From past...

UNESCO was founded in 1945 to develop the “intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind” as a means of building lasting peace. Its pioneering work has helped change the way people everywhere understand each other and the planet we live on.

In its early years, UNESCO helped rebuild schools, libraries, and museums destroyed during World War II, and served as an intellectual forum for exchanging ideas and scientific knowledge.

As newly independent countries joined between the 1950s and 1970s, it turned its attention to access to education for all girls and boys and tackling illiteracy, which remain major challenges.

UNESCO led the movement to protect the environment and sounded the alert over the planet’s shrinking biodiversity. Through its “Man and the Biosphere Program”, established in 1971, it sought to reconcile both the use and conservation of natural resources. It was the first step towards sustainable development.

The Nubian Temples campaign of the 1960s to save Egypt’s most famous monuments from the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam transformed approaches to cultural heritage protection and inspired the creation of the World Heritage programme, dedicated to safeguarding sites of outstanding universal value. This laid the basis for widening UNESCO action to safeguard three dimensions of heritage – tangible, intangible and documentary – and to promote respect for cultural diversity on the basis of human rights.

Through the development of community radio and multimedia centres, training for journalists, helping governments design media laws or, encouraging them to develop broadband services for all, UNESCO has championed freedom of expression, the rights of citizens to information, and helped lay the foundations of tomorrow’s Knowledge Societies.

In his prison cell on Robben Island Nelson Mandela had very few opportunities to learn about what was going on in the world. Years later, in 1996, he told UNESCO’s Director-General, Federico Mayor, who was on official visit to the new, free South Africa, that his window to the world had been the UNESCO Courier. The President explained how pleased he and his companions had been to read The Courier through which they had learnt about cultural diversity and mankind’s common heritage, African history, education for development and so on. All these subjects did not exist in the apartheid lexicon, let alone in the solitary confines of Robben Island, as Annar Cassam from UNESCO, who was present during that meeting, later wrote.

Another personal account is that of Mme Vissière, a woman from the Marbial Valley in Haiti who learned to read and write at the age of 42, in 1948, thanks to a UNESCO pilot project on Fundamental Education. This is from her personal account on what it meant to her to become literate:

“When I am required to put my signature on any document, needless to say that I no longer settle for drawing a cross, and when the opportunity arises to read documents related to my possessions, I do not resort to friends to whom I pay tips when begging alone won’t suffice. At the speculator’s, I now know to inspect the weight of the coffee I sell; at the shopkeeper’s, I am agile to calculate the currency to be paid and received.

In truth with all these open horizons before me, I feel happy...“

For generations UNESCO has embodied high aspirations, hopes and an ongoing struggle for a better life, built on ideas of human dignity, mutual understanding and solidarity of humanity. These ideals and values are spelled out in the Organization’s Constitution, which is the key to understanding UNESCO’s history.

… to future

UNESCO is firm in the conviction that in this age of immense social change and increasing limits, we must invest in resources that are renewable: education, cultural diversity, scientific research - and the boundless energy of human ingenuity - that will enable and drive the development essential for a just and sustainable future.

Millions of girls and boys still have no access to learning. Illiteracy prevents hundreds of millions of women and men from fully participating in their societies.  Youth unemployment is a global challenge. Education remains a top priority on the new global development agenda being shaped by the international community. UNESCO makes the case for a new goal for equitable and quality lifelong learning and is mobilizing governments and a wide range of other partners for this.

Climate change, shrinking biodiversity and increasing demands on natural resources call for more science, and more scientists, to increase our capacity to observe and comprehend the planet. UNESCO’s programmes on the ocean, fresh water resources, the sharing of scientific knowledge, and in the social sciences have an important contribution to make.

Culture, a force for dialogue, social cohesion, economic growth and creativity, remains at the heart of UNESCO’s mission. UNESCO is determined that it should be a priority in the post-2015 agenda, which should be human rights-based, with a focus on governance and the rule of law.

This is why freedom of expression is also so important and why UNESCO will continue to advocate for harnessing information and communication technologies, building knowledge societies and bridging divides.

For more info on UNESCO's 70th anniversary celebrations and background, please see For more info on UNESCO's 70th anniversary celebrations and background, please see http://en.unesco.org/70years

 Celebration in Southern Africa

The UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa is celebrating UNESCO's 70th anniversary through three events from 26 to 28 October 2015 under the theme "70 years of experience for 17 Goals" linking up with the Sustainable Development Goals:

1.     Regional Education strategic planning meeting

2.     Regional meeting of National Commissions and UNESCO

3.     70^th Anniversary event celebrating 70 years of UNESCO and pledge of support to the newly adopted SDGs under Agenda 2030.