My Child Shall Be Protected
If a war breaks out, my child shall be protected, said Willson Khama as he lay dying from tuberculosis six years ago. Willson was only thirty-five years old and had spent almost half of his life as a child soldier with a guerrilla group in Liberia during the country's civil war from 1889 to 1996. He wanted to make sure that his son would never have to go through what he had experienced.
Our Body, Our Earth
I remember walking through the fields of the Canadian Plains on many occasions with my father. On one occasion, we were going to pick sweet grass blades that had pink roots and a distinctively sweet smell. I observed that, prior to my father picking the first blade of sweet grass, he reached into his tobacco pouch and grabbed a pinch, laid it on the ground beside the sweet grass he was about to pick, and closed his eyes as he made his offering to Mother Earth. The sincerity of the process was completely natural in that moment.
The Conference on Disarmament: Injecting Political Will
The Conference on Disarmament (CD)* has met in vain for years. After the successful negotiation of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 and, more recently, the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992, the forum increasingly stagnated. The last time the Conference agreed to negotiate was in 1996 -- this time for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was adopted by the Â鶹APP General Assembly but has yet to enter into force.
Commit to Love and Respect Our Planet
Nearly every day on television or in the newspapers we see reports of natural disasters in different parts of the world, causing concern and alarm. Our planet is going through a most difficult time because mankind, in its eagerness to improve upon personal economic and living conditions, has forgotten that its actions cause pollution and uncontrollable climate change. According to the Â鶹APP Framework Convention on Climate Change, this term is used to refer to global climatic change that is directly and indirectly attributable to human activities that change the atmosphere's composition.
The Â鶹APP Academic Impact
Academic institutions have an invaluable role to play in strengthening the work of the Â鶹APP. From research laboratories to seminar rooms, from lecture halls to informal gatherings in cafeterias, the search for innovative solutions to global challenges often begins on campus.
Education for All: Rising to the Challenge
Imagine a school that changes location every forty-five days -- a school that comes to the child, instead of the other way around. This is happening on the steppes of Mongolia where the government provides mobile tent schools for nomadic herder communities. Further north, in the extreme conditions of Siberia, or further south, on the hot, dusty plains of Kenya, other nomadic children are enjoying more educational opportunities than their parents ever did.
Preparing the Next Generation to Join the Conference Table
The Â鶹APP Charter represents the most ambitious attempt in human history to unite across borders, secure peace, promote social progress, and forge solutions to the most critical problems facing humanity. As United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, The Â鶹APP represents man's best organized hope to substitute the conference table for the battlefield.
Unlearning Intolerence through Education
The call for a dialogue among civilizations has become one of the critical features of the twenty-first century. The term itself has been used to substitute and rethink the clash of civilizations, proposed by Samuel P. Huntington and adopted by some Western educators following the end of the cold war between East and West.
Can Education Be Made Mobile?
The right to education is a fundamental human right, since it is a precondition for the fulfilment of other economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights. It enables social mobility and successful competition in the labour market. Its realization means overcoming poverty and living with human dignity. Being universal, interdependent, interrelated, and indivisible, the right to an education offers equal opportunities for all, regardless of gender, economic or social status.
National Identity and Minority Languages
How far do we go in implementing language policies into the education system so as to integrate a nation's peoples? Nearly all nations identify and determine at least one language as the official language, and some include another as the national language.
Who Speaks for the Poor, And Why Does it Matter?
The UN Chronicle has evolved over the past years into an increasingly attentive and inclusive journal. The focus of each number on a specific issue, like climate change or disarmament, makes it possible to examine these questions from a variety of viewpoints. Its contributors testify to its broad geographic outlook. Recent issues have featured articles by academics, UN officials, government representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and recently, the fanciful innovation of testimony by novelists. What are largely missing, however, are the voices from people's organizations directly representing those sectors of the population most affected by the issues under discussion.
Education as a Means to Promote Sustainability
One of the myths current today, spread by media events such as Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is that everyone will be equal in facing the ecological and human catastrophe of climate change. This is simply not true. Clear thinking about climate change and its likely impact on cultural integrity, transmission, and diversity requires that one take note of the glaring differences today among people on the planet.
Civic Education and Inclusion: A Market or a Public Interest Perspective?
In recent years, we have constantly been reminded that we are living in a knowledge economy. Societies that invest most heavily in training their citizens will therefore be in the best position on the global chessboard. Thus, education is being given a new role in the concept of competition. Not only is this concept of competition encouraged within society, whether in the North or South, the implication is that the primary benefit of an education is economic.
Academic Impact and Education for Sustainable Development: The Contribution of Black Sea Region Universities
Since its establishment twelve years ago, the Black Sea Universities Network has promoted the mobility of students and academic staff, organized scientific meetings, summer schools, and workshops in different fields. Today it is an extremely valuable platform for cooperation, professional exchanges, and long-lasting human connections.
Reducing Poverty Through Education - and How
There is no strict consensus on a standard definition of poverty that applies to all countries. Some define poverty through the inequality of income distribution, and some through the miserable human conditions associated with it. Irrespective of such differences, poverty is widespread and acute by all standards in sub-Saharan Africa, where gross domestic product (GDP) is below $1,500 per capita purchasing power parity, where more than 40 per cent of their people live on less than $1 a day, and poor health and schooling hold back productivity.