Memory of the World In Focus Stories
List of all the Memory of the World In Focus stories.
Reading is food for the soul
UNESCO’s Memory of the World register includes the world’s oldest known book printed using movable metal type, the Gutenberg 42-line Bible and numerous collections relating to the work of noted writers such as Hans Christian Andersen, Astrid Lindgren, Christopher Okigbo and Derek Walcott among others.
Empowerment for women
8 March commemorates International Women's Day and UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register lists records relating to women's issues such as the historic 1893 decision by New Zealand to give women the right to vote.
Languages lost and found
UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register mirrors the fate of the world's languages: one that was saved, one that was lost and the prototype of all modern alphabets.
The horrors of the Holocaust
UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register includes different testimonies of the Holocaust in which some six million Jews and millions of others died during the Nazi regime.
Slavery in the Caribbean and Latin America
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.
Educational reform in Poland and Nicaragua
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.
An audiovisual window on the world
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.
Inventions and discoveries that changed our world
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.
Human rights: The search for truth and reconciliation
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. They describe not only the horrors that occurred in those countries but also, in some cases, document resistance to the abuses. All of them highlight the need to reveal the truth of the past to heal their countries and consolidate democratic values.