboutPalestine in connection to war, and it isgreat that we see that there is musicalso and that people are living lives inPalestine. I myself as a folk musician inNorway think that it is important thatthere are young people continuing thetradition of Norwegian folk musicbecause folk music has to be kept alive.

M.T.: As an artist, I hope to confuse andto break the surface. People have a

perspective. Sometimes artists avoidcontroversial issues because they thinkthey have to have answers or that theyhave to be able to speak in a way thatno one can find fault with. I think thatartists should feel free to be wrong fromtime to time.

The other thing that I often face isthat people just assume that they knowmy politics. My dream is that one daythe Middle East will look like theEuropean Union. Of course most peopleimmediately say that this is impossibleand then I remind them of the situationin Europe one hundred years ago –within the last century, Europe has hadtwo World Wars and countries wereoccupying each other and tearing eachother apart. I want to challenge thebelief that we cannot change in theMiddle East.

I.B.: The only problem for me was thelanguage. Some of the artists fromEgypt and Palestine did not speak muchEnglish, and it can be a bit tough tocome together and make music whenyou cannot communicate with words.So we just had to use the music andplay!

M.S.: I did not have any problems withthe language and to cooperate withmusicians from other parts of the world,but the music was a challenge. I am apercussionist and for me it is difficult toplay a Norwegian song because thebeats are totally different from theOriental beats I usually play. But it hasbeen a very good experience!

M.T.: The difficulty in my work is thatwhen you want to do somethingunconventional and you want toconvince others to go with you to anunknown territory, then people do nothave the same idea in their minds asyou. In Cyprus, for example, I talked a lotabout the unity of the island and aboutconnecting both sides (north and south,which are separate states) by music andpeople did not know what I wanted andwhat was my political agenda… Sofinally I abandoned all my theories and Ijust said: let’s go on the rooftop andplay music and listen to the other side.


I think that artists should feel free

to be wrong from time to time.

Betty Shamieh

strong need to make the world aroundthem very clear and to put labels, andafter that it is very hard to change theirminds. So I believe confusion is neededso that people realize that the labels donot always fit and start looking what isbehind them.

It is a privilege that I can go toplaces about which I am curious, but it isalso important that I let others followme. If I travel to Syria it is a greatexperience for me, but I try to find waysthat through my projects people in theWestern world can also travel a bit toSyria. I feel that I have to share thiscuriosity; it is not only for myself.

I meet many artists in Holland whoare very focused just on the quality ofmaking music, but most people do notask whether they could use their qualityas a tool for making the world better.Thanks to UNESCO, I have met morepeople who think not only about art,but also about art inside the world andwhat it might change.

What are your plans in the near future,

after having won the UNESCO award?

M.T.: This recognition is very importantfor me because my work takes placeoutside concert halls or festivals orprogrammes of orchestras. I do it on myown with a small organization or withfreelancers, and with hardly any budget.Sometimes I obtain media attention andthat is important, but as it is not insidethe infrastructure of culture my work ishard to label, and therefore it is difficultto find support and partners. Such a titlegives some clarity to the fact that I amdoing this type of work and that it hassome positive results. I also hope that thenext years I can follow up on the projectsthat I started – for instance Al QudsUnderground in East Jerusalem. What Ihave done so far is just a beginning!

B.S.: This title was incredibly meaningfulfor me. It was the first time in my life thatI felt that both my Palestinian andAmerican origin were recognized; thus,UNESCO has acknowledged thecomplexity of identity. In addition tocontinuing to develop as an artist,I would like to support the efforts of thelate Juliano Mer Khamis (Israeli actor and

K Group photo taken at the nomination ceremony for “Young Artists for Intercultural Dialogue between Arab

and Western Worlds” on 13 April 2011 at UNESCO.

UNESCO’s young artists

Twenty-four artists aged under 35 were awarded the title of “Young Artist forIntercultural Dialogue between Arab and Western Worlds” by UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, at a ceremony held at the Organization’s headquarters on 13April 2011.This honour recognizes the exceptional contribution to dialogue andexchange between Arab and Western cultures made by:

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Ruti Sela and Mayaan Amir (Israel), artists and curators, designed the ‘Exterritory’project as a way to bring together artists and intellectuals living in conflict zones,especially Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Belgium/Morocco), dancer and choreographer, hasproduced performances that illustrate the meeting of cultures and explorations ofidentity.

Federico Ferrone (Italy), filmmaker, has produced several films on immigration,suburbs and the contribution of immigrant communities to a country’s culture.

Faïza Guène (France/Algeria), novelist, whose highly acclaimed writings portrayreality for those of North African descent living in French suburbs, and counterclichés and prejudice.

JR (France), photographer, is behind the ‘Face2Face’ project, which consists ofposting photographs side by side of Israelis and Palestinians doing the same jobs.

Ibrahim Maalouf (Lebanon), trumpeter, mixes Western and Eastern musical stylesand works with artists from all over the world.

‘Massar Egbari’ (Egypt), musicians, launched the ‘Music as a means of interculturaldialogue’ project, inviting Western artists to share the stage in concerts.

Betty Shamieh (USA/ Occupied Palestinian Territory), playwright, has writtenplays that highlight intercultural relations, especially between Arabs andAmericans.

Zuhal Sultan (Iraq), pianist, who, at the age of 17, founded the National YouthOrchestra of Iraq, which works with several Western artists.

The ‘Talent 2008’ project brings together nine young musicians playing traditionalEuropean and Arab music (Occupied Palestinian Territory, Egypt, Norway).

Merlijn Twaalfhoven (Netherlands), composer and musician, has started someexceptional projects in Jordan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria and theNetherlands, using music to create links and thus serving as a symbol of peace.

As an artist, I hope to confuse

and to break the surface.

Merlijn Twaalfhoven

An imam, a minister and a rabbi strike playful poses,

as part of the 2007 “Face 2 Face” project by

JR and Marco, who covered walls with portraits of

Israelis and Palestinians working at the

same jobs.© Courtesy of JR: http://jr-art.net/

theatre director, assassinated on 4 April2011) who did wonderful work in Jenin.We must not allow violence to scare usaway from continuing to do work andcontinuing to aspire for the kind of futurethat everybody deserves.

I.B.: I would love to visit other countriesand learn about their folk music. I thinkthat traditional music is a particularlygood way to learn about other cultures,even better than classical music whichhas become more universal. And in myopinion, you have to visit the countryand to see how people live there andhow they play and use their folk music. Ialso use some of the things that I havelearned from Arabic music and makethem a part of my own music.Furthermore, as we have been in Egyptand in Norway with the Talent project, itwould be great to visit Palestine as welland do concerts there!

Iris Julia Bührle, 29, is a German art

historian and also a specialist in

comparative literature. She has written

numerous articles and scholarly papers

on dance, literature and history

(including a thesis on France and

UNESCO from 1945 to1958).

M.S.: I will also continue my path as aPalestinian folk musician inside andoutside my country. The UNESCO titleencourages me and gives me a push totake a step forward in my music life. It isgreat to find people that understandand appreciate your art. I was sosurprised when I met the other artistswho were attributed the title and sawthe other projects – you feel you are notalone! There are people fromeverywhere trying to do what you do. ■

JR, Art and the Impossible

JR, who took the photographsillustrating this article, is a memberof the UNESCO young artists group.This 28-year-old French ‘urbanartivist’ (sic) claims to have thelargest gallery in the world – thestreet!

In 2001, JR began clandestinelypasting onto the facades of Parisianbuildings photocopies of thesnapshots he was taking of hisfriends doing graffiti on therooftops. His subjects quicklybecame more diverse while theimages grew bigger, reaching 6 x 8metres in 2004 with his “Portrait of aGeneration”, which made himfamous. That year he also exhibitedin the streets of New York, LosAngeles, Paris and the Cité desBosquets social housing estate inMontfermeil, a disadvantaged Parissuburb.

In March 2007, with Marco, hestaged Face 2 Face, “the biggestphoto exhibition ever”. They posted,side by side, giant portraits ofIsraelis and Palestinians doing thesame jobs in several towns in Israeland the Palestinian Territories. “Face2 Face demonstrated that what wethought impossible was possible,even easy,” he said on 2 March 2011at the TED prize awards ceremony inLong Beach (USA)(www.tedprize.org).

In 2008 and 2009 his Women AreHeroes project took him to Kenya,Brazil, India and Cambodia. In spring2011, he rushed to Tunisia to coverpolice stations and political partyheadquarters with photos, as part ofthe Inside Out project. In 10 years, hehas achieved what we thought wasimpossible. And he makes it all seemso easy! – J. Šopova

See JR’s website: www.jr-art.net

K Staircase in the Morro da Providencia favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, covered with a photo from JR's August

2008 “Women are Heroes” project.

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t/ The world can sometimes

seem very violent, so it is great

to come together and play

music, which is something

that we are passionate about.

Ingebjørg Bratland

What could be better than to plant atree that feeds the villagers while, at thesame time, it provides the material towaterproof the tatas ?

Working under the umbrella of theTogolese NGO FAGAD (Frèresagriculteurs et artisans pour ledéveloppement) and supported by thePatrimonito project and CCIVS, theseyoung World Heritage volunteers haveidentified and planted variousendangered plant species used in theconstruction of the tatas. Within twoyears, the site acquired 1,050 new treesin a 2000 m2 area. A first step, providingthe necessary materials to restore thetatas using traditional methods.

But besides the tangible aspects ofTamberma culture – another name forthe Batammariba – the volunteerswanted to help preserve its intangibleaspects too, by becoming associatedwith the first Tamberma Festival, from26 to 30 March 2011. “This is the firstyear the Festamber festival has beenheld,” explains Atti Y. Tata, a 23-year-oldTogolese man who runs a camp thathosted seven volunteers this year. “Wewere very excited at the idea of takingpart in this new initiative, whichshowcases the richness of our local

culture, languages, crafts and farmproducts.” These jewels, along with thetatas, make Togo a stop not to bemissed on a cultural tourist’s itinerary inWest Africa. “For people who do notknow anything about this culture, whichwas my case, this festival is a very goodway to get immersed in it in just a week,”enthuses Linda Gustafssona, 24-year-oldSwedish volunteer. “I really hope it willkeep going, because it also gives theTamberma an opportunity to appreciatethe wealth of the Koutammakou site ina new way.”

Based in Adeta, the youngvolunteers were not daunted by the 400km journey to Koutammakou. With novehicle at their disposal, they did thebest they could: “We travelled by taxi,bus or motorbike, depending on thestate of the roads,” says Atti. Indeed, theproject is still a work in progress. “Wewere supposed to help withpreparations for the festival, but by thetime we got there, there was hardlyanything left to do,” says Linda. But evenif it takes time to build up momentum,what counts is the will to discover andsimply to get involved. ■

Patrimonito, a cartoon character representing a young

guardian of world heritage, made his appearance in 1995.

He is the mascot of World Heritage volunteers, taking his

young companions to Africa, Latin America, Asia and

Europe. The young volunteers take part in the preservation

and appreciation of emblematic World Heritage sites,

under the supervision of the World Heritage Centre and the

CCIVS*.

K Atti Y. Tata, in Koutammakou (Togo).

* CCIVS – Coordinating Committee for InternationalVoluntary Service

If the hundred-year-old tata mudhouses of Togo had arms, they wouldreach out to hug these young people,just like grandmothers hugging theirgrandchildren. For the past four yearsvolunteers from Togo, Sweden, Japan,and South Korea have been meeting upin Koutammakou, a World Heritage sitein northeast Togo, to look after thesefragile old ladies.

The tatas – traditional, tower-flanked mud houses – seem to embodyall the wisdom of the Batammaribapeople. But they are crumbling underthe weight of modernisation, with itsquick and easy building codes. AndNature is not helping them either,leaving a sad scene of collapsed housesafter the rainy season in August andSeptember. And even the Nere tree,whose bark is used to make whitewashfor the walls of the tatas, is becomingscarce.

That is where the young volunteersdecided to start. Just like the tree,whose symbolic name means “it isgood” in Bambara, and whose rootssometimes reach 60 feet undergroundto find water and provide a harvest offruits packed with goodness, theseyoung people also went to the source.

Patrimonitoin Togo

KATERINA MARKELOVA

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Building citizenship. That’s how Idefine my experience as a UnitedNations volunteer. I recentlyparticipated in the campaign “Unite toend violence against women”launched by the United NationsSecretary-General. I helped set updiscussions on several social networksto make Bolivians more aware of thisserious problem. One lesson I learnedfrom this recent six-month experience- young volunteers are extremelycommitted and professional. We areyoung professionals who are eager tolearn and to help build social justice.

creativityWonders of

Youth volunteering can achieve somuch. Offer young people role modelsand inspire them with a new outlook,and their creativity pays dividends.Take youth seriously, give themresponsibility and a place in societybased on trust, and they excel.

Volunteering empowers youngpeople to act and change the worldaround them. In 2010, the UnitedNations volunteering programmedeployed in 132 countries nearly 8,000people from 158 countries. It

mobilized another 10,000 volunteerswho contributed to developmentthrough the on-line volunteeringservice. About 62% of them were fromdeveloping countries and 80% wereyoung people between the ages of 18and 35.

The year 2011 marks the 10thanniversary of the International Year ofVolunteers. It is also the European Yearof Volunteering- yet another reason foryoung people to exercise their right tocommunity participation. ■

United Nations Volunteers site: http://www.unv.org/en.html

Kenyan Scout Josephat Gitonga,28, takes community service veryseriously. He treats it almost as a“sacred duty”, which has earned himrecognition from the Kenya ScoutsAssociation and the job of directorof the Scout centre in his town,Embu, located about 120 kmnortheast of Nairobi. Passionate andhardworking, Josephat threwhimself into this adventure byreaching 200% of the objectives!With the support of his Norwegiancounterparts, he succeeded inopening the centre to thecommunity and making it practicallyautonomous financially, though ahostel and restaurant micro-projectthat also created jobs.

Initially the centre planned tohold only occasional scoutingactivities. But Josephat dreamed ofturning Embu into a global village.Never had the international Moots –the big meetings of the oldest groupof Scouts, age 18 to 25 – beenorganized in Africa. It was time totake action.

Relying on the experience thatbuilt his reputation among Scouts allthe way to Asia and Latin America,Josephat quickly persuaded theKenya Scouts Association tonominate his town as one of thethree Kenyan locations for the 13thWorld Scout Moot (27 July-7 August2010). The dream became reality:more than 1,000 young worldcitizens arrived in Embu, which hadnever known so much friendship,laughter and brotherhood as well asdiscussion on today’s majorchallenges. ■

Pierre Arlaud, Swiss student, 25;Representative, External Relations atthe World Organization of the ScoutMovement. [email protected]

Volunteering is perfect for tappinginto the idealism and drive of youngpeople. Despite appearances, our lack ofexperience due to our young age is aneasily overcome obstacle. In addition toits social value, community participationthrough volunteering can be a meansfor us young people to get our firstexperience in the ethical principles onwhich the dignity of individuals andsocieties depend. This kind ofparticipation turns us into solutionmakers, a force for development insteadof a vulnerable group. ■

Silvia Bellón, Spanish student, 23

K Opening of the Scouts' 13th World Moot in Kenya, on 27 July 2010.

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the meeting. Delegates also urged theIOC to keep the spirit of the YOG alive inthe period between Games.

That spirit is certainly alive and wellin Innsbruck, Austria, where organizersare in the final countdown to the firstWinter Youth Olympic Games in January2012. Meanwhile, Nanjing, China, ispreparing for the second Youth OlympicSummer Games in 2014. ■

International Olympic Committeewww.olympic.org

Johannesburg, the festival broughttogether for two weeks more than 250boys and girls from disadvantagedcommunities—from tiny rural villages inCambodia to the inner cities of theUnited States, the slums of India to thefavelas of Rio. Conquering culturalbarriers, they came together through thelanguage of the game. They broadenedtheir horizons and gained the confidencethey needed to return to their homesand shape not only their own destinies,but those of their communities as well.

Empowering disadvantaged youth toimprove their lives is the goal of thestreetfootballworld network. It unitesover 80 organizations with a specialapproach to tackling social challengeslike HIV/Aids, crime and homelessness:they use football to bring young peopleinto social development programmes—and keep them there. Working with thenetwork and partners, streetfootballworldaims to reach out to 2,000,000 youngpeople worldwide every year until 2015.

Football can help find solutions toproblems too complex to be solved byconventional methods. The game is onlythe starting point. ■

www.streetfootballworld.org

The International Year of Youth (IYY)coincides with the creation of a newOlympic tradition. The Youth OlympicGames (YOG) were inaugurated by theInternational Olympic Committee (IOC)*last August, just days after the start of theUN Year. The Youth Games combine sport,education and cultural activities in aunique format for young people betweenthe ages of 15 and 18. At the games,young people learn from athlete role

models and from each other in a settingthat encourages lasting friendships.

The first YOG, held in Singapore, drewabout 3,500 young people from aroundthe world. The results exceededexpectations on every level. Theparticipants offered their assessment ofthe inaugural YOG in December at the 7thWorld Conference on Sport, Educationand Culture in Durban, South Africa,cosponsored by the IOC and UNESCO.

In keeping with the theme of theconference, “Giving a Voice to Youth,”teenage delegates took an active role at

While the greatest players in footballwere competing in Johannesburg(South Africa) for the 2010 FIFA WorldCup, 32 teams of young people werecoming together from around the world

for a more unusual tournament, theFootball for Hope Festival 2010.

Organized by streetfootballworld,FIFA, the 2010 FIFA World Cup OrganisingCommittee South Africa and the City of

Sport: only a starting point

Youth Olympic Games

* In late 2009, the IOC received official UN Observerstatus.

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Empowering disadvantaged

youth to improve their lives is the

goal of the streetfootballworld

network.

From a distance, Kawempe division inKampala (Uganda) looks like any shantytown: a sea of tiny shacks with mud andwattle walls. But getting closer, thestench of disease and despair hangsabout like the angel of death. Children’seyes glint warily as they peer at a visitorwalking past. But gallantly, they playabout joyfully. They have probably neverused toothpaste in their short lives, butthat is of no consequence. Theirhaunting voices echo in the distance asyou move further into the swampyslums. Kawempe is characterized byswampy slums where most people arenot sure of their next meal.

Unemployment rates are high, withlow family incomes and highdependence on those who can earn,increasing levels of poverty and theinability to afford health services. Mostwomen here are involved in prostitutionor commercial sex to make a living. Suchis the condition that a few years agomoved James Tumusiime, a youngpsychologist now 30, to tears. A recentgraduate, James was working as avolunteer counselor at a local clinic inKawempe when he met the 19-year-oldmother. “She looked frail, and she saidher children were always falling sick. Shethought it was malaria. I advised her totest for HIV,” James recounts and pauses.The pause is so long that you are afraidthe interview is over. “The test waspositive. I felt bad. She cried so hard.Although I tried to counsel her to livewith a positive mind, I never saw heragain. I tried to reach her on her cellnumber in vain…I pray she did notcommit suicide,” he says. Even now asJames tells the story, his face darkens.

But that incident was the turningpoint for this psychology graduate.Together with seven other young people,he set out to “break the ice” and reachout to such vulnerable single mothers inthe area, most of whom were making aliving through commercial sex. Despitethe fact that in Uganda, commercial sexis illegal under the constitution.

Getting the project going

Another 30-year-old man, who prefersanonymity, recalls that he was also acommunity worker when Jamesapproached him. “There had been aproject before by Plan UK, a charityorganization which was only catering forchildren. But in most cases when youmet children and asked who theirparents were, they did not know. So wefelt we needed a project targeting sexworkers that could help them liveresponsibly.” Another young man in hislate 20s tells heartrending stories ofprostitutes fighting over “clients.” Once,he says, his sister was beaten by aprostitute who thought she too wascompeting with her.

“I remember the day we started the‘breaking the ice’ project. We went therefor a week, every night, to see forourselves. It was sad seeing evenpolicemen on night patrol demandingsex from the girls. That strengthened ourwill to do something to change lives,” hesays. “There were so many teen motherswith children whose fathers they did notknow. Some of them were as young as13. And most of them were in the agegroup of 13 to 25. Some of them werestudents, others barmaids andwaitresses,” James recalls.

In 2007, the ‘breaking the ice’ projectwas launched. “We began with a groupof about 10 mothers we had interactedwith who had told us they were sexworkers. We asked them to identifyothers,” says James, the projectcoordinator. “We wanted the girls toprotect themselves from HIV/Aids andother sexually transmitted diseases.(STDs) We finally got 60 mothers whomwe trained as peer educators. It is easyfor the mothers to be listened to fromtheir experiences. Even for the meninvolved in prostitution, they tend tolisten to a woman demonstrating theuse of a condom, for instance, ratherthan to another man,” James says.

By 2009, the number of beneficiarieshad swelled to 3,000 sex workers. At thispoint, Reproductive Health Ugandacame in with financial support from theJapanese government to set upMoonlight Stars Clinic, which offers freecounseling and testing services forHIV/Aids and other sexually transmittedinfections.“We called our clientsMoonlight Stars because we did notwant a name that would marginalizethem,” James says. The beneficiaries aregiven cards for identification, to avoidhaving non-beneficiaries storm theclinic for free treatment.

A call for donations

Florence Kyeswa, head of the clinic, saysthey receive on average about 70 clientsin a week from the slums in KawempeDivision, most of them suffering fromSTDs. The funds from the Japanesegovernment have also been used totrain the “moonlight stars” in tailoring,bakery, arts, crafts and mechanical work.

Africa, unemployment, slums: a lethal combination leading Ugandan adolescent girls to

prostitution and ruin. Until a group of young people decided to take things in hand.


Moonlightstars CAROL NATUKUNDA

James says the beneficiaries are dividedin groups of about 20, and each groupgiven 5 million shillings (about US$2,500 dollars) as start up capital. Andthe majority of those who have beenequipped have a story to tell.“I am nowable to fend for my children, withouthaving to give in to sex. I feel confidentand happy that I am laying a goodfoundation for my daughter,” says a 17-year-old mother of one, who bakespancakes for a living. Another 21-year-old HIV-positive mother chips in: “Therewas a time I felt I wanted to die. I did notsee any point facing the next daybecause of my status. But now, I haveaccess to treatment and condoms,and asewing machine. I make about 5 dollarson a good day from tailoring.”The onechallenge, according to James, is thatsome sex workers are tempted to fallback on vice. Also, he says, they rely ondonor funds, and the Japanese fundingis now finished. The moonlight stars arelooking for new donors. The project hasdrawn several partners including theUnited Nations Population Fund(UNFPA), which has identified sexworkers as a high risk group in thespread of HIV. and hence is calling formore attention to be paid to thegroup.“HIV is not only spread through

married couples, as we tend to think.Commercial sex workers are a forgottenlot,” observes James.

Other partners are Uganda YouthDevelopment Link, an organizationwhich provides guidance andcounseling to street children and otheryoung people, and Beads for LifeUganda, a non-profit organization thatempowers Ugandan women who makehandcrafted beads from recycled paperand turn them into necklaces, bracelets,and earrings. The two organizations are

Carol Natukunda, 28, is a Ugandan

journalist and the 2008 laureate for the

prestigious African education

journalism award organised every year

by the Association for the

Development of Education (ADEA).

L Solitude, light and shadow, somewhere in Africa. ©

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Uniting against AIDS

World leaders gathered at a High-Level Meeting on HIV and AIDS at theUnited Nations General Assembly inNew York on 8-10 June 2011.

The meeting focused on the gainsmade 30 years into the epidemic andon the renewed commitmentrequired to achieve zero newinfections, zero discrimination, andzero AIDS-related deaths.

Member States promised “boldand decisive action”. They adopted anew Declaration that will guide asustained response to HIV and AIDSbased on change management ratherthan crisis management, emphasizingcountry- and people-ownedstrategies.

As a UNAIDS cosponsor, UNESCOwill continue to lead efforts to engageyoung people and the educationsector in the response to HIV andAIDS and to support preventionthrough sexuality education, genderequality and human rights. ■

now actively involved in sensitizingyoung people across the country inresponsible living. ■

It all began the day Khalida Brohi, now22 years old, learned about the customof karo kari, or honour killing. Honourkilling is the murder of a woman or anact of extreme violence against herperpetrated by her male relatives whenshe is perceived as having broughtdishonour upon her family. Horrified,Khalida vowed to fight this heinoustradition. Unable to take direct action tooppose violence against women, shebegan writing poems about karo kariand within her community shelaunched an aggressive awarenessraising campaign against honour killing.

The young sugharfrom Balochistan

Khalida Brohi’s conviction

comes across instantly from

behind her bright eyes and

inimitable warm smile. Yet

who could imagine that this

petite young woman from a

conservative tribal

community in Balochistan,

southwestern province of

Pakistan, has been a change

maker since age 16, when

she first took a stand

against the centuries-old

tradition of honour killing?

Noshan Abbas meets KHALIDA BROHI

I Young women learning to weave in a community

centre in Karachi, Pakistan

But in a religious, conservativecommunity whose underpinnings areencapsulated in the common proverb‘zar, zan , zameen’ (women, gold andland) - the three main possessionsdirectly linked to man’s honour – tryingto incite local community leaders tomake the distinction between ancestralcustom and religious practice was muchmore dangerous than Khalida imagined.

According to Human RightsCommission of Pakistan (HRCP)chairperson I. A Rehman, “Honour killingused to be practiced only in remotedistricts but now it happens in

metropolitan cities, in Karachi, Lahoreand Peshawar, for example. The settleddistricts have acquired this evil too. It’sone of the biggest problems womenface. Honour killings are not alwaysreported, although since the women’sact of 2006, cases have started beingbrought to the attention of authorities.We have only an approximate figure,which amounts to 800 to 1,000 killings ayear- there may be marginal variationsin the number from year to year but thesituation remains the same.”

Despite challenges of all kinds,Khalida helped found in 2004 the


mindsets, she faced the wrath of thetraditional patriarchal status quo. Her lifewas threatened and she was ultimatelyexpelled from her community.

Tradition versus tradition

“In 2008 our organization faced severalthreats against our safety,” recalls Khalida.“We faced opposition from religiousleaders and community tribal leaders.The time came when we had to leaveeverything and flee.” At that pointKhalida’s father took her to Karachi tosafety so that she could finish her studies.

But Khalida wasn’t about to give upon this crucial issue. “While everythinghad come to a halt, I kept on thinkingabout what had gone wrong in theprogramme. ‘I respect tradition,’ Ithought to myself. Suddenly I realizedwe had to promote positive traditionsthat could help end honour killing. Andthat was how we came to work withlocals as our allies.”

Turning this inclusive strategy intoaction still required perseverance fromKhalida and her team of 40 young

people. “We advocated the same causebut less aggressively,” says Khalida , whoused local traditions to her advantageand confronted the tribal leaders whohad previously threatened her. “In ourculture, you do not kick someone out ofyour house - it’s not done.” Khalidashowed up with her team at the house ofone of the leaders, who was thus forcedagainst his will to listen and talk to thegroup of persistent youths. “We spoke inthe local language and explained howwe wanted to promote local traditionssuch as embroidery, music and poetry.”Three leaders were responsive and evenclerics started giving sermons aboutwomen’s rights in accordance to Islam.

Promoting positive local traditions byproducing embroidery that is latermarketed through PDI, Sughar centreshave also provided a female friendlyplatform for women to create financialelbow room. In addition they receivevalue added training and basiceducation training in areas such as math,writing and reproductive health. ForKhalida, this has meant a window ofopportunity to raise awareness againsthonour killing. “Women’s attitudetowards honour killing is that ofacceptance. We are working to changethat by explaining the status and rightsof women as stated in Islam…they ofcourse become receptive to that,” shesays. Convinced women’s effacement inthe face of honour killing is a primecause for its continuation, Khalida hastargeted women but without neglectingthe involvement of men. Throughcreative avenues such as crickettournaments, interactive theater, SMS,FM radio, info-activism and digitaladvocacy, PDI advocates for the rights ofwomen by educating men. With theconsent of tribal leaders, discussions withmen using the Islamic argument ofwomen’s rights are also organized.

When asked how she measures theeffect of her work, Khalida answers, "Westarted with 14 girls on our team andnow we have 40 both male and femalemembers so I feel attitudes are changing.I have heard of cases of honour killing inneighbouring areas, but not in mycommunity for the past three years.”

Brave Role Model

With the help of savings and thesupport of funding from variousorganizations, Khalida Brohi has set upSughar centres in several districts of

organization Participatory DevelopmentInitiatives (PDI). It has establishedinnovative ideas such as the Sughar(which means skilled and confidentwoman in the local language)Programme to end honour killing byenabling economic empowermentamong tribal women.

“Over time I realized that most ofthe honour killings were of thosewomen who were sitting at home.Those who bring in income everymonth are considered of value to thefamily, and this also builds theircapacities for decision making andcontribution in their households andlives,” says Khalida, zeroing in on thepower of making money. But she alsounderstood the challenge of changingmindsets: “There are three main reasonswhy honour killing happens. First is ourbad policies at the government level,second is the negative perception ofwomen’s status and third, probably thebiggest reason, is that women acceptcustoms as their fate.” But before Khalidaembarked on the challenge of changing

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Balochistan, becoming a fellow of theUnreasonable Institute as well aswinning the Young Champion Awardand YouthActionNet fellowship award.She has a ‘Wake Up Campaign AgainstHonour Killing’ on Facebook thatupdates members on honour killingcases and other relevant information.But Khalida is conscious that despite thesupport from family, internationalorganizations and her team, naysayersstill exist: “Those who are against whatwe do in our community are in minority,so they don’t speak about it publicly,but I know they’re waiting for us to slipand make a mistake. That is why I am soparticular about making sure we try tomake no mistakes whatsoever.”

Expanding its outreach to women,PDI was active in a 2008 nationalprogramme, the Benazir BhuttoGovernment Land Distribution tolandless Sindhi peasant women. It cameup with the programme Land forWomen and took responsibility formonitoring the process. When majordiscrepancies were detected, however,PDI launched a support program forwomen with the help of Oxfam.Through the local radio, theyhighlighted the land programme in far

flung areas; they provided help forfilling in forms, transport to open legalcourts and legal support to women whofaced land issue problems. “Within threeyears the land for women programmeprovided land for 50% of the 3000women participants,” says Khalida.

Shuttling between Balochistan andKarachi where she is finishing herundergraduate studies in internationalrelations, sociology and economics,Khalida has also worked to help floodvictims in the area of Sindh. Receivingsupport from Oxfam and the Rockdalefoundation, she raised funds for 25,000families in nearby areas, provided relieffor 12,000 people and helped establishhomes in the recovery phase.

Looking back, Khalida identifies herbiggest struggle: maintaining theculturally defined concept of a goodreputation, a sacred and often lifedetermining notion in her society. “Theissue of being or not being a ‘decent’ girlbecomes an issue as soon as you stepout of your house”. Even thoughKhalida’s parents have been pillars ofstrength and inspiration for her, Khalidaremembers even her mother beingupset when she was first invited toSydney for an Oxfam launch of a youth

partnership. Khalida laughs as sherecalls her mother’s words: “You will notfind a husband!”

But Khalida is willing to brave therisks and continue her battle to inspirewomen to demand and protect theirbasic human right to life. ■

L Khalida Brodi (front, left) with some of the “Sughar” programme participants. © Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI)

Noshan Abbas, 26, is a journalist from

Islamabad, Pakistan. She works for Al

Jazeera, BBC Urdu and BBC South Asia

online. For Plan International and

Rutgers WPF, she created Pakistan's

first Framework Policy for Adolescents.

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On March 11, 2011, Japan experiencedan earthquake of a scale unprecedentedin the modern age, resulting in morethan 14,000 deaths and leaving 10,000more people missing. Just 15 hours afterthe quake, a 32-year-old web director,Hironori Nakahara, and his friendslaunched a website, buji.me, to collectand display victims’ safety status andlocation information, city by city. Bujimeans “safety” in Japanese.

“The first thing that came to me waswhat I can do to save victims’ lives. In asituation like this, a prompt reaction isnecessary to save as many people aspossible,” said Hironori.

He walked three hours from hisapartment in central Tokyo to hisgirlfriend’s home near the trendy districtof Shibuya. He and his friends met thereto discuss what they could do to helpand take action. The idea of buji.meemerged from their brainstorming.

“I began writing the first line of codeat 6:00 p.m., five hours after the quake,and the site was up by 6:00 a.m. the

next morning. I spent the next five dayswithout much sleep, determined toimprove the website to accommodateas much ‘buji’ information as possible.”

Had Hironori and his team everplanned to charge a fee for this project,he estimates the figure at around US$50,000. But the reward they receivedcannot be calculated in financial terms.

“Through this project, I havereceived many warm messages,thanking us for helping them find theirloved ones,” Hironori recalls. His attitudeto work and money has changed as aresult. “Ever since this moment, for everyproject that I work on, I ask –– is thisproject going to help someone? I haverealized the importance of a project isjudged by its impact on society, ratherthan the size of its budget.”

Gross National Happiness

Back in 1968, in his famous 18 Marchspeech, American politician RobertKennedy had already mentioned theflaws of money-driven benchmarks tomeasure prosperity:

“Our Gross National Product, now, isover $800 billion dollars a year, but that

Gross National Product … counts airpollution and cigarette advertising, andambulances to clear our highways ofcarnage.... Yet the Gross NationalProduct does not allow for the health ofour children, the quality of theireducation or the joy of their play. Itmeasures neither our wit nor ourcourage, neither our wisdom nor ourlearning, neither our compassion norour devotion to our country, it measureseverything, in short, except that whichmakes life worthwhile.”

Subsequently, in 1972, Bhutan'sformer King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck,came up with an alternative benchmarkindex that measures a country’sprosperity based on people’s happinessand wellbeing –– the idea of GrossNational Happiness (GNH).

Much has been written on thesubject since and in today’s Japan, GDPis no longer synonymous withprosperity. In the last 10 years, andtherefore long before the earthquake, ashift in values has occurred in Japanesesociety, primarily among young people,who tend to view Japan’s presenteconomic stagnation as a good sign.

I Shibuya district in Tokyo is a symbol of Japan's

consumer society.

For a number of years,

young people in Japan have

been questioning the

benefits of a society

obsessed by economic

growth. When the

earthquake and tsunami

struck the country last

March, voices were heard

calling for a radical shift in

the value system, to give

priority to social well-being

and solidarity.

An undeclared

revolutionHIROKI YANAGISAWA

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“Our economic activity has been toobig and out of control. Plus, ever since Iwas small, I have felt surrounded by anexcess of everything,” said Youki Amagai, a23-year-old university student from Chiba.“Though I admit money is necessary tokeep my day-to-day life going, it is notsomething that fulfills my internal needs.Instead of going out shopping, I wouldrather go out and chat with older peopleand share thoughts. My main interest is todiscuss what we can do to improve oursociety, especially the environment, andmobilize for action.”

Ever since the non-profit organizationlaw was enacted in 1998, Japan’s non-profit sector has flourished. Many activeand socially-oriented people have begunengaging in volunteer activities. “In termsof materialistic needs, Japan has reachedheights that would be difficult to surpass.But when we look at Japan’s socialsystem, it is incomplete anddysfunctional. Many active youngstersand non-profit sectors have beenfocusing and working on this gap,” saidIkuma Saga, the founder of Service Grant,Japan’s leading pro bono worker andnon-profit organization matching agency.

With Japan’s population decreasingcontinuously, there is a possibility that agrowing number of countries willsurpass the country’s GDP in the nearfuture. Not to worry: Japan is surelybecoming happier and stronger, thanksto its youth. ■

Hiroki Yanagisawa, 33, is a freelance

journalist and the founder of EDGY

JAPAN (edgyjapan.jp), a web media

featuring and connecting edgy

creative talents, products, and

locations from Japan. He is currently

based in Tokyo and Hong Kong.

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They’re young, connected and want to join the debate –

young people from all over the world have set up the

International Youth Climate Movement so that they, too, can

have a say at conferences on climate change. After all, it’s

their future that is being discussed.

4 0 . T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R

“I’m only a child and I don’t have all thesolutions, but I want you to realize,neither do you!”

In 1992, Severn Cullis-Suzuki was only12 years old when she gave her nowfamous speech at the United NationsEarth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. “You don’tknow how to fix the holes in our ozonelayer,” she said. “You don’t know how tobring salmon back up a dead stream. Youdon’t know how to bring back an animalnow extinct. And you can’t bring backforests that once grew where there is nowdesert. If you don’t know how to fix it,please stop breaking it!”

Nearly 20 years later, her words havenot been forgotten. Her YouTube clip, TheGirl Who Silenced the World for SixMinutes, has become a hit, and still bringsa lump to the throat.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki is Canadian butshe was speaking for all of the world’schildren and youth, especially those whoare not as fortunate to have grown up in arich country like hers. Young people makeup one third of mankind – 2 billionpeople who for the most part have no sayin politics. Yet it is their future that adultsare debating. “You are deciding what kindof world we will grow up in,” said Severn.

A mortgaged inheritance

This conflict is serious – young peoplehave realized that the older generation

is leaving them with an economic andecological debt. In 2010, the 27 MemberStates of the European Union (EU))owed some €8.7 billion. And we find ithard even to imagine what one billionrepresents. It is one thousand million, or‘1’ followed by twelve zeros. Every childon the planet is born with a deficit ofabout €17,000 in its account. This debt isthe result of a form of politicalcowardice that dumps the burden ontothose who cannot defend themselvesbecause they are too young or not yetborn.

The ecological debt that generationafter generation has been accumulatingfor nearly a century is colossal. We arenow consuming more energy and fossilresources than the planet can bear.Since the beginning of the industrialrevolution, mankind has been releasingmore and more CO2 into the air.Because of the greenhouse effect, theplanet is getting warmer – the averagetemperature of the Earth has risen by0.74 degrees Celsius since 1905. The firstdecade of the 21st century has been byfar the hottest since records began. Andthe effects of climate change are alreadybeing felt – the Arctic ice sheet isreceding, the frequency of climate-related disasters is increasing, sea levelis rising, glaciers are melting.

“We did not inherit the earth fromour ancestors, we borrowed it from ourgrandchildren,” it says on theInternational Youth Climate Movement

with a cause

JENS LUBBADEH

Demonstration against the oil and mining industry

at the September 2010 World Energy Congress in

Montreal (Canada).

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website (http://youthclimate.org/). ThisAmerican Indian proverb clearly sumsup the issue – it is the youth of todaywho will end up having to pay for ourwasteful lifestyle. “As we move towards acarbon-constrained world, it is theyouth that will fully experience thefuture consequences of today’s actionsof humanity,” says the website.

The International Youth ClimateMovement brings together youngpeople from all over the world, withbranches in countries on everycontinent. Since the 2005 climatesummit in Montreal (Canada), eachnational Member has been sendingdelegates to the world climate meetings.

“This generation understands thateveryone across the world will beaffected by climate change and so it isthe responsibility of us all to takeaction,” explains 29-year-old NevaFrecheville, who is InternationalEngagement Coordinator for the Britishcoalition. The youth of today does notwant to look on passively as adultsdecide their future. “We are starting toshow we won’t stand for it. We willcreate our own change,” adds Neva.

In 2009, the national branches of theMovement set up YOUNGO, whichrepresents all Youth NGOs and islobbying for an 85% reduction in CO2

emissions worldwide by 2050(compared to 1990 levels). YOUNGO hasbeen officially recognized as aConstituency representing the interestsof youth within the United NationsFramework Convention on ClimateChange (UNFCCC). This status is stillprovisional, but should change. “2011 isan exciting year for the YOUNGOconstituency of the UNFCCC,” explainsChristiana Figueres, Executive Secretaryof the UNFCCC, “as this is the year inwhich their status will be considered forformalization. The formalization doesnot mean a ‘start’ of engagement, sincechildren and young people have beenparticipating in UNFCCC meetings sincethe year 2000.”

At the climate conferences inCopenhagen (Denmark) and Cancún(Mexico), young people were able tospeak for the first time with a commonpolitical voice. “Like the otherconstituencies to the UNFCCC,YOUNGO’s constituency function islimited to observer status,” explainsNeva. “In essence, we can’t take part inthe negotiations but rather watch and

try to influence through lobbying andactions. Being recognized as having alegitimate stake in the proceedingsmeans that young people have moreaccess to the process, to the negotiatorsand the secretariat.” Christiana Figueresagrees: “The constituency statusprovides a conduit for the exchange ofinformation between young people andthe secretariat, and helps to orchestratethe active participation of youthrepresentatives in UNFCCC meetings.”And, adds Neva, “Young people are alsoinvited to make interventions which

give voice to young people across theworld at the highest level of theUNFCCC.”

Notably, for the past six years, theseyoung activists have regularly beenholding their own conference a fewdays before the world climate summit.

Not that apolitical

We often say that young people todayare not political. But on closerexamination, things are more complex.It is true that young people are not veryinterested in traditional politics, and

L “Silent Evolution”, underwater installation by British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, shown during the 2010 United

Nations climate change conference (COP 16) in Cancun, Mexico. Young divers swam among 400 submerged

statues to highlight the threat of rising sea levels.

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have little regard for politicians andtheir parties – only around one third ofEuropeans aged 16 to 29 trust them.However, it should be pointed out thatthis proportion is also low among olderpeople. Cécile Lecomte, a 29-year-oldFrenchwoman, campaigns for theenvironment. She lives in Lüneburg, innorthern Germany and has attractedattention for her spectacular stunts tostop trains transporting nuclear wasteby hanging above the railway lines. Forher, “a lack of political interest is not justthe preserve of young people.”

The now familiar lack of politicalcommitment by young people doesseem to be linked to this loss ofconfidence in politicians. According toEurostat*, only 4% of young Europeansare members of a political party. Andonly 16% believe that parliament is thebest place to make oneself heard.

In reality, their involvement inpolitics takes a different form: “We’rehugely political, and that’s increasing aswe become more disenfranchised anddisillusioned,” says Neva. YoungEuropeans feel that non-parliamentarypolitical engagement is even moreeffective – holding debates (30%),taking part in demonstrations (13%) orsupporting a petition or NGO (11%).Cécile agrees. She believes that therehas been an enormous increase inprotest actions by young people.

This trend may be seen worldwide,especially in countries where access totraditional politics is tightly controlled,in the absence of democracy. “As well asthe recent protests in the UnitedKingdom over tuition fees, we also havemostly youth-led movements in placeslike Egypt and Tunisia,” says Neva. “Andyouth in Europe are coming together tobypass the ‘adult’ NGOs and gettogether to influence EU policy.”

For Christiana Figueres, it is evenmore important for young people tobecome involved at national level thaninternationally. “I have constantlyencouraged youth to be activelyinvolved in the development ofnegotiating positions and climatefriendly policies at home, at thedomestic level,” she says. “That is wherethey can have the highest impact toinfluence governments to take a long

term view in full recognition that it isprecisely the next generation that willbe most affected by climate change.”

It is interesting to see that youngpeople are more willing to trust politicalinstitutions, like Parliament, than thepoliticians themselves. And supra-national institutions attract even moresupport – 70% of young people haverespect for the European Parliament andthe United Nations. On this point, youngpeople set themselves clearly apartfrom older people. They probably nolonger think in terms of nationalfrontiers and see networking andcooperation as positive factors thatinspire confidence. Neva agrees: “Youngpeople have shown that it is possible toplace national interests to one side towork together on a common good.”

The internet has certainly had aninfluence. In 2008, 70% of young peopleused the Web every day, and this figurehas increased in recent years. And thereis a real generation gap here, too –young people have much greatermastery of the possibilities of theinternet than older people. Socialnetworks, Twitter and chat rooms areused much more and represent a newstyle of relationships and contact.“Compared to ‘older’ delegates at theUNFCCC, we use new and social media

Jens Lubbadeh, 36, is a journalist for

Greenpeace Magazine, Germany. He

has been a correspondent for the

UNESCO Courier since 2009.

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*The figures on youth in Europe cited in this articleare taken from Youth in Europe, A statistical portrait,2009 edition, Eurostat, European Commission.

much more effectively,” explains Neva.“We are more creative, innovative andfun because we are not blinkered by oldcampaigning styles and habits; we arestill setting the scene when it comes toapproaches. Our communications areoften much more positive – more ‘pro’than ‘anti’ – because basically we aretrying to vision the future that we wantto live in.” ■

L A Boy Scout, under the Ticket to Life Project, helps clean Manila Bay, Philippines

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Zhan Yufeng works 12 hours a day, sevendays a week. The 24-year-old is leadingthe non-profit China Youth ClimateAction Network (CYCAN). “I’m quite busy,managing climate-focused activities,training volunteers, fundraising, andmeeting program partners,“ he says.“Sometimes I stay overnight in my office.”

Zhan earned his degree in art anddesign from the Beijing Institute ofFashion Technology last year. He had fewideas about climate change until he wasinvited to help the CYCAN prepare acampaign for United Nations Day, Oct.24, 2009.

Zhan designed the logo, posters andbrochures for this campaign thatattracted student groups from 200universities from across the country andsome 50 NGOs. It reached an estimatedpopulation of more than 5 million. “Iworked hard for a month along withmany volunteers. I got addicted to thework. It was like love at first sight,” Zhansays.

In December 2009, in

Copenhagen, Denmark,

strange doctors accosted

people on the street,

offering them check-ups

and prescriptions. Their

comportment was at odds

with the image of wise old

Chinese physicians, whose

traditional garb they wore.

No wonder: they were no

more doctors than the

people they accosted were

patients. Yet their diagnosis

of the planet’s condition

was all too accurate.

Prescriptions

More than 30,000 young peopledirectly participated in the campaign,which was supported by United NationsEnvironment Programme (UNEP) andother organizations. There were variousperformance techniques: youngstersused fans to melt mountains of snow,they painted their upper bodies blue toremind people of the rising sea levels dueto global warming, they traveled bybicycle and skates instead of driving, etc.

“My peers were devoted andenergetic. I felt their passion,perseverance, and power,” Zhan says,adding that the opportunity showed himanother side of a commercialized society,a side where young people are workinghard for a greener planet and a cleanerfuture.

Upon the completion of thiscampaign, CYCAN leaders began torecruit candidates to attend the 15thUnited Nations Climate ChangeConference COP15 in December 2009 inCopenhagen, Denmark. This would bethe first time a delegation of Chineseyouth participated in internationalclimate talks.

Chinese CYCAN got the idea whenthey noticed that only one youngChinese participated in the climatenegotiations in 2008 at Poznan, Poland.Hundreds of youth leaders from theUnited States, Europe, and countriesfrom other parts of the worldparticipated in the talks.

Zhan had hesitated: “My English wasnot good enough for an international

conference. I was afraid I could not helpthe team on such an importantoccasion.” But finally he joined thedelegation, working as photographerand program planner.

In addition to designing slogans, T-shirts, and posters and photographingevents, Zhan and his partners managedperformances such as “Diagnosis for asick globe”, for example. Dressed astraditional Chinese doctors, they gavecheck-ups to participants. Those whosigned petitions against global warminggot “prescriptions” for fighting climateproblems.

The team also talked to Chinese andinternational officers, media reportersand climate negotiators, includingChina’s Vice Minister of the StateDevelopment and Reform Commission,Xie Zhenhua, and U.S. Secretary ofCommerce Gary Locke.

Their slogan was No Other Way(NOW), calling for immediate action oncutting carbon emissions to save theworld from global warming.

Listening is not enough

COP15 showed Zhan the limits of theChinese young people’s capabilities.Language was the main challenge. Mostof Zhan’s peers understood thespeeches, but only a few were able toarticulate opinions in fluent English.Zhan was deeply impressed by theprofessionalism of foreign youngdelegates at the meeting. “They wereexperienced, fully aware of the


for a sickplanet

ZHAO YING

mechanisms and policies of theconference. They came up withilluminating proposals and we listened,”Zhan says.

Few courses specializing in climateissues are available at Chineseuniversities, nor do young people havefrequent opportunities to exchangerelative information with their foreignpeers.

In 2009, the CYCAN arrangedtraining programs before COP15 onmechanisms of the talks, climate changeissues, fundraising, public relations andevent management. This was notenough, Zhan points out. It is necessaryto arrange constant training to updateyoung people’s knowledge and skills.Soon after he returned to China, hejoined the CYCAN as a full-timeemployee.

The NGO, founded in 2007 by sevenChinese youth groups, now has justthree full-time workers, and a largeportion of its operation relies on 51volunteers in Beijing and nine coremembers living or studying abroad.

Zhan became head of theorganization after being responsible for aseries of large-scale campaigns includingthe International Youth Summit on

Energy and Climate Change held in July2010 in Shanghai, and the clean energycompetition of Great Power Race thatattracted some 1,000 universities fromChina, India and the United States.

Zhan, a native of the coastalprovince of Guangdong in southernChina, used to roam Beijing’s artgalleries, watch stage shows andmovies, or play billiards with friendsafter school. But his new work schedulewill not allow such habits.

If he had chosen to be a professionaldesigner after his graduation, hisincome could have tripled, but “I’m notin a hurry to make money,” he says. “Atmy age, the priority is to improve myoverall abilities and the CYCAN is a placewhere I keep learning things by meetingpeople from all walks of life.”

What worries him are fundraisingand training volunteers. For threemonths last year, the CYCAN workersdid not get paid due to lack of funds. “Itwas hard but we managed to survive bypresenting constructive plans tofoundations and sponsors,” Zhan says.

Additionally, some leaders left theCYCAN to start new careers or studyabroad, forcing the organization torecruit new members and train

L Zhan Yufeng demonstrating at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen (Denmark), holding up the banner of his organization..

© Courtesy of Zhan Yufeng

Zhao Ying, 34, covering Shanghai's

2010 World Expo for Xinhua News

Agency, which she joined in 1999. She

is a journalist for China Features, part

of Xinhua's network.

amateurs. “There are many youthorganizations active in China, but it’s apressing task to improve their expertiseso that their voice will get heard,” Zhansays. ■

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The newly-created route is immediatelygiven its name: ciclovía ciudadana, orcitizens’ bike lane. The cost of theinstallation, about US$1000, came out ofthe young activists’ pockets. Thoughtraced without permission, the new bikelane does not remain illegal for long. Bythe very next day, Jalisco state’stransport authority rules in favour of theinitiative. It pledges not only to improvethe bike lane and enforce respect for itbut also to recognize all such citizens’initiatives in future, as long as theyconform to the Non-motorized MobilityMaster Plan.

What Master Plan? The story beginsin 2007, in Guadalajara, second largestcity in Mexico and capital of Jalisco state.Citizens organized a protest against amunicipal decision to turn López MateosAvenue into an expressway. Paulinadrives to her classes at the university andcould have benefited, but she felt thedecision, made without consulting thelocal community, was against herinterests. It happened to be the subjectshe was studying at the time,governance and transparency in publicaction. As for Jesús, a philosophystudent and avid cyclist, he could onlybe against an urban developmentproject that favoured the use of

automobiles. Today, at age 24 and 27respectively, they have become full-fledged experts in urban planning andsustainable development. They speaklike professionals, negotiate withauthorities and give interviews to themedia. “We had to learn how to debateand present our arguments to politicaldecision-makers,” explains Jesús. All themore because their first protestconcerning López Mateos Avenue didnot have the results anticipated. But itdid make a lasting contribution to thecommunity by creating the citizens’group Ciudad Para Todos (City for all).

Dialogue had thus been ongoing forseveral years between the youngmembers of Ciudad Para Todos and theJalisco state authorities, with the formerdoing their best to persuade the latter ofthe importance of establishing anetwork of bike lanes in the urban areaof Guadalajara, which comprises eightmunicipalities including Zapopan. Thedialogue produced a Non-motorizedMobility Master Plan, a document ofnearly a thousand pages written by afirm of consultants with theparticipation of civil society. But just asthe battle seemed to be won, a newgovernment came to power, one lesssensitive to the issue. Patiently, the

RUTH PÉREZ LÓPEZ

Photographer Gerardo Montes de Oca Valadez, 33,is a Mexican psychologist and artist and a memberof Ciudad Para Todos. See also: http://gmove.wordpress.com/

Early one fine morning at

the beginning of 2011, a

group of 30 young people

invade the Avenue Santa

Margarita in Zapopan, a

town in Mexico’s Jalisco

state. They attach a line-

marking device to a tricycle

cart and off they go! By

noon, a five-kilometre

stretch of the avenue is

bordered by a white stripe,

bicycle pictographs are

painted on the tarmac and

road signs are attached to

poles.

Life in the © G

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young people started again from zero.They approached the new governmentwith requests to allocate funds toimplement the Plan. To no avail. So theydecided to take matters into their ownhands and trace their own bike lane. “Wehad no legal means to force them to putthe Plan into action,” recalls Jesús. “So wedecided we had to take charge.” Havingreceived a thumbs-up from authorities,they created another bike lane inZapopan last March, using the samemethod.

Conviviality and safety combined

But the battle waged by the youngmembers of Ciudad Para Todos does notend there. In the last few years, theyhave started numerous projects aimedat reclaiming public space in differentcity districts. Opposed to theconstruction of an expressway onInglaterra Avenue, they launched, withcommunity support, the project “Linearpark” to make the central strip thatdivides the avenue’s two lanes intosomething beautiful. They transformed itinto a park and meet there everySaturday to participate in all kinds ofactivities, planting trees, designingflower beds and putting on shows forchildren. “Nomadic park” is another

project, which consists of occupyingspace that is normally reserved for carsby taking over one or two traffic lanesand setting up games, playing music,organizing races or football matches.The object is not to block car traffic butto slow it down and make up for the lackof recreational space in the city. At night,they organize open-air screenings offilms and documentaries.

In other words, these young peopledo not simply protest. Brimming withenthusiasm, they propose alternativeforms of urban development in adynamic and playful way. According toGerardo, a Ciudad Para Todos activistwho took the photos for this article,public space must be laid out so itencourages people to interact. It should“be an invitation to conviviality, reinforcecommunity ties and preserve theidentity of neighbourhoods”. As Gerardoalso underlines, the group’s attempts totransform the city and modes of socialinteraction in public space help reduceurban crime. On top of that, theycontribute to good citizenship and thedevelopment of participative decision-making. The young people’s actions thusnot only have an impact on public spaceand residents’ lifestyles, they alsoinfluence the city’s politics. ■

Ruth Pérez López, 34, is a Spanish

socio-anthropologist and member of

Bicitekas A.C., a group that champions

bicycles and sustainable transportation

in Mexico. She is the author of several

books and articles on poverty, youth,

public space and social change.

http://bicitekas.org/

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bike lane

Scene from the “Nomadic park” project

© Gerardo Montes

de Oca Valadez, Guadalajara

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To

keep your balance you must keep

moving.”

Attributed to Albert Einstein


We often wonder what takes our lives inone direction or another. In my case, itwas a serious illness as a child that keptme bedridden for several months,hovering between life and death.During this long period of solitude, myreading and meditation turned intoarduous lessons that strengthened myspirit and my personality.

After several years of struggle, I gotwell again. I felt that I had to use thesecond chance I had been given anddevote my life and work to achievingchange and progress for the poorest ofthe poor.

The vocation I had chosen as a child– architecture – is usually seen as beingfar removed from the disadvantagedmembers of society. It is most often

linked in peoples’ minds to the prestigeand fame of a few architects and theirspectacular, extravagant buildings. Iwanted to change this old-fashionedand obsolete image of the impactarchitects can have on society. That iswhy I wanted to devote myself entirelyto the development of projects andresearch in sustainable architecture,new technologies, climate change andthe response of architecture tomitigating natural disaster risks.

After years of hard work, I graduatedat the top of my class from San Agustínd’Arequipa national university, in myhome town in Peru. This was my first legup the ladder. Then, a few months later, Ihad the opportunity to participate in aninternational competition onenvironmental initiatives. With thesupport of my mentors, I prepared aproject to rehabilitate the Arequipa riverbasin, with the aim of preservingfarming there, while encouraging

participatory tourism in the agriculturalareas.

My project won an award and I wasgiven a trip to Germany to attend anenvironment conference for youngadults, organized by Bayer. I was one ofabout 100 young environmentalists,

What can be used to store

water, for overwintering, as

a shelter, an igloo, a water

mill, canoe or a raft? Hard to

find an answer? Yet the

object exists. It is made out

of recycled plastic bottles

and steel cables and is

called an ‘ecocylinder’. Its

inventor, the 26-year-old

architect Carlos Bartesaghi

Koc, explains why he

created this object and

many others.

This article was written in collaboration with Tunza,the youth magazine produced by the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP). See: http://tunza.mobi/

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K Panoramic view of “Systemic Agrotourism”

project with “self-built shelters”, 2009

© Carlos Bartesaghi Koc

Green

architecture


CARLOS BARTESAGHI KOC

farming with participatory tourism. Inthe former case, local inhabitantsprovide free accommodation for touristswho, in exchange, help out and learnancestral farming methods. The projectalso calls for “self-built shelters”, whichare buildings made by farmers usingrecycled materials and refuse producedin urban areas. The second project is anurban design for new tourist circuitsinside the famous sillar (volcanic rock)quarries in Arequipa. Once they are setup, these circuits will create new jobs,while protecting and improving healthand safety conditions for quarryworkers, who risk illegal expropriation.

At the moment I am working on aproject for an urban waste treatmentplant for Arequipa (for my qualifyingthesis), which will include a proposal fora controlled landfill site and its eventuallandscaping into a park. The projectincludes a plant for sorting inorganicwaste and a compost production unit.The workers who are there nowinformally will get official contractsalong with better health, hygiene andsafety conditions. They will be offeredtraining opportunities, childcare andleisure facilities on the same site.Children and young people will be ableto visit a waste dump museum and useeducational materials inside the factory.

In the near future, I hope tocontinue teaching and to develop low-cost, environment-friendly architecture.I would like to help bring more justice tothe world and make it a place more fitfor humans and nature. ■

Carlos Bartesaghi Koc’s websites:

http://www.wix.com/carlosbartesaghikoc/cbk)

http://issuu.com/carlosbartesaghikoc/docs/archit

ecture_portfolio_2005-2011

gathered together to discuss scientificand cultural means to combat climatechange effectively.

It was thanks to this trip that I alsostarted to write for Tunza, the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP)youth magazine. And that is how I wasable to exchange opinions andexperiences with many other youngpeople around the world, which turnedout to be a fantastic source of inspirationand motivation.

I went on to organize exhibitions,events and campaigns; I gave lecturesand was taken on as an assistant at theuniversity. Working with a local NGO, Iwas able to design some larger-scalesocial and environmental projects. Theseled to me to travel throughout thePeruvian sierra, where I saw the povertyand social disintegration that areincreasing daily in our country.

Innovative technologies

This experience confirmed my long-standing conviction: in emergingcountries like mine, we must use verylow-cost technologies that can beadapted to different social, cultural andeconomic contexts. This is how the ideafor the ‘ecocylinder’ came about, forexample – a multifunction shelter madeout of recycled plastic bottles and steelcables, fitted together into sheets andstuck on top of one another. Thiscylinder can be used and adapted in athousand different ways, according tolocal needs and weather conditions. Itcan be used to store water, foroverwintering, as a shelter, an igloo,water mill, canoe or raft.

Other projects, like SystemicAgrotourism and Quarry Ecotourism, arepart of the same original idea of linking

LK The ecocylinder invented by Carlos can be used

and adapted in multiple ways according to location,

need and climate conditions.

L Peruvian architect Carlos Bartesaghi Koc making

presentation as a “Young environmental envoy” for

Bayer in 2007 in Leverkusen (Copyright Bayer AG)

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KHALED YOUSSEF was interviewed by Khaled Abu Hijleh

Revolutionone of the great feats ofcivilizationHe does not deny the accusation that his films helped to incite the January 2011 Egyptian

revolution, but he does not claim any of the credit. For Khaled Youssef, co-director, with

Youssef Chahine, of “Chaos” (2007), the “Arab Spring” extends across generations and

borders. In this interview he offers his vision of the events and their consequences for the

arts, society and international politics.

Khaled Youssef at

UNESCO for the

screening of his

film "Chaos", 13

April 2011.

© UNESCO/Michel

Ravassard

OU

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ST Every generation

played a role in

this revolution,

even those that

are no longer

with us.

You are one of the eminent people who

supported the demands made by

protestors during the 25 January

revolution in Egypt, in which you also

participated. What were your

motivations?

I think my involvement was a foregoneconclusion. I took part in the greatmajority of demonstrations against theregime since the 1980s, as president ofthe students’ union. Then in the 1990s, weopposed government decisions,especially on the Gulf War, but alsodomestic policies that perpetuatedoppression and social injustices.

So, when young people usedFacebook to call for demonstrations (inthe first place against the repressivepractices of the police), it was quitenatural for me to be involved, from dayone.

When we arrived in Tahrir Square todemonstrate on 25 January 2011 therewere about 20,000 - 25,000 of us. Thenumber of demonstrators kept increasingall the time, reaching about 80,000 by themiddle of the night. That was when theauthorities ordered the use of force todisperse the demonstrators. I saw adetermination in the eyes of the youngergeneration that I didn’t find in my

generation. These young peoplestood up against the

police with a

tenacity I’ve never seen before indemonstrations. I thought then it was asign there could be a revolution. And Iwas sure of this by Friday 28 January,when we took to the streets, divided intothree groups. One went to the MoustafaMahmoud mosque, in the Mohandessinquarter, another to the al-Istiqamamosque, in Giza, and the third to the al-Nour mosque, in the Abbassiya quarter,all of them near Tahrir Square, in the citycentre. I was in the Moustafa Mahmoudmosque group. As I couldn’t see the sizeof the procession behind us, I climbedonto the back of a pick-up truck. Thecrowd stretched out before my eyes wasso big I couldn’t see where it ended.That’s when I said, it’s a revolution.

Do you think the films you made with

the great Egyptian director Youssef

Chahine, like “Chaos” in 2007, helped

raise political awareness among

Egyptian youth?

I can’t claim any of the credit for startingthis revolution. That is both an accusation– which I don’t deny – and an honour I donot deserve. But it is true that somepeople think our films, some of themmade in the 1980s, played an importantrole in shaping the consciousness of theyounger generations who spearheadedthe revolution.

The youth of a country is not a“spontaneous generation”. This kind of

realization by young people is the resultof influences coming from all

forms of human

expression, from poetry to politics, music,theatre and cinema. It would be quiteright then to say every generation hasplayed a role in this revolution, eventhose that are no longer with us. So, forme, the director Atef al Tayeb [1947-1995]played a part, as did Youssef Chahine[1926-2008] and all those who believed inthe will of the people and sided with theordinary people.

Do you think the 25 January revolution

will influence your next films, in the

sense that it marks the beginning of a

new era?

There is absolutely no doubt thisrevolution will change not only thenature of films, but also all other art formsand literature. I think the socialrenaissance we are hoping for will beaccompanied by a cultural renaissance.There will be new ideas as well as newways of representing them, reflecting thedialectic interaction between politicalclimate and artistic production.

If we go back to the revolution of 23July 1952 [which led to the declaration ofthe Republic of Egypt], it also marked aturning point in cinema history. It eveninfluenced love stories. Public and privateworlds intermingled. It makes me think ofthe great Syrian poet NizarQabbani [1923-1998] who, in his poetry,wondered if two lovers could meet on thebanks of the Nile or the Euphrateswithout seeing planes overhead on theirway to kill Palestinians, Iraqis or Lebanese.

But having said this, I think we aregoing to witness a great renaissance inthe arts and literature, perhaps not

K Scene from the Egyptian

revolution, January

2011.

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immediately, because human expressiontakes a while to mature.

We are heading for some majorchanges, and anyone who is not able tokeep pace with the new Egypt currentlybeing created will find themselves aloneand isolated.

Cinema is, in the first instance, avision. But a vision with no image of thefuture remains sterile. So cinema has to befirmly rooted in reality in order to reflect itfaithfully, while also being visionary.

It is too early to draw any firm

conclusions about the 25 January

revolution, but do you feel the outcomes

are satisfactory for the time being?

I am absolutely satisfied with what thisrevolution has achieved, and veryoptimistic about the future. Revolution isa science of change. First of all it has ledto a change in the political system. Therewas the symbolic fall of the ruling regime,which we are in the process of replacingwith a new one based on the principles ofliberty, equality, democracy and socialjustice – all key demands of therevolution. I think these principles, heldaloft by the protestors, will be the basisfor changes in the very model of Egyptiansociety. After the revolution of 23 July1952, the middle classes, that made up5% of society, increased to 90 %. At thetime, this represented a radical changefor Egyptian society. So I believe therecent revolution will, soon and in thesame way, transform the establishedsocial order, as well as the nature and verystructure of society. It is not possible togo against the will of the Egyptians whocarried out this revolution.

I have always thought that the will ofthe people carries the will of God withinit, which no one can defeat. Egyptianstook matters into their own handsthrough this initiative and I am talkingabout this great revolution thatconstitutes one of the greatachievements of civilization. It seems tome very unlikely that the coming

Because of Youssef Chahine, I started making films

“After the will of God, Youssef Chahine is the reason I became a film-maker. Notonly because he trained me in film-making and gave me the opportunity toexercise my vocation, but really because, without him, I would never have workedin this field. I met Youssef Chahine when I was studying to be an engineer. I neverimagined that one day I would make films. Youssef Chahine discovered in me atalent that I was not even aware of and constantly denied. After three years heended up by telling me that there is no harm in trying. It was only then that Irealised he was right. That is why I feel I owe all of my success to him.

The first ten years, when I worked with Youssef Chahine as co-screenwriteron his films and as assistant director, represented the most important stage ofmy career. That is when I learned the trade. My first full-length feature “TheStorm”, which was made in 2000, opened the way to the second stage, whichwas the real beginning of my life as a film-maker. Since then and up to 2011, Ihave made 11 films, one a year on average. Some of these films are importantsteps in themselves, like “Chaos”, Hina Maysara (Until Things Get Better) andDokkan Shehata (Shehata’s Shop). These films have attracted the most interestwithin Egyptian society and won greater recognition either in terms of thereviews or in festivals. The critics, in fact, agree that these films have helped tochange Egyptian public opinion on questions of politics, society and art.” Khaled Youssef

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citizen participation, for democracy andfreedom of speech, as well as anequitable sharing of national wealth.

As for a multi-polar world, this hasbeen demonstrated throughout history.When one single nation exercises itspower and directs the world, it can onlybe a transition phase between twostages in the progress of mankind. It isobvious that the USA will retain its roleas a super-power, but it will be alongsideothers, like Russia, Japan, China, Europe,led by Germany or France, and the Arabworld, led by Egypt. In this way, the Arabworld will enter into the alliance ofnations as a sixth force, putting its owncards on the table alongside otherleaders, when the interests of the majorpowers are at stake. ■

L French version of the poster for Youssef Chahine's

film "Chaos".

5 2 . T H E U N E S C O C O U R I E R

The youth of a country is not a

“spontaneous generation”. This

kind of realization by young

people is the result of influences

coming from all forms of human

expression, from poetry to politics,

music, theatre and cinema.

changes will be superficial, or that thenew government will be built on arepressive form of state control like theprevious regime.

You have said that we are moving

towards a more multi-polar world in

which the Arab world, led by Egypt, will

have a prominent place. Can we expect

a global transformation in the Arab

world that confirms this vision of

things?

[Laughs] It doesn’t surprise me thewhole world is talking about the “Spring”of Arab revolutions. Everyone hasnoticed it, so it is not an illusion. It waspossible to see the current wave ofrevolutionary dynamism coming. Andwhen a regional power like Egypt goesthrough a revolution, we can be surethat it is real. This is not a form ofpatriotic chauvinism, but historical andgeographical fact. A change in Egypt hasconsequences for the entire Arab world.Just as, over the past forty years, whenEgypt turned in on itself and refused toplay its true role, the whole Arab worldwas weakened and Egypt’s importancewas undermined, too. But when Egypttakes up its true place as a leader, theArab world will experience a secondrenaissance, you can be sure about that.

The revolutions in other Arabcountries will not necessarily take thesame form as ours. Each Arab society hasits own ways of working, but each will, ofnecessity, evolve and the differentregimes will no doubt make room for

New global partnership forgirls’ and women’s educationUnited States Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton and UnitedNations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were the special guests ofUNESCO Director-General IrinaBokova on 26 May 2011 at the launchof the Global Partnership for Girls’ andWomen’s Education. The newpartnership will focus mainly onsecondary education and adultliteracy, especially in Africa and Asia.

Two Prime Ministers, Cissé MariamKaïdama Sidibé of Mali and SheikhHasina of Bangladesh, participated inthe High-Level Forum held the sameday at UNESCO. Also present were the

The future of books“The Book Tomorrow, the Future of theWritten Word” was the theme of thesecond UNESCO World Forum onCulture and Cultural Industries (FOCUS2011), which was held from 6 to 8June at the Villa Reale in Monza (Italy).

Issues surrounding the rise ofE-books were discussed at the event,organized by UNESCO and bringingtogether some 200 authors,publishers, scientists, mediaprofessionals, librarians, sociologists,bloggers, researchers and decision-makers from about 40 countries.

“Today, the book is facing themost profound changes in itshistory,” said the Director-General ofUNESCO, Irina Bokova, at theopening. “No single company orlibrary can pretend to have the keysto the future. This World Forumperfectly embodies the spirit ofopenness we must maintain.”

Some 800 students were able tofollow the Forum proceedings,which were streamed to secondaryschools in the area. ■

Aga Khan, founder and chairman ofthe Aga Khan Development NetworkFoundation, and representatives ofseveral corporate giants participatingin the partnership including Nokia,Procter & Gamble, GEMS Education,Microsoft, Apple and the PackardFoundation.

Globally, some 39 million girls oflower secondary age are currently notenrolled in either primary orsecondary education, while two thirdsof the world’s 796 million illiterateadults are women. Only about onethird of countries have achievedgender parity at secondary level. ■

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ForestWhitaker,UNESCOGoodwillAmbassadorIn recognition of his artistic andhumanitarian commitment, Americanactor Forest Whitaker was named aUNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peaceand Reconciliation on 21 June 2011 atOrganization headquarters.

Born in 1951 in Texas (United States),Mr. Whitaker has played a variety ofmemorable film roles includingUgandan despot Idi Amin in KevinMacdonald’s “Last King of Scotland”, forwhich he received an Academy Award in2006. He is currently directing the a filmentitled “Better Angels” – the title istaken from Abraham Lincoln’s inauguralspeech – about child soldiers in Uganda.

Forest Whitaker is also known for hishumanitarian projects, which haveearned him the Humanitas Prize, anaward for film and television writing thatpromotes human dignity and freedom,and the Hope of Los Angeles Award.

As a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadorfor Peace and Reconciliation, ForestWhitaker will lend his support primarilyto youth programmes, particularly thoseconcerned with peace education andhuman rights. He will participate in the 7thYouth Forum at UNESCO next October. ■

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ERRATUM: In the printed version of the English-language April-June UNESCO Courier, in the photo caption on page 11,President of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is incorrectly identified as “Prime Minister”.

MAB’s 40th anniversaryTo celebrate its creation 40 years ago,UNESCO’s Man and the BiosphereProgramme (MAB) organized aninternational conference, “For life, forthe future. Biosphere Reserves andclimate change” on 27 and 28 June inDresden, Germany.

The conference assessed thepioneering achievements of theprogramme, which seeks to promote aharmonious balance betweenenvironmental preservation and humanactivity. Topics on the agenda includedBiosphere Reserves as implementinginstruments for climate change policy.

Biosphere Reserves seek toreconcile biodiversity conservationand socio-economic development.Local communities are active inmanagement, research, education andtraining projects in the BiosphereReserves, making them sites ofexcellence for experimentation insustainable development.

With 18 new sites added in 2011,the Network now numbers 580 sites in114 countries. For the first time,Biosphere Reserves were inscribed inLithuania, Maldives, Saint Kitts andNevis, and Togo. ■

Memory of the World:spotlight on AustraliaWhile stone, paper and parchmentare the guardians of the memory ofour past, films, multimedia and theinternet are the guardians of thepresent for future generations.Inspired by this idea, UNESCOlaunched the Memory of the Worldprogramme in 1992 to safeguardhumanity’s documentary heritage.

Every two years, new documentsenrich the Memory of the Worldcollection, and a person or institutionis awarded the UNESCO/Jikji Memoryof the World Prize in recognition fortheir contribution to preservingdocumentary heritage and making itaccessible.

In 2011, 45 new documents andcollections from all over the world

were added to the Memory of theWorld Register, which now numbers238 items. The US$ 30,000 Prize,wholly funded by the Republic ofKorea, was awarded this year to theNational Archives of Australia (NAA).The award ceremony will be held inSeptember.

Established in 1960, the NationalArchives shares its professionalknow-how with experts andinterested members of the publicand makes available open sourcetools for digital preservation. TheNAA has also demonstratedinnovation on the preservation ofdocuments written in iron gall ink (acorrosive ink containing iron salts, inuse in Europe for many centuries). ■

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Social mediaaccording toShashiTharoor The first Indian politician to useTwitter in a professional context gavea lecture at UNESCO on 7 June 2011.Shashi Tharoor is a Member ofParliament in India and a formerUnder-Secretary-General of the UN,as well as the author of numerousbooks in English and a columnist forIndia's three best-known Englishlanguage newspapers. To hisUNESCO audience, he underlined theincreasing significance of socialmedia in democratization (includingthe Arab Spring uprisings), disastermanagement (as in Haiti or Japan)and public diplomacy.

Dr Tharoor used the example ofUS President Barack Obama’s visit toGhana shortly after his election. Afterthe White House announced his trip,President Obama received over250,000 questions from Africansacross the continent via Facebookand Twitter.

“Social media is here to stay,” hesaid. “We have to live with it. So let’smake the most of it.”

Dr Tharoor is certainly making themost of it. His use of his politicalwebsite (www.tharoor.in) and newmedia like Twitter made him famousin India. He went on to become thefirst Indian celebrity to get 100,000followers on Twitter. ■

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the worldDiscovering

In just a few pages you can find all you need to know on various subjects related to

UNESCO and its programmes, including: world heritage sites, oceans, biosphere

reserves, the climate, the Earth, the slave trade, crafts and “About UNESCO”. The

Discovering the World Series is a collection in Arabic, English, French, Spanish and

Russian that makes subjects accessible to young readers (from age 10 on).

To order volumes from the collection:

www.unesco.org/publishing

World Heritage In June 2011, 25 new sites were inscribed on theUNESCO World Heritage List.

A selection:Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps(Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy,Slovenia)Hiraizumi – Temples, Gardens andArchaeological Sites Representing the BuddhistPure Land (Japan)The Persian Garden (Iran)Lake System in the Great Rift Valley (Kenya)Ningaloo Coast (Australia)

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Ningaloo Reef, Australia

Pink flamingos on Lake

Nakuru, Kenya

Môtsû-ji, garden

representing the Pure

Land (Buddhist paradise),

Japan

Vestiges of prehistoric stilt

houses in Lake Ledro, Italy

The Persian

garden Bagh e

Shahzadeh, Iran

unesco courier august

Documents