Health: UNESCO's role and contribution
UNESCO’s contribution to the ‘Health Chapter’ of the Mauritius Strategy mainly relates to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and encouraging actions to combat complacency, challenge stigmatization, overcome the tyranny of silence, and promote more caring attitudes. In cooperation with the co-sponsors of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV & AIDS, UNAIDS, Member States, civil society partners and the private sector, UNESCO’s contribution to the fight against the pandemics concentrates on integrating HIV & AIDS preventive education into the global development agenda and national policies, adapting preventive education to the diversity of needs and contexts, and encouraging responsible behaviour and reducing vulnerability.
Fighting HIV & AIDS through preventive education is no single-point programme. It is directed towards five core tasks:
- Advocacy at all levels
- Customizing the message
- Changing risk behaviour
- Caring for the infected and affected
- Coping with the institutional impact of HIV/AIDS.
Prevention is not only the most economical response - it is the most patent and potent response, which seeks to change behaviour by providing knowledge, fostering attitudes and conferring skills through culturally sensitive and effective communication. An approach based on human rights is fundamental for both providing preventive education and treatment as well as in combating stigma and improving living conditions of the infected and the affected.
Further information is provided through a discreet website on
UNESCO's Response to HIV &AIDS;. This site provides links to various components of UNESCO’s work on the pandemic, including
, including those operated by the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and the International Bureau of Education (IBE) and the field offices in Bangkok, Dakar, Harare, Nairobi and Santiago. Access is also provided here to the Monthly Newsletter of the HIV and AIDS Education Clearinghouse.
The designation of
Intersectoral Platforms has provided an impetus for strengthening institutional cooperation in selected cross-cutting domains, with
HIV and AIDS’ among twelve such platforms in the 2008-2009 biennium.
With this as background and context, the handful of examples that follow provide an idea of UNESCO’s recent, ongoing and future activities relating to HIV & AIDS in particular island regions and settings such as the Caribbean.
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PROJECTS/ACTIVITIES
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization