In Focus

Fast Car: Travelling Safely around the World is the first interactive multimedia tool on HIV and AIDS prevention for youth. It aims to provide young people with accurate and reliable information about HIV, while educating, entertaining and promoting healthy behaviour.

UNESCO launches the website dedicated to World Press Freedom Day 2011, which will be celebrated on 3 May 2011 under the theme “21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers”.

Human Rights Day, 10 December, is an opportunity to recall the importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register includes archives relating to human rights abuses in Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Cambodia and the Baltic States.

International Day of Persons with Disabilities is celebrated annually since 1992 on 3 December to promote an understanding of disability issues and to mobilise support for the dignity and well-being of persons with disabilities. UNESCO is one of the UN agencies that promotes and supports the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

World AIDS Day on 1 December draws together people to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic. A new DVD series, Positive Life, has been issued by UNESCO’s Network of Young TV Producers on HIV and AIDS in collaboration with AIBD.

The next edition of the WSIS Forum will take place from 16 to 20 May in 2011, in Geneva, Switzerland. The preparatory process has just started with the launching of an open consultation to elaborate the agenda and to shape the format of the WSIS Forum 2011.

UNESCO’s World Science Day for Peace and Development celebrates the contribution science makes to achieving sustainable development and peaceful societies. Its Memory of the World Register includes archives of the work of people who were on the frontline of scientific invention.

UNESCO has launched the new website dedicated to Professional Journalistic Standards and Code of Ethics in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. This fast, flexible and free online resource provides information on media accountability and self-regulation systems, media legislation and models for setting up and managing press councils.

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register includes France’s Lumière films that were the first to capture the lives and customs of people in countries in Europe and elsewhere, the world’s very first feature length narrative film made in Australia in 1906, newsreels from 1960 to 1990 that view world events through Cuban eyes, and footage tracing the final years of apartheid and the birth of democracy in South Africa.

UNESCO organizes the photo exhibition, Voices on the Rise: Afghan Women Making the News, from 22 to 26 November 2010 at its Headquarters. The photographs provide a look into the lives of Afghan women journalists, producers, writers, filmmakers, human rights activists and parliamentarians. The exhibition will be preceded by a conference on the same theme.

Early in his career, Vargas Llosa contributed to the UNESCO Courier with the article “A cultural battle”, which focuses on free flow of information in the era of technological progress. Freedom of information and the right to dissent are more than essential principles and the only way for a society to avoid mistakes, according to the Nobel Prize laureate.

The report, summarizing the recommendations of a group of experts on how UNESCO could assist its Member States in facilitating social inclusion of persons with disabilities through information and communication technologies (ICT), is now available in English both in printed and online versions.

Universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue. Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as to facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.

The 5th IGF meeting was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 14 to 17 September 2010. UNESCO organized two workshops around the issues of freedom of expression, social networking and privacy. UNESCO’s work on multilingualism, open access, open educational resources, and ICT and persons with special needs was presented in an Open Forum.

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register includes archives detailing Poland’s creation, in the 18th century, of the world’s first ministry of education and a Nicaraguan collection, including objects from t-shirts to diaries, dating from its successful national literacy campaign in the 1980s.

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register includes archival collections relating to slavery in Spanish and British colonies in the Caribbean and Latin America that document the suffering and maltreatment of slaves, and the unraveling of Britain’s transatlantic slave trade.

The 5th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 14 to 17 September 2010. UNESCO will provide various spaces for inclusive discussion on the Organization’s key contribution to the Internet Governance debate.

Scientific information is both a researcher’s greatest output and technological innovation’s most important resource. UNESCO promotes open access - the online availability of scholarly information to everyone, free of most licensing and copyright barriers - for the benefit of global knowledge flow, innovation and socio-economic development.

UNESCO’s support for journalism education in Africa is underpinned by a strong conviction that professional journalistic standards are essential to a media system that can foster democracy, dialogue and development.

UNESCO will actively participate in the 2nd World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) to be held from 5 to 7 July 2010 in the South African town of Grahamstownn. The theme of the congress, Journalism Education in an Age of Radical Change, reflects the major social, political, economic and technological changes sweeping across Africa.

83 new nominations are currently being examined by a panel of experts against the criteria of the Memory of the World Register. They will be assessed by the 10th Meeting of the International Advisory Committee in May 2011. The meeting will make recommendations to the Director-General on the inscription of new documentary heritage and review the progress achieved by the Programme.

The second edition of the annual World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum took place from 10 to 14 May 2010 in Geneva. Halfway towards 2015, this year’s Forum provided a great opportunity for participants to reflect upon what has been achieved so far and what the future actions must be.

The year of 2010 marks a turning point for assessing the progress made towards WSIS implementation during the past five years and for proposing new strategies to ensure the achievement of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) goals by 2015.

More than 300 participants attending UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Brisbane (Queensland, Australia), have urged national governments to enact legislation guaranteeing the right of access for all to information held by public bodies at all levels, local, national and international.

Mónica González Mujica is a heroine of the struggle against dictatorship in her country, who has shown courage in shining the light on the dark side of Chile. “She has embodied the very spirit of the Award. She has been jailed, tortured, hauled before the courts but has remained steadfast,” sais the President of the jury, Joe Thloloe.

UNESCO has launched a resource book Freedom of Information (FOI) and Women’s Rights in Africa, which constitutes the first stage of a wider initiative aiming to foster women’s engagement in the formulation, adoption and implementation of FOI laws in the region.

Is journalism becoming more and more dangerous? While the right to inform is regularly reaffirmed by international governing bodies, the number of journalists targeted is constantly increasing.

UNESCO has provided emergency funding to undertake protective actions to safeguard endangered documentary items.

World Press Freedom Day 2010 will be held from 2 to 3 May in Brisbane, Australia. It will highlight the importance of freedom of information as an integral part of freedom of expression and its contribution to democratic governance.

UNESCO is organizing an expert meeting ‘Knowledge Societies: The Way Forward’ in its Headquarters in Paris (France) from 1 to 2 March 2010. The meeting sets out to examine the theory of knowledge societies and to connect it with practice.