● MINORITIESGYPSIES:A QUESTFOR RECOGNITION

● PORTRAITTHE POWER OFMOTHER-TONGUELEARNING

● YOUTHYOUNG PEOPLEOF THE WORLDUNITE

● PEACE THEATRETHERAPY IN SIERRA LEONE

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PUBLIC TV:AT YOURSERVICE

CONTENTS

COMMUNICATION

Public TV: at your servicePublic television is in danger of beingswamped by the vast numbers of commercialstations now available. Yet it is the only TVthat provides a real public space - betweenthe market and the state - in the audiovisuallandscape.........................................................4

MINORITIES

Gypsies: ever onwardGypsy communities in Europe are mobilisingto find their place in society and put an end tocenturies of discrimination and exclusion......................................................10

IN BRIEFNews from UNESCO's different sectors andregions along with new publications andaudiovisual materials......................................................16

PORTRAIT

A class actSchool teacher Ani Rauhihi is helping torevive the Maori language and boost theperformance of her young pupils......................................................20

YOUTH

We the young people of the 21st century348 teenagers from 178 countries gatheredrecently in Paris for the first World Parliamentof Children......................................................21

PEACE

Healing the wounds of warTheatre is being used as therapy to helpSierra Leone’s traumatized population rebuildtheir lives and their society......................................................22

CULTURAL HERITAGE

The return of the elephant bird eggsA haul of stolen eggs from Madagascar hasFrench officials in a quandrary

Television can be a powerful ally todemocracy

They want a better deal

Handle withcare

is a monthly magazine published bythe United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization. English and French editions areproduced at Paris headquarters; theSpanish edition in cooperation withthe UNESCO Centre of Catalonia,Mallorca 285,08037 Barcelona,Spain; the Chinese edition incooperation with the XinhuaNewsagency, 57 XuanwumenXidajie, Beijing, China; and thePortuguese edition in cooperationwith the National Commission forUNESCO, Avenida Infante Santo N° 42 - 5°, 1300 Lisbon Portugal.

Director of Publication : René Lefort. Editor-in-chief :Sue Williams.Assistant Managing Editor :Monique Perrot-Lanaud Associate Editors : Nadia Khouri-Dagher, Cristina L'Homme, Ann-Louise Martin.Spanish edition : Lluis. Garcia (Barcelona), Liliana Sampedro (Paris). Lay-out, illustrations, infography: Fiona Ryan-Jacqueron, Gisèle Traiano.Printing:Maulde & RenouDistributionUNESCO's specialized services

Visit us at: http://www.unesco.org/sources

TO SUBSCRIBE : Free subscription can be obtained forprofessionals, associations, NGOs IGOs andother organizations working in UNESCO'sfields of competence by writing to UNESCO Sources: Subscriptions31 rue François Bonvin75732 Paris cedex 15. Tel. (33 01) 45 68 45.37.Fax : (+33 01) 45 68 56 54.

UNESCO

UNESCO

This magazine is destined for use as an informationsource and is not an official UNESCO document. ISSN1014-6989.All articles are free of copyright restrictions and can bereproduced, in which case the editors would appreciate a copy.Photos carrying no copyright mark © may be obtained by themedia on demand.

Cover photo: © PIX/Phil Hunt

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Emerging from the horror of war

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● MINORITIESGYPSIES:A QUESTFOR RECOGNITION

● PORTRAITTHE POWER OFMOTHER-TONGUELEARNING

● YOUTHYOUNG PEOPLEOF THE WORLDUNITE

● PEACE THEATRETHERAPY IN SIERRA LEONE

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PUBLIC TV:AT YOURSERVICE

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EDITORIAL

precious. Humanity may all the betteravail itself of such a tool if all theworld’s states - and peoples - agree tomake proper use of it.UNESCO is a challenging paradox. Itcannot lapse into a mere club for intel-lectuals, but must serve as a forumfor international intellectual exchange.It cannot pretend to be a research ins-titution, but must keep abreast of andstimulate research. Nor is it an ope-rational agency, yet it must see that glo-

bal ethics for peace, jus-tice and solidarity,through internationalcooperation in education,science, culture and com-munication, are bothmorally observed and tan-gibly applied. FinallyUNESCO is not a fundingagency, although it mustprovide catalytic funds togenerate further funding:in order to demonstrate

that ideas only take shape throughaction.UNESCO must thus remain true toitself (…) while yet addressing eachday’s new issues, and undergoing eachage’s challenges. I should like to referto the 17th century Japanese poet,Bashô, who dwelt on such a livingcontrast between Fueki, the funda-mental unchanging permanence ofthings, and Ryuko, the trends andchanges of the era. In other words,things which must change, do change;and things which must not change,will not change. So withUNESCO, whose greattask continues.

Koichiro Matsuura

The dominant notetoday, as the 20th cen-tury ends, is one ofnecessary and vigilant

caution. We glimpse how much tech-nology can deliver, but are keenlyaware of how much our guiding moralsense must remain alert. We here atUNESCO, after sighing with relief at theend of the Cold War, with its rigidlyimposed grid, know that we are expe-riencing another striking turn in history,curiously parallel to thatfaced by our founders atthe close of the SecondWorld War. For we seeinternational affairsbecoming more fluidagain, with fresh choicesonce more open before us- but also uncertainty andrisk. The world in 1946 was farfrom perfect. But whatUNESCO offered then,and still does today, was a “factor ofhope”, in Dr Julien Huxley’s words.UNESCO’s first Director-General sawin the Organisation’s creation a “miles-tone in the unification of the spirit ofman.” UNESCO is such a factor ofhope, because it is the one internatio-nal organisation which, through all itsprogrammes, respects and defendswhat is of universal worth and dignityin the material and spiritual heritage ofall cultures: and thereby the absolutedignity of all human beings themselves. But UNESCO can only go on provi-ding the world with such hope, andsuch defence, if it proves itself an ade-quate world instrument. UNESCO is noend in itself. (It) is a world service, ora tool, delicate, highly complex, and

EDITORIAL

A FACTOR OF HOPE

“UNESCO can

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3No. 118 - December 1999

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• Extracts from thespeech by KoichiroMatsuura, on November15 upon his nominationby the General-Conference as UNESCO’sDirector-General

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It is estimated that people spend an ave-rage of three hours per day watchingtelevision in Europe and the UnitedStates. In the former Soviet bloc, timespent in front of the TV has increased ten-

fold since the sixties, while in Egypt, India andBrazil, even poor people, at least in the cities,today own television sets. “Television,” saysYouri Khiltcheuski, of the InternationalAssociation for Culture and Development(Moscow), “constitutes the major part of peo-ple’s leisure time in several parts of the world.”For many, it provides the only access to cul-ture and entertainment.

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The multitude of private television stations now on offer to viewers everywhereis simply overwhelming. But a vast choice does not guarantee quality tv or accessto well-balanced, independent information. Only public television has this res-ponsibility to its viewers, and for this alone it must be defended

The advent of satellite, cable, and nowdigital technologies, the collapse of totalita-rian regimes and the rise of neo-liberalism inthe 80s, generated an explosion in the num-ber of TV channels. “The satellite changedeverything,” says Michel Fansten of France’saudiovisual authority, the Conseil Supérieurde l’Audiovisuel. “Hertzian television wasnational. The satellite transcends borders.But the decrease in production costs was alsoa factor – you don’t need to be a professionalto operate a video camera.” Western Europe,which had 40 mostly public channels in 1980,today has thousands, privately owned for themost part. “It’s impossible to guess how manytelevision channels exist today, except perhapsfor the satellite operators; a new one comesup each day,” adds Markus Boom, of theEuropean Audiovisual Observatory.

What about qualityHowever, programme quality, and edu-

cational content in particular, has sufferedas a result of this explosion in the televisionindustry says Pierre Juneau, President of theWorld Council for Radio and Television(Quebec): “an industry driven strictly bycommercial motives excludes programmeswith lower audience ratings and favoursentertainment programmes which attract alarge public.” Entertainment, notes CharlesOkigbo of the African Council forCommunication Education, means “broad-casting music on radio and serials on tele-vision.” “Radio and television is being trans-formed into a commodity,” adds AnuraGoonesekera of the Asian MassCommunication Research and InformationCentre (Singapore). According to a study inthe former Soviet Union, entertainment pro-grammes now represent two thirds of broad-cast time. Apart from socio-political andnews programmes, culture and educationrepresent only 10% of broadcast time, oftenearly in the morning or late at night.Moreover, commercial channels generallygive minimum coverage of international

December 1999 - No. 118

An estimated 201 millionpeople are now hooked upto the internet. But thereare more than 1.3 billiontelevision sets in homesaround the world

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news.UNESCO, which firmly believes in the

cultural and educational role of television, iscommitted to promoting the public serviceaspect of TV. It considers editorial indepen-dence vis à vis political and economic autho-rities to be a precondition for democracy.“There is a difference between state televi-sion, public service television and commer-cial and private television,” explains GaétanLapointe, general secretary of INPUT(International Public Television), associatedwith UNESCO in the defence of public tele-vision (see page 8). “Many countries that onlyknew state television controlled by totalita-rian regimes now reject that model in favourof the commercial one – they fail to distin-guish between state and public television.”Public television, according to Marc Raboyof the University of Montreal, “is not drivensolely by profit. It is a public service, fundedby the state and responsible to its audience.”

AlienationThe proliferation of television channels

in countries emerging from authoritarianrule has been sometimes welcomed as pro-gress. But in Africa for example, accordingto Charles Okigbo, new private operators“are hardly different from governmentauthorities in terms of their political or cul-tural orientations.” Moreover, “ pluralism hasallowed even more foreign televisions togain access to African audiences.” In someAfrican countries, imported programmes –American or Latin American serials andforeign films – represent 50 to 70% of pro-gramming.

Europe is not exempt from this culturalimperialism. In France in 1983 the percentageof American programmes for the three exis-ting public channels was 3.8% of 13,000 hoursper year. In 1998, that figure jumped to 28%of 320,000 hours per year for 54 French chan-nels, says Michel Fansten. “Generally spea-king, when the supply of programmesincreases, the percentage of American pro-ducts also rises, since they are the leastexpensive,” he adds.

In southern countries, observes AnuraGoonesekera, “the dominance of westernprogrammes tends to alienate the publicfrom the traditional cultural values.”

Public radio and television has managedto stand up to the competition from com-mercial channels - in Scandinavia, Germany,Great Britain and France for example –though here too there is a drift towards “info-tainment”, a massive increase in commer-cials and the marginalisation of cultural pro-grammes. In Italy and Spain, says GaétanLapointe, “national television has become acarbon copy of private channels.” “How canpublicly funded channels justify their budgetsif their programming mimics that of privatestations,” asks Carlos Arnaldo of UNESCO’s

communication division.The solution according to Alfred Smudits

of MEDIACULT, a Vienna-based mediaresearch institute, is to more ardently defendpublic broadcasting, which is increasinglybeing called upon to “provide what com-mercial channels do not, that is, programmeswhich would not otherwise be either produ-ced or broadcast but which are essential tosafeguard democracy.” And then, innovativeways need to be found to fund public TV, forexample some of the profits from privatechannels could be allocated to public ser-vice broadcasting. This was the genesis ofBritain’s Channel 4, a cultural channel ini-tially financed by the private ITV, which todayis a “public service” television station withindependent funds generated by advertising.It may also be necessary to review interna-tional trade agreements to ensure that tele-vision production and programme distributionare not dictated by market forces alone.

One tends to forget sometimes that apartfrom bringing knowledge and laughter orallowing people to dream, television ini-tially helped create a sense of community.The notion of being Arab was strengthe-ned through the concerts of Oum Kalthoumand Egyptian serials watched fromCasablanca to Sanaa. France in the 60swas glued to the serials “Belle et Sébastien”and “Fantomas”.

As for the former Soviet bloc, notes YouriKhiltchevsky, “people are so depressed andtired, that they are content to watch the mostprimitive shows on television. The worsethe socio-economic and political situation,the more apparent the compensatory roleplayed by the media.” An observation thatholds good elsewhere too – to sit in front ofthe television and watch “Dallas”, dubbed inArabic or Bengali, is perhaps the only solu-tion for millions of people exhausted after aday’s work or depressed after another daysearching for a job.

Nadia Khouri-Dagher

Television receivers: totaland number per 1,000inhabitants(Source: UNESCOStatistical Yearbook, 1999)

1970 1980 1990 19970

100

200

300

400

500Sub-Saharan Africae

Arab States

Latin America and Caribbean

Asia and Oceania

Least Developed Countries

Developed Countries

Number of television receivers

year1.5

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6 December 1999 - No. 118

As the Indonesian capital Jakarta burnedbetween May 14 and May 20, 1998, jour-

nalists discovered a freedom they had neverexperienced in the half century since inde-pendence. They were able to report eventsas they happened. The week of anarchy ledto the resignation of President Suharto after32 years in power. It marked the end of a per-iod during which Suharto and his family haddominated government, business and publicaffairs. Hitherto, journalists who broke therules were likely to be jailed, or sacked fromtheir jobs. Newspapers and magazines car-rying dissenting voices were closed down.The government owned networks, TelevisiRepublik Indonesia (TVRI) and RadioRepublik Indonesia (RRI) operated asMinistry of Information mouthpieces. Onlyinformation which benefited the governmentand positively portrayed those in power andtheir close associates was broadcast.

TVRI produced a daily one hour newsbulletin, rebroadcast by the private televisionstations in the capital Jakarta. RRI producedradio news for broadcast throughout thethousands of islands that make up Indonesia’sarchipelago. While the overall adult literacyrate is relatively high (83.2%), the rate islower in outlying regions, hence the impor-tance of radio and television for relayinginformation. About 40% of Indonesian hou-seholds are equipped with television sets,but, says Professor Stephen Hill, director ofUNESCO’s Jakarta office, “TVRI’s ratings areextremely low and the station suffers froman inherited lack of credibility. State televi-sion is heading toward irrelevance if it is leftas it is. The danger is that private broadcas-

ters may ultimately overwhelm the publicnetworks but look what you miss, you missthe ability to lead the creation of standards,to actually develop a sense of national inter-est and goals in terms of cultural expres-sion.”

In its favour, TVRI is broadcast by thegovernment owned Palapa satellite, so it hasa chance to compete in terms of servingremote audiences. However, it will need asolid legal and financial foundation if it is tostand up to the onslaught of private televisioncompanies selling their wares. The televi-sion market is expected to rapidly expand asIndonesia fights its way out of economic cri-sis and digital compression (which fits moreprogrammes into a single channel space)takes hold.

“TVRI and RRI could become publicbroadcasters funded by the state budget andsupervised by an independent commission,”Leo Batubara, the secretary-general of theIndonesian Newspaper Publisher’sAssociation told the Jakarta Post recently.“Censorship would be determined by them-selves using their own code of ethics. In theinterests of the public they would not be allo-wed to show too many commercials. Fees(from consumers) would add to theirincome.”

Critical timingUNESCO has also recommended the State

broadcasters be transformed into an inde-pendent public service network governed byan independent board, and is working withthe government to establish a legal frame-work for this to take place. It is a delicate pro-cess in that it requires turning around formerstate propaganda machinery in law. Thetiming is critical as the legacy of decades ofrepression by the Indonesian governmentsurfaces in the form of independence move-ments. But in many respects, the groundworkhas been laid. A new press law, drafted by theHabibi government with UNESCO (assistedby the British based ngo Article XIX - a refe-rence to Article XIX of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights on the free-dom of opinion and expression and the rightto know) passed through the Indonesian par-liament mid-September. Editorial freedomfor the print media is now legally protected.Before the law went through, journalists,representatives of the armed forces, thegovernment and parliamentarians actuallysat down to discuss press freedom and demo-cracy. The consultation process meant thedraft law became a public document, - a firstin Indonesia’s legislative history.

An independent Press Council is also

From State serviceto public service

also known as theInternational CentreAgainst Censorship (anngo working withUNESCO), hasdeveloped the followingset of recommendationson public servicebroadcasting: • The independence ofgoverning body of thepublic broadcastershould be guaranteed bylaw.• The principle ofeditorial independenceshould be guaranteed bylaw.• Public servicebroadcasting should beadequately funded by ameans that protects thebroadcaster fromarbitrary interferencewith its budgets.

ARTICLE 19...

One of the many satellite receivers in aremote village, on the island of Borneo

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being established, with members chosen bythe journalists’ and publishers’ unions.Government employees are automaticallyexcluded. The Council will be responsiblefor dealing with complaints and for deter-mining media development and training pro-grammes. The Council recognises televisionand radio broadcasters as journalists.

Consultations between the governmentand UNESCO have been taking place over anew Broadcasting Law which places the res-ponsibility for broadcast regulation with anew Independent Broadcasting Commission(IBC). The Commission will have overallcontrol over issuing licenses, planning broad-cast frequencies, implementing a Code ofConduct for Broadcasters and promotingbroadcast policy development. The indepen-dence of the IBC is guaranteed because it isappointed by and reports to the House ofRepresentatives. There are strict guidelines onmembership which include conflict of inter-est rules and prohibitions on State employees.

The draft Broadcasting Law has not yetdealt with the state broadcasters but in adisplay of political support for an indepen-dent media, President Abdurrahman Wahid,

abolished the 50,000 strong Ministry ofInformation last October. It was a move cal-ling for a “cold turkey” change of cultureand rapid understanding of the idea that afree media promotes transparent and accoun-table governance. “There is an urgent needto transform TVRI and RRI into independentbodies,” stresses Sylvie Coudray ofUNESCO’s Freedom of Expression,Democracy and Peace Programme, “and itis only as independent bodies that they canbe expected to maintain decent ratings andsurvive. It would be most unfortunate if theywere unable to do this as the public wouldbe denied access to an important alterna-tive to commercial broadcasting and theavailability of genuinely Indonesian broad-casting would suffer.”

These sentiments are echoed byWijayananda Jayaweera, responsible forUNESCO’s communication projects in Asia.“What is really required is a public broad-casting system that does not control infor-mation but that gives space to different eth-nic perspectives and views, to reflect themulticultural nature of Indonesian society”.

Ann-Louise Martin

“There is no such thing as publicservice broadcasting in Russiatoday,” explains Vladimir Pozner,president of the Russian TelevisionAcademy and the host of a weeklyshow on the national Channel 1.The television market has explodedin the Russian Federation since thefirst private broadcasting companiesarrived in 1996. Experts estimatethere are now between 800 to 1,000television stations broadcasting to ageographic area hitherto serviced bya handful of State-controlledoperators. More than 90% of Russian homes inthe European part of the country areequipped with television sets.Overall, one in three households hasa TV set. Much air time is taken up byimported Western soap operas, but,in spite of the crisis brought about bythe collapse of the rouble in August1998 when both state-owned andprivate channels suddenly lost theiradvertising revenues, Russianproduction continues to scrape by.The locally made “Boulevard ofBroken Streetlights”, for example,broadcast by the Media Most group,found instant success. A quarter offilms selected for the annual INPUT -the Television Screening Conference

(see page 8) come from Russia andeastern Europe.Concerning news and information,Pozner sees the bright side in theproliferation of channels: “peoplenow have the possibility to listen toand watch very different types ofprogrammes and get what you couldcall conflicting information. If youwant to take the trouble you canlisten to different sources and drawyour own conclusions which could

never happen before.” But on theother hand, “its very clear thatpeople use their media empires forpolitical purposes which makes itquite difficult for a journalist to be a

journalist.”“The Russiangovernment’s role in relation to themedia is rife with conflicts ofinterest,” stresses a report byInternews, a non-profit organisationmonitoring independentbroadcasting in Russia. “The state isregulator, major player and arbiter allat once.” In May 1998, President Boris Yeltsinissued a decree transforming the All-Russia Television and RadioCompany, or VGTRK, into “a unifiedproduction and technologicalcomplex.” The move was seen bysome commentators as an attempt toshore-up government-ownedchannels against private competition.For others, the new centralisedagency was reminiscent of theSoviet-era Gosteleradio. Yelstin’s press secretary toldjournalists at the time that one dayRussia would reach the stage where“the state plays a very small role inbroadcasting.” However, he warned,this had to be done gradually,“without severing all the channels ofstate influence on this extremelyimportant sphere of our publicpolitical life.”

Ann-Louise Martin

Russia: From drought to deluge

Tell it like it is

Are you being served?

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the best ofworld television

Mr Battu goes from village to village inIndia with his mobile cinema van, a

loudspeaker announcing his arrival as hesets up his old Soviet projector, a white sheetto serve as a screen and his old scratchedfilms. Poor families from Kakanj in Bosniaeke out a living by collecting coal from anabandoned mine there. In southwesternColombia the Paez Indians consider thedeadly earthquake to be a warning fromMother Earth to end deforestation and opiumcultivation.

These people’s stories are amongst 99documentary and fiction films – moving,disturbing, intelligent – selected by INPUTfor its annual meeting held last April in FortWorth (Texas). INPUT, International PublicTelevision, was set up in 1977 by a group ofAmerican and European public service tele-vision companies to encourage the exchangeof programmes at meetings financed by spon-sors from the host country.

“INPUT is not a festival. INPUT is not amarket. INPUT does not give awards,” saysthe organisation’s Spanish president, EnriqueNicanor. “INPUT is a lively and multicultu-ral ceremony performed and addressedtowards programme makers working activelyin the public interest, producing the kind oftelevision that serves and challenges the

audiences with intelligent stories.” The weeklong event brings together hun-

dreds of professionals from dozens of coun-tries to see each other’s productions andmore importantly to meet. There are nogiant video screens, just ordinary televisionslike in normal viewing conditions. “It is goodthat it is not a market, with buyers pressingyou,” says NRK (Norwegian public televi-sion) producer Per Selstrom. “We go there tomeet other people and exchange ideas onnew ways to make programmes, on newways of reflecting realities.” “The films andprogrammes screened offer a glimpse into thepowerful potential of television to move, dis-turb, confirm, ensure, titillate, question, arguein a hundred different ways and respond toa hundred different questions,” remarksIndian media commentator Shoma A.Chetterjee, who has followed INPUT’s work.

Exposing rare works Since 1994, UNESCO has been working

with INPUT to fund regional workshops andhelp producers from Eastern Europe, Asia,Africa and Latin America to participate inINPUT’s annual meetings, explainsUNESCO’s Rosa Gonzalez. Their work todayaccounts for more than a third of films shownby INPUT. The two organisations, adds

INPUT makes it possibleto see rare andsometimes bannedproductions©

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99No. 118 - December 1999

It makes perfectcommon sense.An internationaldatabase oftelevisionprogrammesmade by public-fundedbroadcastersoffering titles atlittle or no costto fellowoperators indeveloppingcountries. Thisin a nutshell is“ScreensWithoutFrontiers”. Theidea dates backto 1996 whenUNESCO initiallyapproved it. Sincethen, some 200public and privatebroadcasters andproductioncompanies havebeen canvassedabout the concept.Most have beenfavourable, somehave even sentcassettes ofprogrammes. DrVladimir Gai, chief ofUNESCOscommunicationdevelopment sectionpoints to a cupboardin his office. “Its fullof cassettes.Organisations likethe Arab StatesBroadcasting Union(ASBU) and theInternationalOlympic Committeejust sent us materialsaying ‘take it andplease use it’.”Such concreteexpressions ofsupport haveconvinced UNESCOthat the conceptmust operate as acentral databasewith links to partnersaround the globe.“We want it to be anextremely useful,administratively light

and low costproject,” adds Gai.At present, there islack of databasesconcerning publicservice television ingeneral andprogrammes inparticular. ScreensWithout Frontierscould fill the gap,providing pathwaysfor qualityprogrammes to newaudiences. It wouldalso givebroadcasters indeveloppingcountries a chanceto divert preciousfunds to their ownproductions. Gaistresses thatindividualgovernments wouldneed to take care ofresolving copyrightmatters, waivingrights asappropriate,although UNESCOcould hold a smallreserve fund to helpclear rights in somecases. The JapanMedia Communi-cation Centre(JAMCO) hasoffered UNESCO the700 programmes(dubbed in English

and Spanish) ithas in a publicprogramme bank.JAMCO hasprovided 2,500programmes to 52countries overeight yearsshowing there isa demand andhighlighting thepotential ofScreens WithoutFrontiers project.The InternationalRadio and Tele-vision University(URTI) has beengranted $70,000by UNESCO’sInternationalProgramme for

the Development ofCommunication toset up a pilot modelof Screens WithoutFrontiers whichcould prefigure theoperational launchof the project. TheCooperation Chan-nel, also known asAlpha TV, based inBudapest has of-fered office space,personnel, 800programmes anddovetailing of$350,000 to get theidea off the ground.The possibility ofusing the satelliteARABSAT to facili-tate programmeexchange among thepublic televisionchannels of develo-ping countries isalso being investi-gated by UNESCO.“This open, public“electronic library”will provide an ac-cess to quality tvprogrammes all overthe world, thusboosting inter-national exchangesand improvingmutual knowledge,”states Gai.

A.-L. M.

An Idea Whose Time Has ComeGaétan Lapointe, INPUT’s secretary general,have “identical views on the important ofaudio-visual creation for social, economicand cultural development and for the pro-motion of democratic values.”

UNESCO’s support makes it possible to seeproductions which rarely make it to thescreen, from Kirghistan and Lithuania toUganda, or to see films which are banned intheir own countries.

Films shown range from one-minute clipsto 90-minute productions with budgets bet-ween $3,000 and $300,000 and whose direc-tors are generally young and unknown. “Wedon’t make differences between genres,timing, size of budget or broadcasting com-pany. We just look for that quality whichdefines what public television must be,” saysEnrique Nicanor.

“I am working on a late Saturday eveningshow for SVT (Swedish Public Television)presenting international programmes - mostlydocumentaries,” says Agneta Bome-Borjefors,member of INPUT’s 1999 selection committee.“Quite a few of them I’ve actually found atINPUT.”

Sheila de Courcy, producer at RTE (Irishpublic television), who’s also on the 1999 com-mittee adds, “in Ireland we are very consciousof our culture. And as programme makers weare in conflict with the value of the dominantculture. It gives me strength to see how othercountries express their own culture, and ithelps me to define approaches to my ownwork.

N. K.-D.

Kids gather round the village tv in Niger

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Sales of US tv programmes to the EuropeanUnion market

Estimation of sales for European programmes to North America

The culture divide(Source: European Audiovisual Observatory)

A market dominated by the Americans

Home is wherever they go.Everywhere and nowhere,because they have no land andno country. They’re always onthe move. Always they come

from “some-where else”, even when they’velived in a place for several generations.People imagine things about them. Loved orunloved, Gypsies intrigue and disturb us.They stand for “the other”, the exotic: peoplewho are free, special, proud, strong – butalso dirty, vulgar, unpleasant and thieving.

We think of them as nomads, but verymany of them are not. We call them “Gypsies,”lumping together a patchwork of communi-ties, while they identify themselves as mem-bers of groups that differ according to theirorigin (most of them came from northwes-tern India, others from central India), thetime they left those places (between the 5thand the 12th centuries) and in relation tothe peoples they have often mixed with whilekeeping their own culture. They are knownas Roma (in central and eastern Europe),Manush and Sinti (western Europe) andGitanos (in Spain and Portugal). They num-ber between 15 and 30 million around theworld - up to 10 million in Europe.

“Anything you hear about the origins ofthe Gypsies is largely mythical,” says Frenchethnologist Alain Reyniers, editor of the

10 December 1999 - No. 118

GYPSIES:EVER ONWARD

They are between 15 and 30 million worldwide. Yet they remainoutcasts. New generations of Gypsies though, while defendingtheir differences, want to change this

magazine Études Tsiganes and a member ofthe Gypsy Research Centre at the Universityof Paris. “There’s no historical trace. Werethey a caste of warriors, cleaners or musi-cians? We can’t say. The only thing we knowis that apparently different groups of peoplecame together and, as they moved throughEurope, they were homogenised by the localsthere.”

They were pushed around by the Arab,Afghan, Mongol and Byzantine empires andin western, central and eastern Europe andhave always been rejects. First on accountof their ethnicity and then socially. “If they’dbeen warriors like the Rajputs in India,” saysReyniers, “they’d’ve fought to join thesesocieties and supplant another group. Butone of the features of Gypsy culture is thatthey’ve never wanted to own land.”

This probably explains their mobility andthe sort of trades they ply – artists, tradersand travelling craftsmen, horse-dealers,skilled workers, makers of arms, ammuni-tion and gunpowder, blacksmiths in themines of Bosnia (for the Ottoman army in the16th century), and army musicians... Becausethey come from elsewhere, they have alwaysbeen the ideal scapegoat, to be blamed forall society’s ills. “Their constant movementbetween the Christian and Ottoman empiresdidn’t help,” says Reyniers. “It meant they

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UNESCO has teamed upwith ethnologist AlainReyniers - editor of themagazine EtudesTziganes in Paris and adirector of the GypsyResearch Centre atParis University - topublish a book and aCD-Rom called“Tsigane, heureux si tues libre!” (Gypsy, happywhen you’re free!). This investigation intothe cultural forces atplay among the Roma infive countries of centraland eastern Europe(Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the CzechRepublic and Slovakia)will help make youngpeople - and olderpeople - aware ofGypsies, to think aboutthem, break down ste-reotypes and get toknow this persecutedpeople through learningabout their history, theirwanderings, theirfamous figures, theircustoms and their cur-rent problems.

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11No. 118 - December 1999

were always seen as agents of ‘the enemy’ byeach side.”

But Gypsies do not object to their mar-ginalization. Is it because it gives them ahandy excuse? “They always mention thefact that they don’t have any country whenthey ask for some benefits,” says Reyniers.

Whatever it is, they do not consider itshameful, because they live in their ownworld, with their own rules, and negotiatewith “the outside” rather like a state withina state without regard for the restrictions ofthe society. How else would they have putup with being forced to move around Franceuntil 1970 carrying identity documents likecriminals which they had to have stampedwhen they were obliged to leave each townafter three months. And how else do they putup with having, still today, to get a similardocument signed every six months as if theywere people living on the streets?

Inhumane conditionsBut even if some Gypsies are still resilient

and adaptable enough to display whatUNESCO’s Cultural Pluralism Division chiefKaterina Stenou calls “their ability to stay thesame however much things change,” manyGypsies are at now the end of their tether.Especially in central and eastern Europewhere, she says, “they have become the dregsof society, living in crowded and inhumaneconditions and in a state of serious commu-nal depression.”

They may be represented at the EuropeanCommission and be recognized – on paper– as a “national minority” in some easternEuropean countries, but their plight has notchanged. They still have no opportunitiesfor cultural, social or political emancipation.Especially now, when these countries aregrappling with economic changes whichinvolve cutting off social welfare. So theyare looking for a dignified life elsewhere andemigrating westward, to Canada and theUnited States.

Because they live in closed communi-ties, Gypsies always attract racial hatred,reminding them that half a million of theirpeople died in Nazi concentration campsduring the Second World War. The wall (twometres high, 65 metres long) built lastOctober in the Czech industrial town of Ustinad Labem to separate the local Gypsiesfrom the rest of the inhabitants is a strikingexample of such persecution. The wall waserected in the middle of the night to avoidconfrontations with opponents to the project.Three brown steel doors that can be locked,control access to the Gypsies homes.International pressure forced authorities todemolish it in late November.

“It’s the human being that is rejected inthis,” says Reyniers. “But it’s no good justsaying that. People’s attitudes have to change.The attitude that it’s normal to beat up a

Gypsy when he goes to a police station, nor-mal to send Gypsies away when they go toa social welfare office. It’s a more than justhaving a policy of integration, because thepeople who go to listen to a Gypsy concertone evening will reject them in other cir-cumstances the next day.”

Indeed, to give an example, the globali-sation of cultures creates a process whichencourages Gypsy music and strengthenscommon identity. “Gypsy groups exchangetheir different singing traditions, forexample,” says Stenou. UNESCO, she says,wants to help Gypsies preserve this “silentculture, which has no voice or intermediary”and is based on honour, and wants to help itsurvive and develop, in all its originality, bygiving Gypsies access to citizenship and todignity, through education and professionaltraining. To the right to be different and pro-bably also strange. But not strangers.”

“These are the demands of virtually allGypsies,” says Reyniers. They are well awaretheir culture is a strong one which will allowthem to be part of host societies while remai-ning true to themselves. It is the way theyarrive in these societies that gets them rejec-ted.”

“Our societies have a lot to learn from theGypsies,” says Stenou, who has arranged forUNESCO to give them a voice. For evenwhen they are not nomads, they display theirmobility. “A skill,” she says, “that somemodern thinkers reckon is transformingtoday’s world. The wanderer, who uses hisintellectual, linguistic, civic and economicresources to adapt to any situation, is perhapsbecoming an example for humanity.”

Travelling is in a Gypsy’s soul. In theirdreams, there’s always a picture of an openroad. The urge to encounter new things, theunknown. To always go on. The road doesn’texist until you start walking.

Cristina L’Homme

Gypsy cultureon a CD

A camp on the edge of Paris for thousands of Gypsies who fled Roumania

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UNESCO also supportstwo other institutionsthat cater increasinglyfor Gypsy children:• a kindergarten atCsepel, a poor suburb ofBudapest, whose pupilsare nearly all Roma.• a high school ineastern Hungary, in thedeprived region ofSzabolcs.Education ministerPéter Soltesz says that“if these pioneeringinstitutions producestriking results, we willextend the experimentto the rest of thecountry. We don’t wantGypsy-only schools –that would be anotherform of discrimination –but we are interested inthe French idea of“priority educationzones which favourdeprived or poor areas.”

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Hungary: ten out of tenThe southern Hungarian city of Pécs,

whose 165,000 inhabitants live in a balmyMediterranean climate near the border withCroatia, is often held up as a model of tole-rance. In 1991, it opened its doors to refu-gees from the war in Yugoslavia. Its Germanand Croatian minorities have their ownschools and the Croats even run a theatre intheir own language. But Pécs has won inter-national recognition with the Gandhi School,Europe’s first high school exclusively forGypsies. In 1997, the city was awarded theUNESCO Peace prize for its spirit of inter-ethnic tolerance.

The aim of the Gandhi School – foundedin 1994 and mainly subsidized by theHungarian government – is to train a Gypsyprofessional class which is sorely lackingin Hungary. There are some 700,000 Romain the country – 7% of the population – butonly 1% of their children graduate from highschool, compared with the two-thirds ofother young Hungarians who do. So it ishardly surprising that unemployment is rifeamong poorly-qualified adult Gypsies – witha 60% jobless rate compared with a nationalfigure of 11% – and that Roma make up two-thirds of the prison population.

Failing at school is one of the main causeof this social rejection and “Gypsy familiesdon’t encourage their children to go beyondprimary school,” says Tibor Derdak, a tea-cher and one of the founders of the GandhiSchool. “In their culture, study doesn’t havemuch prestige and children don’t have anexample to look up to.”

Zsolt, a cheerful and talkative boy of 18in his final year at school, wants to go to mili-

tary academy in Budapest after graduatingand says proudly: “I’ll be the first in my familyto go on to higher education, as my parentsdidn’t go beyond high school.”

When communism collapsed, Zsolt’sparents were the first to be laid off at the farmcooperative where they worked. Today theylive off state allowances and a few cows andpigs they have to feed the family. Zsolt is aboarder at the school and only goes home tohis village, Magyartelek, at weekends.

“The village has 300 inhabitants, includingfive Gypsy families,” he says. “Everyoneknows each other and we often all get toge-ther on Sundays to eat and drink. I neverknew what racism was while I lived in thecountryside. I discovered it in the city whena group of skinheads insulted my friends. Weasked them why they hated us and they said:‘because you’ve got dark skin.’”

PrejudicedHungarian society is still prejudiced

against Gypsies, nearly all of whom havefixed abodes. The country has three Romacommunities. The majority (two-thirds) camefrom India 500-600 years ago and now onlyspeak Hungarian. The Vlachs, who have beenthere for two centuries, speak Romany, alanguage which has many dialects, such asLovari and Kalderash. The Bea, who camefrom Romania, where they were slaves until1861, speak an ancient form of Romanian.

Zsolt speaks Hungarian and Bea at homewith his parents but it was only at school thathe learned to read and write the latter lan-guage. Classes in Bea and Romany are com-pulsory at the Gandhi School so Gypsy chil-

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dren can become part of Hungarian societywithout losing their roots.

But Gabriella, a lanky teenager with curlyhair who wants to become an English inter-preter, thinks the Romany classes are a wasteof time. “These old-fashioned languages areno good to me,” she says. “I prefer to spendmore time on my English.” She is very plea-sed that the school gives her “a chance to dosomething interesting in life” but says thereis one problem.

“I’m the black sheep of my family becauseI’ll be the first member of it to break the cul-tural links which bind my relatives together.I’m already feeling more distant from mymother, who’s my great, and only, real friend.A cultural and intellectual gulf is growingbetween us and she feels bad,” says Gabriellasadly.

The success of the Gandhi School and its190 pupils is inspiring other ideas. In the vil-lage of Manfa, near Pécs, Tibor Derdak, theGandhi School teacher, has started theCollegium Martinum, one of three institu-tions that are getting a total of $50,000 fromUNESCO as part of a new Hungarian govern-ment programme. The Collegium is not aschool, but a boarding establishment foryoung Gypsies who go to high school in Pécs.

No car, no maps“It’s good that young Hungarians and

Roma children are getting to know eachother and are studying together,” saysDerdak. “But leaving the home village is ahuge problem for young Roma because theyhave a lot of trouble becoming part of societywhen they’re on their own. At high school,all the children know how to swim exceptthe Gypsies. And a young Hungarian can readmaps, which feature in a lot of schoolbooks,because he learns to read them when he tra-vels by car with his father. But in the Gypsyvillages, there are no cars and no maps.”

The Collegium Martinum, which is hou-sed in a large, well-equipped building, offersa friendly ambience and after-hours help forRoma children. A dozen of the boardershave already graduated from the school andhalf of them are going on to university.

Florence La Bruyère

Pecs

Spain:using the power of the press

Spain’s young Gypsies are using the mediato change the stereotyped views of them

and to end the social exclusion that has pla-gued their people for centuries.

The headquarters of the Spanish UnionRomani, an NGO set up in 1986 to fight dis-crimination and racism towards the Romanypeople, looks just like any other office. It hascomputers, tables, papers and a lot of workto be done. Those who expect to find Gypsieslistening to folk music or learning to read andwrite should leave such clichés outside.

This Gypsy federation of several groupsis preparing to enter the 21st century withflourish. The goal is to end all forms of dis-crimination and to battle for equality, usingthe internet, mass mailings, manifestos,conferences and petitions, while never for-getting who they are – a people with a cul-

ture, a language and their own character.Heading Union Romani is Juan de Dios

Ramírez-Heredia, a journalist, member ofthe European Parliament and a Gypsy. He hasrepresented the federation at internationalcongresses in Brussels, Granada, Madrid andBarcelona. He knows the media have a cen-tral part to play in the fight against the pre-judice Gypsies have suffered from for cen-turies.

“Ignorance is the principal source of ourmisfortunes,” he says. “To combat it, UnionRomani keeps up constant pressure on jour-nalists and asks them to sign a pledge that‘the Spanish press, radio and televisionshould not publish or broadcast materiallikely to provoke discrimination on groundsof a person’s race or colour and should avoidmentioning them in disparaging terms.’”

Getting an educationthat protects theircultural identity

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To successfully fight someone though,you need to get to know them first. To thisend, Juan de Dios and a group of journalistshave carried out an extensive study of themedia to examine its relationship withGypsies. Some 7,500 texts published by 124Spanish media outlets in 1995 and 1996 wereexamined: 31% of stories were found to be“negative”, reinforcing the wide-spread imageof gypsies as “smugglers and delinquents,”with “barefooted and bare-bottomed chil-dren with runny noses.” The study foundthat most news about Gypsies comes fromthe Madrid region, Andalusia and Catalonia(51% of all stories concerning Gypsies), andthat the “worst” reports about them werepublished in the Balearic Islands and Galicia(57% of the most negative articles).

Aware of the need to change their imagein the media, young Gypsies joined forces tolaunch a UNESCO-backed project called“Free and Informed Gypsy Youth,” whichhas already led to meetings with otherEuropean Gypsies – in Cordoba (Spain) in1997 and at UNESCO headquarters in Parisin 1999. The aim is to work out how they canhelp to spread information about the plightof their people so as to put an end to themedia distortions. At these conferences, theyoung Gypsies decided to set up new mediaorgans run by their own people and to rein-force existing ones: Juan Silva, the head of

the youth wing of Union Romani points outthat although Gypsies have very high illite-racy rates they also boast “the largest num-ber of street publications.” Proof that theyhave a clear need to communicate and toinform themselves and others.

A newspaper like Informaciones, writtenin the Romany language, reports all racistacts by gadjos (non-Gypsies) and has allkinds of news about Gypsies elsewhere inEurope. Nevipens Romani, a free fortnightly

newspaper that defends human rights, ismostly aimed at gadjos, to whom it explainsGypsy culture. An article signed by journa-list Javier Ruiz Senz in the latter explainsthat “almost no one in Spain knows that gyp-sies are a transnational people, almost noone in Spain knows that they have customsand tradition in common with gypsies allover the world.”

Net wanderersThese young people are also hoping to set

up a radio broadcasting network and haveapplied for a licence in Spain. In addition,increasing numbers of Gypsies are makingtheir entry into television and other gadjo

media to act as informal agents to encou-rage integration.

Young Gypsies are also working thestreets, through various activities organizedby Andalusian Gypsies in Seville, such asmeetings, exhibitions and even, says Silva,“doing a survey in schools, called ‘FourCultures, One Youth’, to find out what youngAndalusians think of Gypsies.”

There is also an internet website givingcomplete information on Gypsies anddemonstrating the transnational characterof their young people and their desire to runtheir own lives. It was started at a meetingin Valencia of 30 young Gypsies and is calledEuroternet, (‘Euro’ from Europe and ‘tern’from the Romany prefix meaning ‘youth’)the name they have also given to the asso-ciation they have formed, which is open toall Roma youth in Europe. The site’s openingmessage stresses that “at the dawn of the21st century, to be a Gypsy who is a journa-list, lawyer, mechanic or painter does notmean you have to lose the sense of belongingto your own people.”

Integration, they insist, must not be confu-sed with assimilation and loss of one’s ownidentity. The young Gypsies say that “if inte-gration means ceasing to be one thing tobecome something else, we’re not interested.We want to keep on being who we are –people, Spaniards and Gypsies. What wewant is to end the social backwardness wehave suffered from because of discriminationand persecution against us throughout ourhistory.”

Inés García Albi

Barcelona

●●●* Euroternet can be reached through the webpage of Union Romani, at:<http://www.unionromani.org/euroternnet.htm> e-mail: <u-romani@pangea.org>

Valencia (Spain), June1998: the creation ofEuroternet

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“Pure Cortes”

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An artist for peaceJoaquín Cortés never stops. He began

dancing in a programme for children,then joined the Spanish National Ballet forseven years and is now at the peak of hiscareer. He owes his success to hard workand perseverance and, especially, to hisfamily, of humble origin, who have alwayssupported and encouraged him.

He has a multitude of projects in his head– fashion, films and dance, a record, a Spanishfilm production. “I’m not a dancer,” he says,“I’m an artist.”

Right now, he is working on a show cal-led Soul, which is about mingling cultures.He does his own choreography and runs histroupe himself. It opened in Barcelona inOctober to packed houses every day beforeleaving on a world tour, as with his previousshow, Gypsy Passion. Soul draws on andmixes different cultures through music anddance.

On stage, he is clearly in charge, withwhite shirt and a ribbon in his hair. He makesa few friendly remarks to the troupe andcracks some jokes. He distrusts the media,which has often given him a hard time, espe-cially concerning his love life. But he makesan exception this time. He talks aboutJoaquín Cortés, the Gypsy, and UNESCO’sartist for peace, a title he was awarded for

encouraging and popularising Gypsy cul-ture. He is also an ambassador for peace forUNICEF.

“I’ve been named an artist for peacebecause of the Joaquín Cortés Foundation,which is setting up projects backed byUNESCO and UNICEF. We’ve started withan idea I really like: opening a children’sdance school in Madrid or Barcelona. Aplace where they can learn all kinds ofdances, not just flamenco, and work withdifferent choreographers and differentstyles.”

Against the trendsCortés loves children, so he has created

projects for them. “Not just for Gypsy chil-dren,” he says. For even if being a Gypsy issupremely important to him, he wants mostof all to “open up to others.” He knows that“minority cultures like the Gypsies are oftenvery closed off” and thinks “it’s good thereare people – and there are many like me –who naturally go against the trends, whoinnovate and encourage new things so as tomove a culture forward. Because a culturehas to move forward.”

With this approach, Cortés is trying to fos-ter a new image of his people. “My dancingexpresses Gypsy culture, but the importantthing is that people see a serious, profes-sional Gypsy and that they get that into theirheads. It’s extremely important because thegeneral attitude to Gypsies in society is stillvery negative.

Has this poor image ever been a pro-blem during his career? No, he says, notdirectly. But, aware of the racism his peopleare still very often subjected to, he adds:“When I have to sign a document to do witha show, there’s always someone who says‘watch out, he belongs to another race.’This kind of stupidity is still around, unfor-tunately.”

How can it be avoided? “You have to sur-round yourself with good people, work hardand keep at it.” As an artist, he has at lastfound a place in society. A place which allowshim to express his ideas. When the defendersof pure flamenco, people who don’t likemixing cultures, criticized him, he told themthat he was doing “pure Cortés”.

“I go for things I like and I develop myideas,” he says. “And if so many people cometo see my shows, it’s for a reason.” He getshis message over. A supremely dignifiedone. Because his art, like his people, travelsall over the world.

Inés Garcia Albi

Barcelona

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EQUAL RIGHTSPEOPLE

No.188The Federated States of Micronesia has become UNESCO’s 188thMember State. Micronesia’s 121,000 Micronesian and Polynesianinhabitants are spread out over 607 islands, stretching across morethan 3,200 kms of Pacific Ocean.

TO REGULATE OR NOTTO REGULATE?Access and regulation were at theheart of the debate “Social, Ethicaland Legal issues in Cyberspacein the 21st Century”, held at head-quarters on November 10.“Africa, with 9.7% of the planet’spopulation, can count only 0.1% ofthe world’s internet users,” saidAmadou Top, the general mana-ger of Alliance Technology andInformatics, reflecting the mainconcern of the African participants.For Hervé Bourges of France’saudiovisual council “the choiceswe make concerning the waythe internet is to be organised,

Equal rights:the textIn response to growing demand,UNESCO has published a secondedition of the “Passport to equa-lity” in English, French andSpanish. The Passport is essen-tially an educational tool, desi-gned for local opinion leaders,parliamentarians, lawyers, tea-chers and community leaders.It contains the full text of theConvention on the Eliminationof All Forms of Discriminationagainst Women (CEDAW). The30-article convention sets outaccepted principles and mea-sures to achieve equal rights forwomen everywhere. It was adop-ted by the UN General Assemblyin 1979 and has been ratified by

EDUCATION

COMMUNICATION

Art for our sake!“Creativity is the immeasurablestrength of every human being.We can measure everythingexcept creativity. Creativity isour hope, it invents our future.We must therefore facilitate thisincredible human capacitythrough artistic education,” saidoutgoing Director-GeneralFederico Mayor launching anAppeal for the promotion of artseducation and creativity inschools.UNESCO hopes to establish theappeal with the support of theinternational artistic commu-nity. It aims to develop the crea-tivity of school children and ado-lescents by introducing newmethods for arts education. A European Summit organised byFrance’s National Committee forArtistic Education (CNEA) onDecember 20 at UNESCO willopen the first stage.

163 states (with some reserves).In the coming months thissecond edition will also be publi-shed Kiswahili, Urdu and Hindias well as Arabic, Chinese andRussian.

and its legal regulation” couldlead either to “cultural entropy”or “a new flowering of culturaldiversity.” Those who “aim tocontrol the new media (..) are thesame as those who want controlsof the traditional media,” saidRonald Koven, of the World PressFreedom Committee.Gareth Grainger, from theAustralian Broadcasting Autho-rity pointed to four priorities forUNESCO: affordable access tothe internet; training; the disse-mination of information aboutinternet development; and thepromotion of internet contentquality.

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EDUCATION’S VITALSTATISTICS“Sound policy-making in edu-cation is simply not possiblewithout reliable and up-to-datedata,” says Denise Lievesley, thedirector of UNESCO’s newInstitute for Statistics, in thelatest issue of EFA 2000 (No. 37October-December). This edi-tion looks at the difficultiesencountered by the globalEducation For All 2000 Assess-ment, which aims to identify pro-gress and shortcomings in basiceducation over the ten yearssince the Education For AllConference, held in Jomtien(Thailand). Specialists in some180 countries are working on theAssessment, the results of whichwill be presented at six regionalconferences from this Decemberthrough to February 2000. Theculmination of the whole exer-cise will be the World EducationForum in Dakar, Senegal, nextApril 26-28.

A GOODWILLAMBASSADORMarianna V. Vardinoyannis theGreek founder of the Founda-tion for the Child and theFamily, has been named aUNESCO Goodwill Ambassador“in recognition of her personalcombat for the protection ofchildren, the family and theleast privileged in Europe andaround the world.”

A NEW CHAIRPERSONFOR THE EXECUTIVE BOARDSonia Mendieta de Badaroux,Ambassador and Honduras’Permanent Delegate toUNESCO since 1993, has beenelected chairperson of theOrganization’s Executive Boardfor two years.

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PRIZES

1999 SCIENCE PRIZESUNESCO’s 1999 science prizeswere awarded on November 8during the 30th session of theGeneral Conference.The Kalinga Prize for thePopularisation of Science wentto Marian Ewurama Addy(Ghana) and Emil Gabrielan(Armenia).

The Carlos J. Finlay Prize waspresented to Adam Kondorosi(Hungary).The Sultan Qaboos Prize forEnvironmental Preservation wasawarded to the Charles DarwinFoundation for the GalapagosIslands (Ecuador).The Pasteur Medal was pre-sented to Professor Luiz Pereira(Brazil), and the UNESCO-Ghandi Gold Medal went toProfessor MonkombuSwaminathan (India).

A defender ofLatin AmericanidentityThe late Ecuadorian painterOswaldo Guayasamin has beenposthumously awarded thisyear’s International Jose MartiPrize. Guayasamin died lastMarch before completing hismonumental project the “Chapel

of Mankind”. He was renownedfor this work depicting the Indiantragedy and the sufferings of thepeoples of Latin America.The prize was created in 1994 atCuba’s intiative to promote andreward an actvity of outstandingmerit contributing to the unityand integration of countries inLatin America and the Carib-bean, and to the preservation oftheir identities, cultural tradi-tions and historical values.

WINNING WEB SITESNirvanet, an artistic e-zine, anda website featuring the life andworks of the Chilean poet VicenteHuidobro are the winners of thisyear’s UNESCO Web Prizes. Theywere selected by an internatio-nal jury from almost 500 projectssubmitted by web designers in71 countries. Nirvanet (http://www.nirva-net.com) presents cultures andplaces around the world throughart, music and video. The site,“offering a new vision of a multi-cultural world”, is available infour languages and was createdby an international team of webdesigners in Brussels (Belgium).The Vicente Huidobro site(http://www.uchile.cl/cultura/huidobro), created by a team of stu-dents and professors at theUniversity of Chile, offers a selec-tion of poems, narratives, lettersand manifestoes of the poet inSpanish and French. It alsoincludes a biography, images,critical texts and bibliographi-cal information of high qualityand “unique and tasteful” design.

CulturalLandscapesThree laureates - the Valle deVinales (Cuba), the Open-Air ArtMuseum at Pedvale (Latvia) and

Marian Ewurama Addy

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Elishia’s Park in Jericho(Autonomous PalestinianTerritories) share this year’sUNESCO-Greece Melina Mer-couri International prize for theSafeguarding and Management ofCultural Landscapes.The prize bears the name of thelate Greek actress and CultureMinister Melina Mercouri whoardently fought for integratedconservation and sustainabledevelopment. Awarded every twoyears, the $30,000 prize rewardsoutstanding examples of actionto safeguard and enhance theworld’s major cultural land-scapes.

MAYOR WINS PEACE PRIZEUNESCO’s outgoing Director-General, Federico Mayor is thewinner fo the first Peres Centre forPeace Award. Former Israeliprime minister Shimon Peres pre-sented the prize to Mr Mayor ata ceremony held at UNESCOheadquarters on November 9, forhis “unique role in the hopes, poe-try and peace of our generation,”during his 12 years in office.The Peres Centre for Peace wasfounded in 1997 to advance Arab-Israeli cooperation by creating awide range of projects in the fieldof peace economics, peace edu-cation and social development.

“Though the 20thcentury has been

based on the mightof the sword, with arecord of winnersand losers, we mustrealise that thecoming century willhave to founded ondialogue, lest thesword be turned intoa sharp, doubled-edged blade whichwill spare nobody.”

Mohammad Khatami,President of Iran, at

UNESCO’s 30thGeneral Conference,

appealing for moremutual respect in

international relations

“It is not only sadbut totally

unacceptable thatdespite our seriousand concertedefforts to betterourselves, we indeveloping countriescontinue to sufferdeclining officialdevelopment aid,declining terms oftrade, a resurgenceof protectionism onthe part of thedeveloped world anda ballooning andexcruciating foreigndebt burden.”

Robert Mugabe,Zimbabwe’s President,addressing the General

Conference

“The democraticvocation of our

people and our newpolitical generationhas resulted in astrengthening ofnational institutionsand a profoundprocess of reform,modernisation anddecentralisation inthe country.”

Jaime David FernándezMirabel,Vice-President

of the DominicanRepublic addressing

the General Conference

18 December 1999 - No. 118

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BOOKS

WorldCommunicationand InformationReport 1999-2000UNESCO Publishing 1999300pp., 250FF., 38.11 EThis new report provides anoverview of the wilddevelopment of informationand communicationtechnologies and theirsignificant socioculturalimpacts in the world.Economic concentration,technical integration andbusiness mega-mergers are thefeatures of a constantlyevolving environment, withhuge private companiesgrabbing a lion’s share of theaction. Education, culture andcommunication; whichcontribute to the building ofcollective and individualidentities, are deeplytransformed by these newtechnologies. The reportexamines the challenges raisedby evaluating the use ofcommunication technologiesin developed and developingcountries, in urban as well asrural areas,by literate as wellas illiterate.

General History ofthe CaribbeanVolume II: New Societies:The Caribbean in the “Long” Sixteenth Centuryedited by P.C. EmmerUNESCO Publishing 1999 -344pp., 2OOFF., 30.49EThis major six-volume projectcovers the historicalexperience of the peoples andsocieties of the Caribbeanregions from the earliest timesto the present. The thirdvolume, “Slave Societies of theCaribbean”, was the first to bepublished. Volume II covers

three at most and so thehistorian is unable to identifyand interrogate relevantmaterial scattered in a varietyof depositiories in manycountries. This has affectedthe way in which the history ofthe region has been written.The chapters which discussmethodology are followed bystudies of particular themes ofhistoriography. Volume VI alsoprovides a detailed biblio-graphy which serves as areference for this book and theGeneral History of theCaribbean as well.

America will not seek tosmooth things over, but will bean objective history of theentire region from the RioGrande to Tierra del Fuego,”said Hernan Crespo-Toral, theAssistant Director-General forCulture, presenting the work toUNESCO’s General Conference.“We have not published theGeneral History of LatinAmerica with a Latin Americanperspective, but a universalone,” said Germàn CarreraDamas, the president of theInternational Scientific Com-mittee in charge of the project.“Furthermore, rather thanbeing an official, ideologically-based history, this work juxta-poses different points of view.(...) It is not the history ofstates or nations, but ofsocieties.”This first volume opens with achapter outlining the traits andregional characte-ristics of theAmerican environment.Volume II will be publishednext April and will be concen-trated on “Early Contact andthe Formation of NewSocieties”.

the evolution of Caribbeansocieties between 1492 and1650 through the intrusion ofEuropeans and Africans. Itexamines all the ingredientsfor creaing new societies byconquest and occupation, fromthe mining and plantingactivities of the Spanish inEspaniola, the the contrabandtraders from other Europeancountries. The volume alsocovers the plantation societiesof the Lesser Antilles, theextinction of the indigenouspopulation in the GreaterAntilles, the wars against theCaribs, and the beginnings ofthe slave trade and slavery.

Volume VI: Methodology andHistoriography of the Caribbeanedited by B.W HigmanUNESCO Publishing 1999 - 948pp.,200FF., 30.49EVolume VI looks at the wayshistorians have written thehistory of the region dependingupon their methods ofinterpretation and differingstyles of communicating theirfindings. The linguisticdiversity of the region souldrequire the ideal historian tobe proficient in all itslanguages. But proficiency isgenerally limited to two or

●●● To find out morePublications and periodicals are soldat UNESCO’s bookshop(Headquarters) and through nationaldistributors in most countries.For further information or directorders by mail, fax or Internet;UNESCO Publishing, 7 place deFontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP. Tel. (+33 1) 01 45 68 43 00 - Fax (33 1) 01 45 68 57 41. Internet:http://www.unesco.org/publishing

Las sociedadesoriginariasdirected by Teresa Rojas RabielaEditorial Trotta/UNESCO Publishing 1999 - 660pp., 230FF, 35.06EAfter UNESCO’s monumentalGeneral History of Africacomes the General History ofLatin America. The firstvolume of this new nine-volume work, has jsut beenreleased in Spanish and dealswith sociedades originarias(the first societies to settle inthe region).“The General History of Latin

19No. 118 - December 1999

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PERIODICALS

MuseumThe Islamic world has embra-ced a huge geographic span overmany centuries, and its arts areof a parallel variety and beauty.The special dossier in MuseumInternational (No. 203, July -September 1999) presents arange of issues confrontingmuseums in collecting, preser-ving and displaying this rich heri-tage, and also on presenting it tothe public in a meaningful way.At the end of the 20th century,there are four types of museumsin which Islamic art can befound: Western, universalmuseums such as the Louvre;Western specialised museums;national museums from Islamicstates; and finally libraries,which often house manuscripts,paintings and calligraphic art.The manner of their decisionswill form the taste of the publicand identify the norms by whichIslamic art will be evaluated.Other articles in the issueinclude a preview of the NationalSteinbeck Centre in the UnitedStates; access for the disabled tosites of cultural interest; andNuremberg’s DocumentationCentre on the Reich PartyCongress site.

THE UNESCOCOURIERThis month’s UNESCO Courrierfocuses on the work of memoryacross the globe. How havenations that endured atrocities inthe second half of this centurycome to terms with their ordeal?What obstacles have lain in theirpath? Between remembranceand forgetting, how can theymake peace with the past andbuild the foundations for a bet-ter future?South Africa made a new depar-ture but in Russia, the work ofmemory is incomplete. InCambodia, it is to a large extentblocked laments film-maker

CULTURE

ON THE WEB

More diversityplease!The 157 States Parties to theWorld Heritage Convention adop-ted a resolution inviting thosecountries which already havemany sites on the World HeritageList to voluntarily limit nomina-tions of new sites at their 12thGeneral Assembly, held at head-quarters, at the end of October.The resolution also features arange of measures to increasecapacity-building and facilitatethe inclusion of sites in under-represented regions and theireffective protection.Two thirds of States Parties to the

Rithy Panh, and in Rwanda, it isimpossible according to contri-buting writer Benjamin Sehene.Canadian jurist Louis Arbourhopes that the legal process can,by establishing irrefutable facts,at least prevent the past frombeing mythologized, and mayeven prevent crimes againsthumanity.

InternationalSocial ScienceJournalThe central dossier treats ‘glo-balization’, a theme which hasoccupied a central place in themass media, political and eco-nomic commentary and thesocial sciences. But what does itmean? How far does it repre-sent a new phenomenon, andhow far is it merely a new wordfor an old fact? What are therespective roles of trade, invest-ment and financial flows, in theprocess? How does it affect deve-loping economies and smallcountries? To what extent is itgovernable, and how can this bedone in a world still made up,politically, of nation states?These are some of the questionsaddressed, from a variety ofpoints of view in issue no. 160.Other stories include a feature on“curbing corruption in Africa:some lessons’s from Bots-wana’sexperience”. The article presentsa comprehensive overview of thesituation.

THE ROLE OF THE HEART“In the face of globalisation, cultural diversity should be defendedfor the sake of the preservation of human dignity. (…) Culture can-not take second place to the economy.” Thus concluded 55 cultureministers at a debate on “Culture and Creativity in a GlobalisedWorld”, organised by UNESCO on November 2. The roundtable was held ahead of the Seattle Conference of the WorldTrade Organization, where cultural goods are expected to pit the par-tisans of free trade against those in favour of regulation.The ministers urged UNESCO to reinforce its task “as an intellec-tual watch and forum” for the preservation of cultural diversity; ful-filling “the role of the heart,” said Canadian culture minister ShielaCopps, “matching the commercial role of the WTO.”

Djenne in Mali

SEND AN E-CARD TODAYUNESCO’s Memory of the World programme and the Communi-cation, Information and Informatics Sector (CII) have created anelectronic postcard service. It includes cards featuring the culturaldiversity of Central Asia, African postcards (1890 to 1930),construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, images and chronicals fromthe Annals of the Choson Dynasty from the Republic of Korea,Hungarian history, documents from the Russian State Library,illustrations from 17th and 18th century Japan, and historical photosof Latin America from the National Library of Venezuela in Caracas.Click the icon on CII’s Webworld site, write your text and sendyour card!http://www.unesco.org/webworld/index.shtml

World Heritage Convention havefewer than three sites on theList - and several have none atall.

Mother-tongue learning is the essential primer, says a New

Zealand primary school teacher dedicated to bringing the Maori

language back to life. This portrait is taken from a series published

by UNESCO to celebrate World Teachers’ Day on October 5

20 December 1999 - No. 118

A CLASS ACTI

f you grow up not spea-king your language, you

won’t know who you are,”says Ani Rauhihi, a Maoriprimary-school teacher inthe North Island of NewZealand. Maori is closelyrelated to Rarotongan,Tahitian, Hawaiian andother languages spoken inthe Polynesian islands, fromwhich, according to Maoritradition, seven canoesbrought their ancestors toNew Zealand.

Today, the Maori popu-lation stands at about250,000, and they have theirown members of parlia-ment. Nevertheless, Maorisremain marginalised in NewZealand’s societal commu-nity.

Rauhihi teaches 9-12year olds in the MaoriImmersion Unit of PetoneCentral School, a short walkfrom the beach where thefirst white settlers landed inNew Zealand in 1840. After

PORTRAIT

the immersion classrooms,called the Whanau (family),children must observeMaori customs ad removetheir shoes before entering.“This sets the tone,” Rauhihisays. “The children don’t seeit as rules, but as part ofMaori custom, part of theiridentity.

“All subjects are taughtin Maori because teachingreflects our values. Teacherswork together and otherMaori adults visit regularly.Everybody does things toge-ther, there’s a lot of storytelling and singing. Theolder children help teachthe others, while we try andfoster Maori values such asrespect for elders - everyonehave something of value.”

In this warm supportiveenvironment children areeager to learn. “A youngMaori boy who’s often dis-ruptive in the ordinary class-room is sometimes sent tous. Here he joins in the sin-

ging, fits in and is no troubleat all. Unfortunately, hisparents don’t want himtaught only in Maori.”

TAKING INITIATIVEIn the working-class area

where Rauhihi teaches, manyof the children come fromhomes where single-parentsare on welfare. Those whowork tend to be drivers orunskilled labourers. Rauhihieasily identifies with suchfamilies because she grewup in a small town where herparents worked in the localfactory.

Rauhihi laments the lackof teaching resources in theMaori language. “There areno maths books, for ins-tance. But we have becomevery adept at creating ourown materials on the com-puter. This takes up all ourspare time, but we don’twant to give our studentssecond best.”

When she began tea-ching, she sometimes haddoubts. “A lot of peoplethink, what’s the point oflearning Maori? You’ve gotto know English to get a job.But now I look at the facesof children and I know thatwhat we are doing is impor-tant. They’re confident,open and ready to learn.Sadly, there are a lot moreMaori children strugglingand getting into troublewhere little Maori is taught.It’s those children I worryabout, because they are mis-sing out on their heritage.”

Noel O’Hare

Petone

(from Class Acts:How Teachers Awaken

Potential, available from

UNESCO’s

Education Sector)

settlement, Maoris lost mostof their land - and since theywere forced to speak inEnglish, they almost losttheir language as well.School children were puni-shed for speaking Maori,which was only recognisedas an official language inNew Zealand in 1987.

Rauhihi grew up spea-king English with only asmattering of Maori. She isthe first in the family toreceive higher education,and it was during her tea-cher training that she atten-ded a hui, or Maori gathe-ring. “The people were sopassionate about holdingonto the language. It was anawakening for me,” shesays.

Now a fluent Maori spea-ker, Rauhihi believes that aknowledge of their own lan-guage is the key to givingher people back their self-esteem, and raising Maorieducational achievement. In

Ani Rauhihi, “I know that what we are doing is important”

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Giving a voice to those who will build tomorrow’s world was

the aim when children from many countries met recently in their own

international parliament in Paris

YOUTH

21No. 118 - December 1999

“WE,THE YOUNG PEOPLEOF THE 21ST CENTURY”

Rahila Oumarou Saminou,a teacher in Niger, whoaccompanied two youngdelegates from her country.“But they must have an ade-quate education or theywon’t be going anywhere.”

THREE BILLIONThe parliament sat in

Paris from October 21 to 27,with 348 teenage membersfrom 178 countries. TheFrench National Assemblyand UNESCO organised thegathering, to mark the startof the new century in astrongly symbolic way.“More than half the world’spopulation are under 18,”noted the National Assem-bly president, LaurentFabius. “They have strengthof numbers and time ontheir side and a spontaneitythat is often lacking inpublic life. Who better thanthey to help create a newcentury and define the prin-ciples from which it willdraw sustenance?”

Preparations for the par-liament, which was inspiredby France’s annual NationalChildren’s Parliament,began back in February. Ineach country, UNESCO’sAssociated Schools singledout several classes, each of

Rizwana Shahnaz is just16. Her face and some-

times the way she holds her-self hints at the child shewas until only recently. Butthe Bangladeshi high schoolstudent speaks like an adult,seriously, sometimes evengravely. She and anothergirl were chosen to repre-sent their country at theWorld Parliament of Child-ren. She spoke not just forherself but for a countrycrippled by under-develop-ment.

Of the half-dozen topicsdiscussed by these youngparliamentarians, educationwas the most important onefor Rizwana. “It’s the keyto everything else,” she said.“Without education, therecan be no peace and no dia-logue. In a country likemine, where more than two-thirds of the people are illi-terate, we know the valueof knowledge. Education isstill a privilege for us. Thathas to change,” she said asshe and her colleagues pre-pared to enter the chamberof the French NationalAssembly to the sound of asolemn drum roll.

“Children are the peoplebest suited to foster peaceand compassion,” said

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which put together a draftmanifesto dealing with sixtopics: education, cultureand intercultural dialogue,peace and non-violence, theenvironment, communica-tion and new technologiesand development.

The results were sent byeach country to be judgedby a committee of promi-nent figures includingCuban writer Zoé Valdés,French yachtswoman Isa-belle Autissier and formerUN secretary-general Bou-tros Boutros-Ghali. For eachof the six topics, the judgeschose three drafts to serveas a basis for discussion bythe young parliamentarians.The Youth Manifesto for theTwenty-First Century wasadopted in plenary sessionon October 24 and presen-ted two days later to theUNESCO General Con-ference.

“We, the young peopleof the twenty-first century,want that century to be oneof peace among nations,”the manifesto begins. Butthe document is not just astatement of intentions. Thechildren put together a num-ber of concrete proposals.For example, they called forimmediate reduction in mili-

tary spending, with themoney saved to be spent onprojects to promote peace.On education, they calledfor lower tuition fees andfor a greater say in runningtheir schools. But they alsorecognized their duties too.“We are committed to impar-tially respecting the dignityof others,” said SheritaYanuararief from Indonesia.Other commitments inclu-ded encouraging school-children to help each otherand to be more involved ineducational and social acti-vities.

THE ROAD TO NEW YORKUnlike some proposals

drawn up by the FrenchNational Children’s Parlia-ment, which are adopted bythe adult parliament andmade part of French law, thepoints made in the Manifestodo not have any legal force.“But we will make sure yourmanifesto is sent personallyto all the world’s heads ofstate and government,” saidLaurent Fabius.

In September 2000, adelegation of children willgo to New York to presentthe document to the UnitedNations on the occasion ofthe Millennium Assembly.

French National AssemblyPresident Laurent Fabiusand some of the youngmembers-for-a-week

heard her plea and theyseriously intend to maketheir manifesto a reality,beyond the official ceremo-nies. “We haven’t done allthis for nothing,” said

22 December 1999 - No. 118

HEALING THE WOUNDSOF WAR

“We’re counting on youbecause our fate dependson your ability to prepare abetter future for us,” saidNobel Peace Prize winnerAung San Suu Kyi, who is

under house arrest inMyanmar, in a recordedmessage to the parliament.She was one of the majorfigures associated with theoccasion. The children

Eight years of war have left their ugly mark on Sierra Leone.

But a series of theatre workshops are providing catharsis for

Freetown’s inhabitants

PEACE

Rizwana. “I’m optimistic. Ifjust a few of our proposalsare followed up, that willalready be progress.”

Agnès Bardon

In a hall in Freetown, thecapital of Sierra Leone,

Adama grips the imaginarybody of her dead daughter inher arms. The tears are run-ning down her face. Anaudience of more than 100local Christian and Muslimcommunity leaders, teachers,chiefs, nurses, market wo-men and housewives are nai-led to their seats by thedrama, reliving similar mo-ments in their own lives.Some of them weeping too.

Adama’s daughter wasone of the victims of theSierra Leonean civil war,which began in March 1991.The Revolutionary UnitedFront (RUF) entered SierraLeone from Liberia to over-throw the one-party rule ofthe All Peoples Congress,which had been in powersince 1967. The rebellionbecame a campaign of vio-lence to gain access to thecountry’s diamond andmineral wealth. In May 1999a cease-fire between therebel forces and the govern-ment was finally signed.

100,000 DEADThe eight year war was

characterised by systematicand widespread human rightsabuses against the civilianpopulation. Many thousandsof people had their limbsamputated, their eyes gou-ged out, or were burned alive.The rebels believed that thecivilians should be punished

for their support of thegovernment. More than100,000 people died.

The Forum for AfricanEducationalists (FAWE) isa group of Sierra Leoneanwomen who are trying torestore peace there. Fundedby UNESCO’s Culture ofPeace sector FAWE, haslaunched a series of theatreworkshops in Freetown,which involves people re-enacting the atrocities theyobserved and survivedduring the war.

“The women have bornthe brunt of this war. Theirhusbands and children havebeen killed. Whole familieshave had their limbs hackedoff, and women have beenraped en masse,” says Jose-

phine Nickel, the nationalcoordinator of FAWE. Shesays that the programme isslowly helping to bring recon-ciliation and forgiveness thatwill hopefully construct a sus-tainable peace.

In one church building ina central Freetown slum, twoformer rebel soldiers act-outthe return to their villageafter five years at war. Therebels accept that they dama-ged the women’s communi-ties beyond repair. They begforgiveness for attacks on anearby village in whichdozens of people died. Thewomen tell the rebels thatas long as they are truly sorry,they will be forgiven andaccepted back into their vil-lage life.

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“Women have born the brunt of the war”

Adama - the womanacting out the death of herdaughter - says that theworkshops were helpingthem overcome the trauma.“Through re-enacting ourown tragic periods, we havebeen able to make out heartslighter by sharing our griefwith others. It has made iteasier for us to forgive therebels, although it is not easyfor all of us.” Adama’s daugh-ter, 7 and her son, 10 werekilled by the rebels, and twoother children were abduc-ted. Her once-large familynow comprises a daughter, 5and a son, 3.

In the aftermath of thewar, FAWE has receivedsupport not only fromUNESCO, but also from the

France wants to return a haul of

ancient eggs stolen from Madagascar, but the

authorities there don’t yet have a “safe house” for them

23No. 118 - December 1999

Birds’ eggs are providingFrance with its first

opportunity to applyUNESCO’s internationalconvention against the traf-ficking in cultural property.*Eggs from the “elephantbird,” in fact, the biggestbird ever known. Threehundred and fifteen of themwere seized at the port ofLe Havre as they arrivedfrom Madagascar.

The three-metre-tall bird(oepyornis maximus) livedin the Quaternary Period(2,500,000 years ago to pre-sent day) and got its nick-name because it had a dino-saur’s head on an ostrich’sbody. It was clumsy andcouldn’t fly, so was an easytarget of natural predatorsand eventually becameextinct. Its eggs are five orsix times bigger than anostrich’s and can weigh upto 12 kilograms.

French customs officialsseized two consignments ofthem last July. Charges maybe brought for receiving sto-len goods and for smugglingcultural property, based onthe UNESCO convention.The matter is being hand-led by the special policedepartment which dealswith trafficking in culturalproperty.

The convention has exis-ted since 1970, but Franceand several other Westerncountries that make up thelucrative art market, havebaulked at signing it. In theend, French President Jac-ques Chirac insisted on itsratification – albeit 26 yearslate. The ancient elephantbird’s eggs, which are popu-lar as decorations, are thefirst case to be bought to

justice under the conven-tion’s previsions. They arevalued at over $500,000. Asingle egg was recently soldin Paris for $18,400, saysHervé Le Lièvre, a palaeon-tologist at France’s NaturalHistory Museum.

Most of these eggs werefound in pieces by peasants,who painstakingly put themback together, and soldthem to smugglers for lessthan $5 each. They werethen re-sold for an average$1,600 each.

“The eggs were broughtto France without any spe-cial care,” says Le Lièvre.“All data on where theywere laid has vanished. Thiswould’ve enabled us tounderstand better how thebirds lived. An egg in goodcondition might also have

contained remnants ofa foetus.”

THE RETURN OF THEELEPHANT BIRD EGGSCULTURAL HERITAGE

France has arranged forthe eggs to be officiallyreturned to their homeland.But the government ofMadagascar is faced with adilemma, because it doesn’thave the means to lookafter them properly. So theyare still in the hands ofFrench customs officials,who have asked UNESCOand the InternationalCouncil of Museums(ICOM) to help Madagascarsafeguard this heritage andset up a small museum topresent the history of thebird and take charge ofresearch into it. All inter-ested donors please standup!

Vincent Noce

* 1970 Convention on the Meansof Prohibiting and Preventing theIllicit Import, Export and Transferof Ownership of Cultural Property

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Waiting to go home

new government of SierraLeone. “We are impressedby the work of FAWE in hel-ping to achieve sustainablepeace in this country. Theiruse of theatre is bringingabout reconciliation to thiswar-shattered nation,” saysCharles Margai, the minis-ter for internal affairs andlocal government.

GOING NATIONALWith UNESCO’s help,

FAWE will extend the work-shops to Bo and Kenema,the southern and easternregional capitals. Nickelsays many Freetown resi-dents who have participa-ted in the workshops thinkthat all inhabitants of SierraLeone should have a chanceto join in. “The peace agree-ment is significant, but it isreally only a piece of paper,”says Nickel. “What FAWE’sworkshops are doing canreally cement the agree-ment.”

The workshops are run-ning to packed houses. Afacilitator at one of themasks participants to find it intheir hearts to forgive:“Many women have SierraLeonean husbands, ormaybe boyfriends who arerebel fighters, or militia menas brothers,” says Berna-dette Jojo. “When the sol-diers and rebels return fromthe bush after the peaceagreement, let us forgivethem. Let us accept them asbrothers and sisters. Whenthey go to the market, theschools, the hospitals, thechurches, the mosques andeven the shoe store, do notreject them. Don’t cry themdown - open your hearts tothem. We know they havebehaved like beasts, but for-give them and make peacewith them in your own ways.Then we can incorporatethem into society; and livetogether in peace. Let us puteight years of killing, andrapes, and mutilation behindus.”

Allieu Kamara in

Freetown,

with Chloë Fox

on UNESCO’s calendar

next month’s issue :

UNESCO AND THEPRIVATE SECTOR:SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES

21ST CENTURY:TOWARDS A NEW WORLD CONTRACT

2000 WORLD MATHEMATICAL YEARUNESCO assists developing countries in building maths and science capacities.To highlight the domain, the year 2000 has been declared “World Mathematical Year”,in partnership with the International Mathematical Union

10 to 14 January LAW STUDENTS AND BIOETHICSUNESCO and the Human Rights Institute of the Paris Bar host a programme for law students featuring the emerging specialisations of ethics and biomedicine. Subjects include medical ethics and human rights; ethical and legal reflections concerning the rights of vulnerable people, the rights of the child and women’s rights; ethics and patients rights

11 January ETHIOPIAN ARTSA conference at Headquarters presenting Ethiopian arts in the framework of a series of events to mark “2000 years of Christian art”

17 January to 12 February JOMTIEN 10 YEARS AFTERIn Bangkok (Thailand), Cairo (Egypt), Recife (Brazil), Warsaw (Poland) and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic); regional meetings will assess a decade of initiatives launched after the World Conference on Education for All (EFA)(Jomtien, Thailand, 1990) - these lead up to the World Education Forum in Dakar (Senegal) in April

3 to 5 February CULTURAL TOURISMNazareth (Israel) hosts the second international seminar on the management of tourism flows in culturally wealthy cities. Successful case studies will be presented

7 to 8 February REFORMING SECONDARY EDUCATIONHeadquarters welcomes international and non-governmental organisations including the World Bank and the OECD, to coordinate reforms in secondary education