LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - UNESDOC Database | …unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001054/105418e.pdf ·...

L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R

U N E S C O S O U R C E S N o . 8 8 / M A R C H 1 9 9 7

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DOING MORE THANMAKING DOJulio C. ValienteSocial workerConcepción (Paraguay)

Permit me to tell youjust how much I appreciate the work doneby Sources. I am certain that all your read-ers share my opinion when it comes to theimportance of the publication.

At the age of 38, I have already spent16 years working with organizations in thecountryside to promote community devel-opment. My region is predominantly agri-cultural, in what is undoubtedly the poor-est area in the country. And yet, we havehad our fair share of interesting experiencesnot just “making do”, but most impor-tantly, in improving people’s living condi-tions.

UNESCO Sourcesis available on

Internet

under the headings:new or publications

at our address:http://www.unesco. org

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THE CARROTAND THE STICKBert WarburtonLithgow N.S.W. (Australia)

I was pleased to readyour November dossier entitled “Down tothe last drop” (UNESCO Sources, No. 84).The issue focusing on our wasteful use ofsuch a precious resource, water, is longoverdue. My congratulations in presentingthe stakes involved without falling into thetrap of hysteria which may make for excit-ing headlines but generally doesn’t lead toany meaningful discussion or action. Thereis, however, one major point which you didnot raise: changing people’s habits and at-titudes is never an easy task, and usuallyrequires some prompting, especially inrich countries where a clean and plentifulwater supply is taken for granted - wheredishwashers are used half empty, or tapsare left dripping and bathtubs turned intoswimming pools.

The hip-pocket nerve is usually veryreponsive to such prompting. In otherwords, the price of water should reflect itsreal value, financial incentives offered tothose who use it most efficiently. At thesame time, governments would do well toinvest in a major publicity campaign show-ing people very practically how to use lesswater in their homes. There are any numberof very simple things that can be done tocut water consumption in the home - fromchanging tap washers regularly to usingspecial shower heads that deliver a fine (andsatisfying) spray rather than a torrent...

Such campaigns, using the carrot andthe stick approach, can work very well.Witness the drunk-driving campaigns inNSW, Australia, where a combination ofrandom breath testing, heavy fines andwidespread publicity - highlighting notonly the penalties but also ways that peo-ple could still go out and enjoy a drink -dramatically cut the number of road deathsand radically changed behaviour. Peoplestill go out and enjoy themselves, butthey’ll leave the car at home and use a taxi,or a bus provided by the club or the pubfor the purpose, or a friend will be desig-nated to stay sober.

It could be argued that such an approachborders on the repressive, or infringes uponcivil liberties. But aren’t civic responsibili-ties and community well-being, which im-ply careful use of community resources (ofwhich water is surely one of the most vi-tal), equally important?

THANKS!Diego D. OrellanaCuenca (Ecuador)

I would like to con-gratulate your magazine. It is one of yourinternational organization’s best means ofinforming the public of its achievements.

THE WHOLE GANGIbrahima MagassoubaSecretary-GeneralUNESCO’s National Commission in GuineaConakry

Your publication ena-bles us to better inform all of our readers -school children, students, teachers, re-searchers, cultural figures, media, non-governmental organizations, etc....

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STILL READINGCarlos IzquierdoNational Centre for the Improvement of Science TeachingCaracas (Venezuela)

I continue to read yourmagazine with great interest. It has provento be a very useful tool in my work, in thefield of education and in the popularizationof science by radio and other media. Forthe past 21 years, I have produced a dailybroadcast entitled, “Life and Science”, andfor the last 11 a weekly programme, “Child-hood and the Future”.

Many thanks to the whole team atSources who knows just how to keep themagazine alive in the long-term.

http://www.unesco

I N S I G H T

3. . . . . .

PAGE AND SCREEN . . . . . . . . . . 4

PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

C O N T E N T S

F O C U S

A l l a r t i c l e s a r e f r e e o f c opy r i gh tres t r i c t ions and can be reproduced,i n wh i c h c a s e t h e ed i t o r s wou l dapprec ia te a copy. Pho to s ca rr y ingno copyright mark © may be obtainedb y t h e m e d i a o n d e m a n d .

U N E S C O S O U R C E S

Editorial and Distribution Services:UNESCOSOURCES, 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP. Tel.(+33 1) 45 68 16 73. Fax. (+33 1) 45 68 56 54.This magazine is destined for use as an infor-mation source and is not an official UNESCOdocument. ISSN 1014-6989.

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Pages 6 to 16

PLANET:

Culture• A BALANCING ACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Peace• BEWARETHE POOR MAN’S BOMB . . . . . . . . . . 20

Youth• OUT OF THE FRYING PAN... . . . . . 22

Education• CHILDREN HAVE RIGHTS TOO! . . 23

LOOKING AHEAD . . . . . . . . . . 24

Cover photo: ©HIEN LAM DUC

Death in Eastern Europe?

What’s to become of him?

Blasted bugs.

THE RIGHT TO PEACE

NOT JUSTSTREET SMART


W e mus t i d en t i f y t h e r oo t s o f g l oba l p r ob l ems and

s t r i v e , w i t h imag i na t i on and de t e rm ina t i on , t o c he ck

con f l i c t s i n t h e i r e a r l y s t age s . Be t t e r s t i l l p r e ven t t h em .

P r even t i on i s t h e v i c t o r y t ha t g i v e s t h e mea su r e o f ou r

d i s t i n c t i v e l y human f a cu l t i e s . We mus t know i n o r de r t o

f o r e s ee . F o re s ee i n o r de r t o p reven t . We mus t a c t i n a

t ime l y, d e c i s i v e and c ou rageou s manne r. . .

“ . . . A s y s t em c o l l a p s ed i n 1989 be cau se , c on c en t r a t i ng on

equa l i t y, i t f o r go t l i b e r t y. T he p re s en t s y s t em , f o cu s ed on

l i b e r t y, w i l l know t he s ame f a t e i f i t f o rge t s equa l i t y - and

so l i da r i t y. . . . We mus t t h en , f o r t h e s ake o f bo t h p r i n c i p l e

and s e l f - i n t e r e s t , r edoub l e i n e ve r y f i e l d t h e f i gh t aga i n s t

ex c l u s i on and ma rg i na l i z a t i on . . . P ea c e , d eve l opmen t and

democ ra cy f o rm an i n t e r a c t i v e t r i ang l e . T hey a r e mu tua l l y

r e i n f o r c i ng . W i t hou t d emoc ra cy, t h e r e i s no s u s t a i nab l e

deve l opmen t : d i s pa r i t i e s b e come un su s t a i nab l e and l e ad t o

impo s i t i on and dom ina t i on . . .

“ . . . E du ca t i on i s t h e key t o t h e u rgen t l y needed c hange i n

t he d i r e c t i on pu r sued by t oday ’s wo r l d , wh i c h i s i n c r ea s i ng

d i s pa r i t i e s i n t h e po s s e s s i on o f ma t e r i a l g ood s and know -

l edge i n s t ead o f r edu c i ng t h em .

“ . . . T h i s p r o f ound t r an s f o rma t i on f r om opp re s s i on and

con f i n emen t t o opene s s and gene ro s i t y, t h i s c hange ba s ed on

t he da i l y u s e o f a l l o f u s o f t h e v e rb ‘ t o s ha r e ’ - wh i c h i s

t h e key t o a new f u t u r e - c anno t b e a ch i e ved w i t hou t ou r

young peop l e . . .

“ . . . T he un i v e r s a l r enun c i a t i on o f v i o l en c e r equ i r e s t h e

commi tmen t o f t h e who l e o f s o c i e t y. T he s e a r e no t ma t t e r s

o f gove rnmen t bu t ma t t e r s o f S t a t e , no t on l y ma t t e r s f o r t h e

au tho r i t i e s bu t f o r s o c i e t y i n i t s en t i r e t y. . . I n o rde r t o

change t he wo r l d need s e ve r yone . . . I t i s t ime f o r a c t i on . . .

We mus t r ea c t , e a ch o f u s , t o t h e be s t o f ou r ab i l i t i e s . I t i s

no t j u s t a ma t t e r o f l o ok i ng a t wha t t h e gove rnmen t i s

do i ng . We mus t pa r t w i t h s ome th i ng o f ‘ ou r own ’ . We mus t

g i v e , g i v e o f ou r s e l v e s . ”

Ex t r a c t s f r om t he de c l a r a t i on o f D i re c t o r-Gene ra l F ede r i c o Mayo r

en t i t l e d “ The Human R i gh t t o Pea ce” ( J anua r y 1997 ) .

P A G E A N D S C R E E N


4. . . . .

BOOKS

UNESCO publications andperiodicals can be purchased atUNESCO Publishing bookstoresat Headquarters and throughnational distributors in mostcountries. In each Member State,books and periodicals can beconsulted at a UNESCOdepositary library.For further information or directorders by mail, fax or Internet:UNESCO Publishing, 7 place deFontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP(France), tel.: (+33 1) 01 45 6843 00, fax: (+33 1) 01 45 6857 41, Internet:http://www.UNESCO.org/publishing.

RENEWABLE ENERGYOF THE SUNOur lives revolve around the sunin ways we tend to ignore; fromour hominid ancestors opting forstone caves which, absorbingthe sun’s rays, offered relativelywarm places to spend the nightsto cosmonauts of the Mir SpaceStation depending on the ship’ssolar cells.With full-size colour photos, thiscommemorative brochure marksthe launching of the World SolarProgramme (1996-2005),serving as both a synopsis anda complement to MadanjeetSingh’s earlier book, The Sun:Eternal Flame of Creation, alsopublished by UNESCO. Looking

to history and culture, the authorrecounts how and why differentrenewable energy sources havedeveloped before exploring theirpotential. Steering clear of drytechnical language, the bookfires the imagination. Afterimagining the Romans andJapanese in theirgeothermically-heated pools2000 years ago, readers speedthrough history to find Icelandtapping into this source toprovide for 85% of all itsresidential heating needs.Turning to the oceans, we findengineers harvesting the energyof the waves. And there’s nooverlooking the rise of biogasplants, dotting rural landscapesin countries like India.The book also points to thewindfall of the “cultural tools” ofrenewable energies, with localcommunities worldwideintegrating them in their culturaltraditions.

● Renewable Energy of theSun, compiled and written byMadanjeet Singh, UNESCOPublishing 1996, 79 pp., 180 FF.

BASIC EDUCATIONAND WORKHas the reorganization of thework and marketplace de-stroyed common knowledge?Are the basic educationprogrammes provided at theworkplace offering employeesmeans for self-improvement orare they marginalizing them, bydemeaning their accumulatedskills and knowledge in favourof the corporate agendademanding specialized techno-skills? How can educators andlocal community groups fightagainst social exclusion anddeteriorating working condi-tions?Based on two years of “action-research” conducted throughthe UNESCO Institute forEducation (based in Hamburg,Germany), some 20 specialistsfrom 12 countries respond withconcrete examples in pursuingthe overall goal: “to promotethese alternative experiences ofwork in marginalized, periph-eral areas, with the support of acooperative network of re-searchers, professional workersand affiliated bodies”.

● Alpha 96 - Basic Educationand Work, edited by Jean-PaulHautecoeur, Culture ConceptsInc./UNESCO Institute forEducation 1996, 348 pp.,130 FF.

COMPACT DISCS

MUSIC TRADITIONSOF MALAWISimmering in the country’scultural diversity, the recordingsoffer a rich blend of influencesspiced with an original flavour.The result is a highly-varied yetdistinctly “Malawian” music -from the formation dancesderived from decades ofwatching colonial marchingbands to the proverbial storytell-ing accompanied by bangwe, aseven-stringed board zither.

PROSPECTSAppeals for education reformare leading a bandwagonaround the world, attractinggovernments, internationalorganizations and NGOs alike.However, they risk putting thecart before the horse, ignoringthe major actors - teachers.The latest issue of Prospects (No.99) looks to the future of theschool with an opening articleby Jacques Attali, beforeexamining the quandary inwhich “modern educationalpolicies and reforms demand anideal teacher that does not existin reality and whose availability,in the numbers required, willtake decades to develop”,according to the contributorRosa Maria Torres.The issue moves on to explorethe many facets involved, bylooking at who and where arethe world’s 60 million teachers,essentially ignored in the reform

PERIODICALS

process. Instead of planning thereform first and trainingteachers afterwards, authorspoint, for example, to the needto not just include them butencourage their “profession-alization”, enabling them “todevote less energy to sleight ofhand and apparent conformity,and more to achieving objec-tives and engaging in dialoguewith those to whom they areanswerable”.While exploring general trendsin both industrialized anddeveloping countries, the reviewprovides case-studies fromSpain to sub-Saharan Africa.

THE UNESCO COURIERWhat is the link betweenTangiers, New York, Bombay, LaPaz, Marseilles and Vancouver?All of these cities have a history“punctuated by the arrival ofsuccessive waves of immi-grants”, remind the editorialistsof the March issue whichhighlights “Plural Cities”.Whether they be famous fortheir ports and financial centresor notorious for their slums,these cities have all “acquiredthe knack of handling spasms ofviolence and even of drawingvitality from them”, oftenbecoming the “pacemakers” oftheir countries, instilling a“creative energy” which “seepsthrough hidden channels intooutlying areas, bearing much-needed antidotes to uniformityand conformity”.

Complex instrumentals take thelead, with nyakatangale, amouth-resonating musical bow,ulimba, a gourd-resonatingxylophone, nkhwendo, tubularidiophones and mitungu, thestruck hoe blade ensemble. Andwith the influences of peoples

like the Lomwe, Chewa andNgoni, Malawians are alsomasters in intricate drumensembles, with rhythmicexcitement building in danceceremonies beating from sunsetto dawn.

● Music Traditions of Malawi.Musics and Musicians of theWorld Collection. UNESCO/AUVIDIS, Price: 145 FF.

http://www

P E O P L E


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BATTLING THE IRRATIONALWITH JIRI GRYGAR

MALA SALGADO: STRIPPINGAWAY THE GLAMOUR

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W ith an undergraduatedegree in her native Sri

Lanka and a master in arts froman American university, MalaSalgado was well on her way to abrilliant career as a sociologist.Churning out papers for publica-tion, she found her niche indemographics, tracing the linksbetween fertility and female la-bour trends. But in 1989, Salgadohad to deal with her own popula-tion changes: twins to add to heryoung son. She took time out.

It didn’t take long, however,before she was back on the pro-fessional track, albeit in a differ-ent direction, working with thenon-governmental Alcohol andDrug Information Centre(ADIC). With a UNESCO fel-lowship of $1,500, she has re-cently completed a study on thecentre’s progress and pitfalls.

“As much as 60% of the adultpopulation (over the age of 18)drinks and smokes. Kids usuallystart around the age of 14,” shesays, before pointing to the un-precedented advertising cam-paigns launched by the tobaccoand alcohol industries. “Withconsumption dropping in indus-trialized countries, they’re nowtargeting the developing world.”

Setting out to launch a coun-ter-attack with preventative ac-tion in the island’s schools, ADICran up against some unexpectedresistance: smoking teachers alltoo appreciative of lighting up acigarette with the evening’s ape-ritif. But the students presentedanother surprise: unbridled enthu-siasm.

“Instead of lecturing on thehealth risks, we focused on de-glamourising drugs, getting kidsbetween the ages of 12 and 16 to

see through the publicity mythsand images insisting that theyneed to smoke or drink for realenjoyment.”

Seeing their fathers spend, forexample, 30% of the family in-come on cigarettes and alcohol,Salgado says the kids formed

“action groups”, countering theadvertising by plastering theirown posters and stickers inschools, shops, buses and even athome. In Matara and Hambanto,for example, they met with mem-bers of parliament to restrict thenumber of new liquor shopsopened, while two schools inWattegama in the Kandy districtsuccessfully removed all tobaccoadvertisements in local shops.

But perhaps their biggest bat-tle has been fought at Colombo’sbeloved cricket field, where thedreaded billboards cast theirshadow over school matches.Seeing red, they launched anothercampaign, but this time had tosettle on a compromise: sheets tocover the billboards duringschool-related events. And thenext game-plan? “Oooh!” saysSalgado. “Better ask the kids.”

A.O.

Working at Czechoslovakia’sastronomy institute should

have been a dream come true forJiri Grygar who recorded his firstmeteor shower at the age of 13.But politics blocked his view in1980, with his superiors “lockinghim in the institute”, cutting himoff from outside contact and hisstudents after he repeatedly re-fused to join the Communistparty. Thanking his lucky stars,the astronomer found refuge in amost unusual place: a low-tem-perature physics laboratory wherehe dreamed of using infrared re-mote sensing to map the heavens.Shifting to a high-temp lab, hemoved closer to the skies by im-agining the origins of the uni-verse.

But Grygar found that the ‘bigbang’ in his professional life camenot just in doing science, but popu-larizing it. And so he launched aseries of books and radio showslike Meteor, “an island out of themainstream of media propa-ganda”. He offered “the kind ofinformation peole hungered for”.

The Velvet Revolution hassince swept aside the censors’floodgates, but today Grygar

finds himself fighting againsta rising tide of “pseudo-scienceentertainment shows”. To rein-force his efforts, he will receivethe UNESCO Kalinga Prize forpopularizing science at a cer-emony in New Delhi (India) on31 March along with the Indianastrophysicist Jayant V. Narlikar.

“My role has changed,” saysGrygar. “Under the communists,scientists were the lucky few tohave contacts with the outsideworld. So we tried to share thisinformation to keep up the spiritof a nation oppressed.” Now,Grygar sees himself as a public“protector”, fighting against theonslaught of the “irrational... Wehave more than 30,000 so-calledhealers, claiming to cure diseaseby emanating special radiationfrom their hands or by mappingthe supposed pathogenic zones ofpeople’s homes. It’s been a catas-trophe since Vaclav Havel report-edly moved his bedroom from oneside of his home to another be-cause of bad energy.” And thenof course, there are the astrono-mer’s “traditional enemies”, as-trologists, discouraged under thecommunists and thus in high de-mand today, according to Grygar.

These “destructive forces”are now being promoted on tvshows which Grygar tries tocounterbalance as chairman ofthe Czech Television Council.Continuing with his radio pro-grammes, lectures and books,Grygar is branching out, creatingassociations like the Czech Scep-tical Society. “You could call itthe Sisyphus Society,” he says.“We’ve got the same uphill bat-tle.” And the same determination.

Amy OTCHET

● UNESCO is “a leadinginternational voice on behalf ofeducation and literacy for all, ”declared KOFI ANNAN, THESECRETARY-GENERAL OF THEUNITED NATIONS, in anaddress to the American Council

on Education in WashingtonD.C. on February 24th. A voicewhose message should be madea “global priority” according toMr. Annan, for whom “the firstingredient of political stability isan informed citizen. The first

ingredient of economic pro-gress is a skilled worker. Andthe first ingredient of socialjustice is an enlightened society.Education is, thus, a key toglobal peace and well-being...the principal agent in efforts

to build (the) pillars of humansociety.” This education shouldpromote “understanding,tolerance and friendship amongall nations, racial or religiousgroups,” the Secretary-Generalsaid.

LEARNING TO WORK WITH THEIR HANDSCAN HELP PUT KIDS WHO HAVE HAD

DIFFICULTIES LEARNING BACK ON THEEDUCATION TRACK (Photo G. Cerallin,

Écoles Sans Frontières).

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U N E S C O S 0 U R C E S N o . 8 8 / M A R C H 1 9 9 7

F O C U S

7. . . . . .

NOT JUST STREET SMART

T h i s m o n t h ’s d o s s i e r

I t’s not only because they’re homelessthat they end up in the streets,” explains

Father Patrick Giros, founder of the Frenchassociation “Aux captifs la liberation” (Lib-eration for Captives). “It’s because they’vebeen rejected in a thousand and one ways.”Street children have accumulated a seriesof failures. The first almost always involvesthe family. Neglected, beaten, raped, thesechildren substitute street violence for thatof their parents. Forced to earn money, theyend up leaving “service station families”where they no longer belong, and failurein school inevitably follows.

ALWAYS MORE NUMEROUSThey are thus millions living at the fron-tiers of a society which has become inac-cessible. How many exactly? Always morenumerous, insist social workers.

The figures, however, don’t mean verymuch. All depends on how you define“street child”, a term which covers differ-ent realities: those who work in the streetand go home periodically (the most numer-ous), those who live in the streets 24 hoursa day, and runaways. According toUNICEF, they total over 100 million andalmost half of them are in Latin America.“But when I’m asked where the problemis most severe, I am tempted to say that

it’s not in places where they are the mostnumerous, but rather where no-one’s talk-ing about them,” warns Stephane Tessier,the programme coordinator at the Interna-tional Centre for Childhood and the Fam-ily. “Today, all of the world’s biggest cit-ies - in the developing countries, those intransition and those in the industrializednations - function by excluding children.”In the latter, they are less visible becausethey are rapidly placed in homes or spe-cialized insititutions. But the mesh of these“safety nets” stretches under the weight ofcurrent neo-liberal policies. A Council ofEurope study concluded that “the phenom-enon is a major problem in many Europeancountries”, although it is often “poorlyrecognized”, “badly understood” and “de-nied”. In the United States, street childrennumber about 750,000 according to soci-ologist Irving Epstein.

The school, which dispatches them intolow-grade classes or excludes them com-pletely, is of no help. “Rather than directlyacknowledge the power of the culture ofthe street and the skills that one must learnin order to survive within that culture (re-spect of temporality, mistrust of authorityand elimination of private and public enti-tlement to space) the formal education re-sponse is one of encouraging homeless

children to blend into the existing schoolsystem without structurally adapting the sys-tem to their specific needs,” writes Epsteinin a recent article in the magazine Compara-tive Education. He contends that onlyNGOs and charitable organizations closeto the Church can, for the moment, help inthe area of education. Yet their efforts areoften seen as marginal by governments indeveloping countries. “What makes thecase of homeless children and youth uniqueor worthy of special attention?” he asks.“The answer lies in the distinctive cultureof street life, whose values, while internallyconsistent, are entirely antiethical to thosepracticed in schools.”

THE SAME EVERYWHEREAs specific as it is, this culture is no lessstandardized and global: identical from oneend of the planet to another. “In cities ofover one million inhabitants, the organiza-tion of public space is the same everywhere,with traditional cultural landmarks strictlylimited to family and school ties,” saysTessier. “We find the same consumer andmarket ideology. You can even watch thesame soaps and sitcoms on the tv screensin shop display windows.”

And there are many other points incommon. Street children live in gangs and

Street children have no place in the world of adults. Beaten, kicked out of their homes, unjustly impris-oned (p.9), they are even killed off like vermin in certain cities like Sao Paulo (p.12-13). And schools,which are either incapable or simply not interested in responding to their specific needs, represent justanother defeat for these kids (see below).Today, the non-governmental organizations are the only ones having any success in providing thesechildren with the kind of comprehensive care they need to relearn to be part of society. In Mexico, theJuconi Foundation is working to reintroduce them into the formal education system (p.10), while inSenegal, an unusual Koranic school is using whatever means available to offer them a trade (p.11).But all projects of this kind are doomed to fail without the support of qualified and competent educa-tors, sorely lacking in cities like Bucharest (p.14), or unless help is given to the children’s families, whocan be difficult to reach, as in Ho Chi Minh City (p.15). Then there are the police, who run into thesekids on a daily basis and, provided they receive the special training required and are subjected tonecessary controls, can provide real help rather than harm (p.16).

F O C U S


D o s s i e r

8. . . . . .

CH I LDREN IN NEED

need money to survive. They sell what theyhave: their working power, their docility,their penal immunity and their bodies.“Studies reveal that they earn the equiva-lent of about two minimum wages eachmonth. But they have no possibility of sav-ing any money because they spend it allrapidly or it’s stolen from them.” The “ca-reers” of street children, from Bogota toKinshasa, from Manila to Los Angeles, arethus very similar. When they are small,they’re used by the bigger children for thejobs out front: as lookouts, messengers, tocarry drugs, etc. After that they must be-come gang leaders to keep clear of the po-lice, the mafia, rival gangs and the like.

Many are ravaged by drugs by the ageof 15 and it is estimated that 80% to 90%of children who live in the streets havetaken drugs at one time or another. Theysniff glue, solvents of all kinds, or carbonmonoxide, using a plastic bag attached toautomobile exhaust pipes. Those with themost money, who work regularly, buythemselves a bit of crack. “They’ll tell youthat they take drugs to forget their miser-ies and that, in any case, they’re going todie soon.”

VULNERABLEIt is this same incapacity to project them-selves into the future, this “strongly identi-fying” valorization of the notion of danger,of risk taking, which, together with the de-mands of “clients”, cause them to refusecondoms and makes them particularly vul-nerable to AIDS. Nervous, unstable, totallyself-centred, accustomed to putting them-selves down, lost in a moral and affectivedesert, they owe their survival, in the final

analysis, to that which helps push them far-ther and farther away from non-violent “ne-gotiated society”.

Does all this mean that they are irre-trievable? The efforts undertaken by thou-sands of associations and NGOs in poorurban areas prove that much can be done,provided that they are given the means tocarry out the job at hand.

The first condition is to train media-tors, who recognize these children as fully-fledged citizens and are familiar with theiruniverse. These “street educators” knowhow to decipher these kids’ behaviour,communicate with them and orient themtowards the appropriate social services.

The police also have a role to play. “Inmany countries, when everyone has de-serted ‘high-risk’ zones, the police findthemselves on the frontline,” says Tessier.“Of course we must denounce murder andtorture of which a small minority is guilty,but it is also very important for the futureto avoid constantly associating police withthese exactions. We must teach them toapproach kids without entering into thespiral of provocation. When the police losetheir legitimacy, a vacuum is created andwho occupies it? Religious extremists andthe mafia, who arrive with a ‘package’ ofclear-cut values and wads of money.” Likestreet educators, the police must know howto orient children towards structures capa-ble of convincing them that they still havea place in society.

From there on in, a long apprentice-ship can begin. This requires a lot of will-power on the part of the children and a lotof individual follow-up, perseverance, en-ergy and considerable personal commitment

on the part of educators. To teach childrento play again, to know how to behave orspeak correctly, to respect others, they usepractical disciplines, usually including anintroduction to business or a trade, and toall of the activities based on creativity:theatre, pantomime, dance, design, photo,video, etc. The hardest hit need psycho-therapy, and the poor, that is to say, all ofthem, need material help to compensate fora drop in their earnings since they will beworking less or not at all in the street.

This method has all the more chanceof success if it involves families, who canoften be identified. Experience proves thatthe degree of family cooperation conditionsalmost everything else, beginning withreinsertion into the classic education sys-tem, or professional training.

T H E I R W O R S T E N E M Y“Educational concerns must focus bothupon what happens outside the school, forexample street violence, murder, etc., ... aswell as what type of environment is beingprovided within the school,” insists IrvingEpstein. These efforts must also be accom-panied by an attempt to sensitize publicopinion, which generally oscillates betweenindifference and hostility towards streetchildren. “We must not forget that the popu-lation is often their worst enemy,” saysTessier. In some countries, where the childis looked upon as a small sub-adult - easilymalleable and available for whatever needsto be done - the entire ancestral social sys-tem must be reformed in depth.

In Brazil, an unprecedented campaignto mobilize the media and voluntary or-ganizations resulted in a small revolution:in a country where businessmen pay deathsquads to shoot them down, street childrenthus found themselves at the heart of thepolitical debate. In June 1990, the new Stat-ute of the Child and the Adolescent re-placed the Code of Minors, utilized underthe dictatorship as an instrument of repres-sion. At the same time “tutelary councils”have been set up to monitor application ofthe Convention of the Rights of the Childin all muncipalities. This is a first impor-tant step but one which, in Tessier’s opin-ion, is still “very abstract”.

As elsewhere, nothing will reallychange, he concludes, so long as “thesechildren are rejected on all fronts”; so longas “social democracy remains but a faintglimmer”.

Sophie BOUKHARI

“Basic education should be provided to all children, youth and adults... The poor,street and working children should not suffer any discrimination in access to learningopportunities.” In response to article 3 of the World Declaration on Educationadopted in 1990, UNESCO developed the Education Programme for Children inNeed, encompassing children living on the streets, handicapped and exploited,victims of war, marginalized youth...Launched in Germany in 1992, the fund-raising campaign has now collectedabout ten million dollars. The funds, which have supported projects in all regionsof the world, are essentially used to educate and train these children, to reinforcethe training of educators and police in contact with them and to build and renovatenew shelters. UNESCO intends to develop this programme with the help of itsnational commissions and regional and national offices. It will also pursuecooperation in this field with its sister agencies in the United Nations, and seeksupport from educational research organizations.Naturally, in order to be as close as possible to children in difficulty, the programme’sactivities will be carried out in close collaboration with organizations already ac-tive in this domain.

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F O C U S

spells in prison have been awaiting trial forminor offences. Amendments to the Cor-rectional Service Act last May stipulatedthat juvenile court cases could not be post-poned for more than 14 days and that chil-dren accused of minor offences could notbe held in cells while waiting to appear incourt. But two of the country’s nine pris-ons have no other secure places to holdchildren. Many of the children caught inthis system join prison gangs, making forthe disturbing paradox in which kids areintroduced to criminality for the first timeafter they are arrested.

Rehana ROSSOUWCape Town

ANYWHERE BUT HOME

“I was born in New York’s Elmhurst Hospital on October 25, 1975. Ever since I was15 I’ve been in and out of the system. I’ve been benched, which in police terms meansthat I spent four days on the street in January 1992.“My mother had a drug problem. It was bad - she was pushing. You’d find drugs allover the place, in the couches, everywhere. My teachers knew I was having problemswith her. She was using the social security checks for drugs.“One afternoon she threatened to hit me. I told my guidance counsellor; she told mymother that charges would be filed against her. That’s when my mother told me to getmy stuff out of the house. She didn’t want me there. I was too much trouble.“That was when the snowstorms hit New York. I stayed in the hall of her apartmentbuilding, no food, no money, no nothing. I covered up with my coat, but the windowswere open. I was numb all over, dizzy and weak. I stayed there after school, thatnight, the next day, another night and then the second day until about three.“A neighbour came to check the roof and saw me. I couldn’t stop shaking. She didn’twant to get involved, but said, “boy, go get yourself something to eat”. I took themoney and bought three slices of pizza and something to wash it down.“I was too embarrassed to go to school. I had the address of the shelter the guidancecounsellor gave me but my foot hurt. I walked to the hospital. They said I had frostbite.They put me in a psych ward because they felt I was going to kill myself. I did thinkabout it, mostly because of my mother. I got out the next day, though, with a foot cast.“I ended up in Covenant House but I kept going back to my mother. I mean she is mymother. My sister who lives in Colorado Springs knows about her, and told me to getout of there. She was smarter, but I am the only son and closer to my mother.“I finally did go to Colorado Springs and got a job at a convenience store. I wasmaking money, but after almost a year, I heard my mother was sick and I came backto help. It didn’t work out and I was back and forth at places and then at Covenant.“This man there told me you can only go so low. Then you have to start at the begin-ning and correct the problem. I’m starting new. I’ve got a lot of anger, but I’m turningit around.”

Ravin, a 20-year-old black male, is now with the Covenant House, a non-governmen-tal organization offering room, board and a stable living environment, so that he cancontinue his education and learn a trade.

Patrice ADCROFTNew York

P o r t r a i t s

9. . . . . .

DOWN AND OUT IN NEW YORK CITY

A t 14, Ricardo Josephs spends hisdays roaming the streets of Cape

Town (South Africa), panhandling fromtourists and begging for scraps of food out-side restaurants. Nights are spent in thedoorways of businesses, huddled forwarmth with the group of 10 or so boys he“hangs with” for protection and friendship.

Ricardo joins the ranks of the estimated4,000 children living on the streets of thecapital. Their average age seems to be 11,although many kids don’t know when theywere born. Until recently, the authoritiespaid them little attention, with just twoshelters set-up in the past 20 years. But nowanother shelter and training centre for girls,Ons Plek, is under construction withUNESCO’s financial assistance. In themeanwhile, kids can wash, see a doctor andcontinue their basic education at a com-munity centre. While 80% of the streetchildren are boys, the 20% made up of girlsis on the rise along with child prostitution.

“I’m not a rent boy (prostitute),”Ricardo says defensively. “Some of theboys on the street get a good deal from theirregulars and they scheme (think) they canlive a nice life off rich men. But I’m not ahomosexual, I’ve got a girlfriend.”

NEVER GO ING BACKRicardo was born in the rural town ofGeorge, about 600 km from Cape Town.He ran away four years ago after an abu-sive stepfather knocked him unconscious.“I miss my mother but she never did any-thing to help me,” he says. “Her husbandis more important to her than her four chil-dren. I’m never going home again.”

With services and shelters lacking,Ricardo, like so many other homeless boys,is a frequent and forced guest at the city’sPollsmoor Prison, despite PresidentMandela’s edict in 1994 forbidding theimprisonment of homeless children. “I’vebeen in Pollsmoor three times since I gotonto the streets,” says Ricardo, with a non-chalant shrug. “I’ve also been held at po-lice stations a lot of times. I’m not scaredof prison, but I don’t want to go back.”

But a tear rolls down his face whenasked whether he was sexually abused byolder youths. “They beat me, that’s all theydid to me, nothing else. The bigger boys

bully us. They steal our food and our blan-kets and there’s nothing we can do to stopthem.”

Ricardo says that the first time he washeld at Pollsmoor, he shared a cell withadult males - despite claims by the Depart-ment of Correctional Services that childrenare held separately. Ricardo also says thatthere is no provision for education. Thekids are locked into their cells for 23 hourseach day, with one hour spent outdoors forexercise in a concrete, walled courtyard.

“The last time I was at Pollsmoor itwas a bit better. We had a television in ourcell every second day and we could watchany programme we wanted.” Ricardo hasnever been convicted of a crime. All his

At 10, Ricardo hit the streets and prisons of Cape Town to escape his violent stepfather.Meanwhile in New York, Ravin finds himself kicked-out of home at 15 by his drug-addicted mother.

F O C U S


A FAMILY AFFAIR

D o s s i e r

10. . . . . .

In Mexico, the Juconi Foundation gives priority to reintegrating street children into their families,and helping those families to cope better.

I t began with “operation friendship”organized by the Juconi Foundation in

favour of children on and in the streets ofPuebla. This city of two million inhabitants“surrounded by 11 poor and marginalizedstates (including Chiapas and the state ofMexico) is a frequent stopover on the wayto the capital,” explains Alison Lane, thedirector of Juconi.“We’ve calculated thatthere are between 120 and 150 street kidsin Puebla and several thousand child work-ers.”

Since 1989, the Juconi Foundation,with UNESCO’s support from 1992 on-wards, has helped more than 2,000 of thesechildren.

Educators first observe the childrenbefore making contact. Young people fromthe foundation as well as familiar commu-nity members such as ticket vendors areused as mediators. “Initially, they just in-troduce themselves and show photographsillustrating the foundation’s activities. Butthey come back, day after day, and invitethe kids to eat a sandwich or to have adrink or even play a game of football.”Over the next few months, the educatorsevaluate the children’s needs. They selectthose they feel will benefit most from theprogrammes. “We can’t help everybodyand tend to concentrate on those kids whodon’t go to school at all. We realize as wellthat there is little chance of ‘recuperating’a child who’s spent over three years in thestreets.”

A TA I LOR-MADE APPROACHThe foundation divides the kids into threecategories: street living children; streetworking children (especially at bus stopsand traffic lights); and market children.

The children who work in the streets,boys and girls aged from three to 17, haveenormous difficulties reading, writing oreven expressing themselves, since Span-ish is not always their mother tongue. Theyare cared for at home. The educators (28professionals helped by about 100 studentsin training at the foundation) work closelywith a network of schools, training cen-tres and companies to boost the children’seducational level and get them back intothe system. This means they spend lesstime working in the street. To compensate

for their loss of revenue, the foundationfinds them small jobs in a protected pro-fessional environment, and scholarships tocover food, supplies, uniforms and trans-port to school. At the same time, they helpto create a stable family environment byworking with the parents, and particularlythe mothers: more than 50% of these kidslive in single parent households.

“We help these families to better man-age their income. We stress the importanceof punctuality and personal appearance

and accompany them to job interviews. Wealso try to influence family dynamics. Whenchildren start earning money they startplaying the big shot. But by going to schoolregularly, they usually learn to becomechildren again.”

The market children are easier to inte-grate in group activities. They form a rela-tively homogenous population who live inthe same area. The most motivated partici-pate in the “day centre” which takes in be-tween 170 and 180 each year for four orfive hours daily. They are divided intogroups according to their age, given el-ementary schooling and benefit from vari-ous services: food aid, showers, medicalhelp... Twice a week they follow lessonsin basic hygiene and health.

“All the kids have communication prob-lems. We use music, mime, theatre andmovement to help them identify their emo-tions and become aware of their bodies.”The parents are involved here as well. Apartfrom literacy classes, they are taught to plantheir shopping, to cook balanced meals andmanage their homes.

The foundation has a totally differentapproach to street living kids, most ofwhom are boys. The emphasis is on reinte-grating the children into their families.“They all have a family, but can’t stand itanymore. Most of them are victims of ne-glect and some of terrible mental andphysical abuse or systematic rejection.”While preparing to return home, these kidsaged from five to 17, are housed in the“Casa Juconi”, which can take in 20 to 30at a time for a maximum of 18 months.

Here they have access to the same serv-ices offered by the day centre as well asextra psychological support (group and in-dividual therapy). To help them expressthemselves, the educators organize jointsessions each evening where the childrentry to free themselves from their “familyanguish”. Those who are unable to take part,or whose families continue to reject them,go to foster homes in the region.

Support to the children continues forthree years after they have left the founda-tion. “We follow their schooling, develop-ment and help strengthen family ties.” Outof 580 minors taken in charge during 1996,only 116 have returned to the streets.“When there is a failure, it means we’vebeen unable to enlist the family’s help. Re-habilitation is a long and tortuous proc-ess. One child ran away from the CasaJuconi eight times. We managed to per-suade him to come back and participateagain. But street kids are very mobile.Sometimes we never find them again.”

S.B.with Aurora VEGA in Puebla

W O R K I N GC H I L D R E NA R E C A R E DF O R I NT H E I R O W NH O M E S W I T HT H E I RB R O T H E R SA N D S I S T E R S( P h o t oJ u c o n iF o u n d a t i o n ) .

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F O C U S

11. . . . . .

D o s s i e r

FROM THE KORAN TO CARPENTRYIn Dakar, kids beg for their religious schoolmasters. But in the suburbs, a “modern” Koranic schooloffers boys and girls basic education and job training.

At 18, Coda Nguer is one of the oldestresidents of the daara Islamic school

in Malika, 20 km northeast of Dakar, wherehis mother sent him when he was nine. Hedecided to take a job as watchman at theschool after five years learning carpentrythere, rather than face the outside world. “Iget 30 to 60 dollars a month which enablesme to help my family,” he says, though headmits that he would like to go abroad oneday and try his luck. The daara at Malikawas built in 1980 after a group of womenwere “shocked to see hundreds of rootlessand destitute taliban (pupils at Islamicschools) in the streets,” says one of itsfounders, Catherine Koate.

UNDER THE MARABOUTFor most parents, an Arab-Islamic educa-tion is a sacred duty. In the poorest fami-lies, it is sometimes seen as a way to avoidfeeding another hungry child. A recentUNESCO survey found that 80% of all chil-dren attend more than 3,000 daaras inSenegal. There are only 2,434 formalprimary schools in the country. Howeverthe daaras use out-of-date methods andlessons do not go beyond basic religiousinstruction in Arabic. The taliban areoften forced to go begging and more thana thousand of them make a living thatway in Dakar to support themselves andtheir priest-teacher, or marabout. After be-ing handed over to the daara by their par-ents, some do not see their relatives foryears. “Sometimes, after 15 years, thepriests give the children back to familiesthey don’t belong to,” says Koate.

For her, the moment of inspirationcame when the young taliban who tendedher mother’s garden died. “Like all of them,he ate anything at hand and died of foodpoisoning. The marabout could have savedhim by raising the alarm.” Today, herdaara - which is subsidized by the gov-ernment and other organizations, includ-ing UNESCO since 1995 - has about 120pupils, including some girls, who havebeen admitted as non-residents for the pastfive years.

Some of the children have comestraight off the street, others have been sentby their parents or guardians or by publicservices such as the ministries of family

affairs or justice. All of them arrive be-tween the ages of five and nine and two-thirds of them live at the school. TheMalika daara combines tradition and mo-dernity, providing Koranic instructionbut also basic education in three lan-guages - Arabic, Wolof (the most-widelyused local language) and French. “Wehave to be practical and think above all ofthe child’s interests,” says the teacher of aclass of ten and eleven-year-olds, AbdouKhadre Sene. “In Senegal, knowing Frenchis an advantage in getting a job.”

The education level of his pupils, hesays, is “just as good” as at other schoolsin the capital. However, he only has toteach a class of 11 children, while the main-stream classes can have as many as 50 pu-pils. “At least half of them should qualifyfor entry to secondary schools,” he says.Not bad, considering only 10% of all pri-mary schoolchildren in Senegal qualify.

What about those who don’t? Thedaara doesn’t let them leave empty-handed.

Right from the beginning, the schoolteaches them how to tend crops and lookafter poultry. The mornings are devoted totheir lessons but in the afternoon, pupilscan grow vegetables on a small plot, lookafter fruit trees and help run the hen-house.In general, the older pupils look after theyounger ones and are responsible for theupkeep of the equipment. Some of the chil-dren have really taken to farming and goon to pass exams to get further training.

The school’s carpentry workshop cantrain about 15 apprentices between the ageof 14 and 17. About a year ago, it acquired

most of the tools and staff needed. A mas-ter carpenter from Saint-Louis is training,over three years, the first proper class infurniture-making. Most of the pupils dreamof setting up a business on their own. Butnot many manage to scrape together theinitial capital required. With their solidtraining, they will probably find a job in asmall existing carpentry shop for a tinywage. The smartest of them will prosperby taking private job orders on the sideunknown to their boss.

Koate is aware of the problems of find-ing employment in a crowded job market.There are plenty of carpenters working onthe streets of Dakar. She wants to set up anew workshop to train pupils in electrical,telephone and television maintenance, butthere is one major problem: electricity. Thedaara, which uses solar energy, is not yetconnected to the national grid. And the cityauthorities are unwilling to hook it up ongrounds of cost because the school is in an“out of the way” place.

So the future of the Malika taliban isfar from secure. So far, a few former pu-pils have passed their high school examsand gone on to higher education. Othershave started up small businesses or goneabroad. But most of them get by as bestthey can, picking up any little jobs theyfind. One or two even come back and askfor help from the daara. But none of them- pupils, apprentices or those without work- go begging on the street.

Aminata TOUREDakar

W H A T K I N D SO F J O BP R O S P E C T SA W A I T ?( P h o t o ©T i g e r P h o t o ) .


F O C U S

12. . . . . .

The youngest was less than one year old, the eldest 21. These 48 children, who lived in the miserable conditionor killed by stray bullets. Their photos were collected during an investigation carried out by two journalists for

IN COLD BLOOD ...

F O C U S


13. . . . . .

ns of Sao Paulo's favelas, are among the thousands who have been murdered by Brazil's drug lords and police,r the Burti printing company, which published them in its 1997 calendar.

F O C U S


SETTLING THE DUSTGetting Viet Nam’s street children back into school means convincing their families that educationis a profitable investment.

D o s s i e r

14 . . . . . .

They call them the “buôi doi” - “dustof life”. Indeed, the street children of

Viet Nam’s big cities are growing in numberevery day and non-governmental organiza-tions say the capital, Ho Chi Minh City, hasas many as 50,000. Nearly all maintainregular contact with their parents or someother member of their family, even if onlya distant uncle.

Most are excluded from the officialschool system, in which “there is a drop-out rate of 20% a year in poor neighbour-hoods and which, like the rest of the coun-try, is inconsistent,” says Nelly Le Priol, avolunteer with Ecoles sans frontières (ESF- Schools Without Borders). ESF has setup in Viet Nam the “Schools of Hope” pro-gramme of the Christina Noble Associa-tion which aims to get children back intothe official system or to attend a vocationaltraining centre. Financed by UNESCOsince the end of 1992, it has trained teach-ers and repaired 13 informal schoolsfounded for the very poor by volunteers orformer teachers pushed out by the commu-nist regime.

“These schools, where the teachers are sel-dom qualified, are at the bottom of a four-level scale,” says Le Priol. “Above the‘schools of hope’, you have the Pho Cap,the ‘alternative’ state schools which pro-vide, often free, a basic education pro-gramme of 10 hours a week. Then there’sthe Pho Thong, the formal state schools,and at the very top the private or semi-pri-vate schools.”

However getting street children backinto any sort of class can be difficult. “At16 or 17, some of them don’t want to sitalongside children who are much youngerto learn to read and write,” says Le Priol.But mostly it’s their families which keepthem away, often because the fees andschool gear are too expensive, sometimesbecause their papers are not in order (if,for example, they have left their area ofresidence without permission to go andwork in the city), and nearly always be-cause children who attend classes don’tearn any income.

These families only have about $15-20a month to buy food and, often, repay loans

carrying about 30% monthly interest. “Theteachers visit them to try to persuade themto send their children to school, but theyrarely succeed,” says Le Priol. “Onewoman said she’d rather send her daugh-ter out to be a prostitute than to school.”

To win them over, ESF has tried twomethods - providing meals to the poorestchildren through women’s associations or

counselling the families and giving theman allowance to buy healthier food for thechildren. “We really prefer the first solu-tion, but the second has proved the mosteffective,” says Maïté Barrès of ESF. “Notonly did some children gain in height andweight but their parents or relatives cameregularly to the monthly meetings organ-ized by the teachers and at the end of whichthe allowances were paid. At first, theydidn’t take part in the proceedings. But bitby bit, they began to talk with the teach-ers. A certain trust developed. In someneighbourhoods, when the children wereable to return to the state schools, parentswere reluctant.” But they will have to getused to the idea because the ‘schools ofhope’ won’t be there forever, notes Barrès.“One day the government will knock themall down. It’s already on the drawingboard.”

The programme also provides scholar-ships and has developed a system of mi-cro-credits. It was intended to help the chil-dren indirectly by enabling the women inthe family to set up income-earning activi-ties. “This has been a failure,” admits

Barrès. “We’ve managed to improve life forsome families but they’ve rarely reinvestedmoney in the children by registering themin a formal school or buying them booksor more nourishing food.”

Aside from the problems of obligatorycooperation with the neighbourhood com-mittees, which supervise the schools andwhich are stifling in some places, the small

loans (about $37 repayable over threemonths at interest of 2% a month) havesometimes enabled the women to expandtheir small businesses. But most of themuse it to guard against misfortune,“I usedit all to buy medicine,” said one. Anotherwoman repaired her shack. A third paidback a harassing moneylender. “One craftyperson even lent out the money to othersat a higher interest rate,” says Le Priol.

Do such efforts have any long-term ef-fect? “Despite the failures of some partsof the programme, what we’ve done withthe parents is useful,” says Barrès. “If theyhave listened at all, even for a little while,something will always remain.” The lowdrop-out rate in the schools of hope, rang-ing between eight to 12%, is another plus.“But the most encouraging result is with-out a doubt the work done with the educa-tion services and the public schools in re-integrating these kids in the official sys-tem: about 100 have been able to get backinto the Pho Cap and a smaller group inPho Thong.”

S. B.

A C L A S S O FH O P E F U L S

( P h o t o © E S Fa n d C h r i s t i n a

N o b l e F o u n d a t i o n ) .

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F O C U S

Cristescu of the Ciresarii Centre, where po-lice dump young vagabonds and delin-quents. Before the programme, the staffacted like “prison guards”, without themeans to offer any entertaining or creativeeducational activities, according to PatriciaDhont, who coordinated the courses.Above all, the participants learned to ques-tion the way they viewed the children, evenif some of them have since quit their jobs:39 instructors out the 57 attended more than5 sessions out of the 24 organized. “Ithought I knew it all but now I realize thatI know nothing,” admits a participant. “Inthe name of genetics, the children’s behav-iour was seen as something that couldn’treally be changed and therefore bore noconnection to the responsibility of the in-structor,” explains Dhont, adding that theparticipants were generally “very eager tolearn more about behaviour”. Throughrole-playing exercises, videos and just bywatching the way the instructors interacted

with the kids and by meeting with psy-chologists, they learned to establish affec-tionate relationships in reaching out to thechildren and creating an almost familialatmosphere. “I want to get rid of the mo-notony in my work and make it more dy-namic, even on the rainiest afternoon,”says George, who learned to use art, lit-erature, games and sports to animate hiscentre. “At first, I didn’t know how to dealwith the kids when they got into these ag-gressive fits, especially the ones who hadbeen sniffing glue,” says Elena Mihaita.Now, she knows that “most of the time, you

15. . . . . . .

BUCHAREST BLUES

D o s s i e r

Social workers in Romania want to throw off their prison guard image and learn how to helpthe country’s rising tide of street children.

W H A T T O D OW I T H H I M ?H O W T O H E L PH I M ?( P h o t o ©H i e n L a mD u c ) .

K ids who don’t know how to play?”Elena Mihaita never believed this pos-

sible until 1993, when she decided to workwith street children. “Some of them havespent up to four years on the street. Whenthey turned up here, at the Gavroche Re-ception Centre, they didn’t know what to dowith a fork or toothbrush, or even a toy,”says Mihaita, a graduate of Bucharest’sPolytechnic Institute.

“In Romania, street children are the re-sult of the very difficult transition whichthe country is going through,” emphasizesRodica Caciula, the director of Equilibre-Romania, a non-governmental organiza-tion. But in fact, the phenomenon datesback to the Ceaucescu regime, with poli-cies promoting high birth rates among apoverty-stricken population. The ranks ofunwanted, abandoned children crowdedinto orphanages and other institutionswhich were “as closed as the prisons. Thechildren were trained to be useful to in-dustry, as everything was orientated to-wards this sector,” explains Caciula. AfterCeaucescu’s fall, they escaped from theseinternment camps, to the streets, wherethey were joined by other children, fleeinghomes rocked by hardship and domestic vio-lence that accompanied the economic crisis.Between 1,500 and 3,000 children live in Bu-charest’s streets, train stations and sewers,which may stink but stay warm in winter.

A NEW PERSPECT IVE“But today, the government doesn’t havethe same means nor instruments,” saysCaciula. “The children’s centres are nowwide open. And the problem is that there isno training available to the people work-ing in these centres. So without stimulat-ing and attractive programmes, they havea hard time keeping the kids.”

The only training programme ever of-fered was held from October 1993 to Feb-ruary 1994. Set up by the French associa-tion Equilibre and financed by UNESCO,it was offered to the some 50 employees(two-thirds of whom were women) of allthe city’s centres working with street chil-dren. “The course helped us to look at thesekids differently - to better understand whythey behave the way they do - and to stopjumping to conclusions,” explains Aurel

just have to speak in a gentle voice, cuddlethem and give a sense of warmth”. Andlearning some basics in sociology and lawhelps her deal with the police.

But the programme couldn’t fill all theloopholes: participants regret not havingmet with medical professionals or havinglearnt to teach manual skills. Certificationremains another major problem. “They arealready being paid poorly. If at least wecould offer them a certificate recognizedby the health ministry, they would havesome professional incentive to continueworking in this field,” says Marilena Buttu,director of the Gavroche Centre. She esti-mates that almost half of the trainees haveleft the profession for better paying jobs.Social workers generally earn $25 permonth, far less than the average salary ofabout $60 and barely more than the mini-mum wage ($17). But “this training mustcontinue at all costs,” insists Caciula, whois seeking funding for more courses.

In the meanwhile, a Social Worker’sGuide financed by UNESCO will be re-leased at the end of this June in Romanian,French and English. “It will be the first ofits kind in Romania,” points out GeorgetaJurcan, part of the editorial team.

“We organized this training to set anexample,” says Caciula. “But we must con-tinue to prevent the situation from gettingworse and to support these social workerswho are under constant stress.”

Mihaela RODINABucharest

F O C U S


D o s s i e r

FROM INQUISITOR TO GUARDIANChanging police attitudes to street children in countries like Brazil is a life or death issuefor these kids, but one that much of society ignores, or even opposes.

16. . . . . .

In countries like ours, turning a politicalpolice force into one for ordinary citi-

zens is a very important step on the road todemocracy,” says Brazilian political scien-tist Gisalio Cerqueira Filho. Cerqueiraknows what he is talking about. He had togo back to his job at the Federal Universityof Rio de Janeiro after a programme he wasrunning to educate police about the rightsof children living on the streets was abruptlyscrapped.

For the children concerned, the issueis a matter of life and death. A fair numberof the thousands of them killed in Brazileach year (45,469 between 1979 and 1994,according to official figures), are murderedby police. According to the public prosecu-tor in Sao Paulo, for example, the policeare reponsible for a quarter of such deathsthere.

The secret links between drug smug-glers, death squads and some policemenhave put the whole force under a cloud.The police terrorize people instead of re-assuring them, and they are now the onlyrepresentatives of the state the inhabitantsof the most wretched of the favelas (slums)have contact with.

To try to make the police into some-thing different - a bridge between destitutechildren and the rest of society, especiallythe justice system and the schools - ascheme was launched in 1993 to educateand train the “law and order experts” andthe military police of Rio de Janeirostate. With the support of UNESCO andthe help of the city’s four major universi-ties, 4,000 police (about 10% of the totalforce but 60% of its officers, says

Cerqueira) followed the courses. History,psychology, philosophy and sociologyteachers told their police pupils about Bra-zil’s African cultural roots, since most ofthe slum-dwellers are Afro-Brazilians.They also gave courses on law, links be-tween the civil and military police and theorigins of torture.

At the same time, efforts were made toclean up the police. Several were chargedwith violence against women and children.Some were convicted and jailed, othersfired. Police expeditions into the favelaswere reduced.

M E D I A R E S I S TA N C E“But we’ve realized how very hard it is tochange things without the backing of themedia,” says Cerqueira. “In Rio, the mainmedia group, TV Globo, was against us. Allthe work we did in the daytime was can-celled out each evening when the police satin front of their TVs and got the messagethat life was impossible in Rio without se-vere repression of Afro-Brazilians.”

What is the overall result of this initia-tive, which was cut short in 1995 after thegovernment of Rio state changed hands?

“We had some concrete results but wehave to face the fact that very many policewere more interested in having fancy weap-ons than hearing about human rights,” saidCerquiera. Some politicians and othershave reacted to the recent extension of le-gal protection of minors by demanding thelowering of the age of criminal responsi-bility from 18 to 16 - even to 14.

But the need to change how the policetreat children goes beyond Rio. Such a

scheme is also needed, for example, inPeru, where 11,000 children live on thestreets, according to UNICEF. Since April1994, the police, along with the SwedishRadda Barnen Association have, withUNESCO’s help, devised courses for of-ficers in 15 regions of the country.

Called “care and follow-up for chil-dren and teenagers,” the year-long train-ing consists of eight months of study andwriting of a final report, which must pro-pose new attitudes, activities and workmethods.

Four courses are on offer - the specialproblems of children and adolescents,laws, psychology and social work, and thepolicy of supervision needed. Accordingto a questionnaire put to the students whohave undertaken the training, the coursesespecially enabled them to update theirknowledge on the law and, for 54% ofthem, to revise their ideas about children.

“We approach them now in a muchmore constructive and less repressiveway,” said a senior officer fromHuancayo.

“The course gave me another view ofchildren: not just human beings to protectbut also people with rights,” said a policecommander from Lima.

So far the programme has involved1,147 officers and late last year was ex-tended to non-commissioned officers. Di-rectors of police training in several otherLatin American countries will meet inLima at the end of this year to discuss howto expand the programme beyond Peru.

S. B.

TO FIND OUT MORE ...WORKING WITH STREET CHILDREN. Pub-lished with the International Catholic ChildBureau, the book presents 18 projects aim-ing to reinsert these children in society andtheir families (UNESCO/BICE, 1995).

STREET AND WORKING CHILDREN. In afew paragraphs, the fold-out presentsUNESCO’s major approaches to helpingthese children.

BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST - STREET CHIL-DREN IN AFRICA. Education specialist Jean-Pierre Velis looks at the educational prob-lems linked to these children (UNESCO,1993).

INNOV DATABASE 1995, INNOVATIVEBASIC EDUCATION PROJECTS. Everythingyou need to know about 112 educationalprojects designed for children and adults in

difficult situations (UNESCO/UNICEF,1995).

TRAVELLING EXHIBITION. 16 thematic dis-plays available from UNESCO (1994).

THE HEART ALONE SEES CLEARLY (seep.17).

Renowned photographers and poetspeer into the eyes of the world’s children in need.

All proceeds go directly to the programme’s activities.

Price: 120 FF The book can be purchased directlyat the UNESCO Headquarters bookshop

or by sending a cheque addressed to:UNESCO “Children in Need”

7 place de Fontenoy75352 Paris 07 SP, France

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A l l a r t i c l e s a r e f r e e o f c o p y r i g h tr e s t r i c t i o n s a n d c a n b e r e p r o d u c e d .



P L A N E T

Dramatic complaints and predictionswere two a penny. A Hungarian professor,head of one of the country’s most impor-tant public opinion organizations, said thetwo big cultural losers in the transition werebooks and the cinema. In real terms, peo-ple are now spending 20% less on booksand cinema tickets than they were at theend of the 1980s. This is because more andmore people feel shut out of the market.According to the Czech speaker, it is thesmaller libraries that are most threatenedin the Czech Republic. For example, chil-dren’s books, flourishing not so long ago,have all but disappeared, he said.

In the latest Czech budget, without adjust-ing for inflation, culture gets 6% less thanlast year. “And no-one tells us how we canmake up for that 6%,” insisted DanaRyslinkova, who runs a cultural institute inPrague. She thinks it is not necessarily ‘highculture’ or the major institutions which arein danger but the smaller, more modest cul-tural institutions and creators who are atrisk. But all this depends on the countryconcerned. A British expert in cultural man-agement noted that the famous BolshoiTheatre was just as much on the verge ofbankruptcy as any small theatre.

One impassioned speaker said that inLithuania, writers and painters could nolonger even afford to buy paper and can-vas. From there, it was a short step todoom-laden predictions that Central Euro-pean culture, with its myriad roots, woulddie out, washing away in what a speakerfrom Dresden called a spreading ocean of“MacDonald-ism”.

The situation is indeed alarming andthere is every reason to be gloomy. But if120 experts from 23 countries could gatheron the banks of the Danube just to say allthis - brought together by UNESCO, theHungarian authorities, the Hungarian Na-tional Commission for UNESCO, theCouncil of Europe, the European Commis-sion in Brussels and the European MozartFoundation - it means there’s still hope.Besides, listing complaints, no matter howvalid, won’t solve anything and, in fact, onlyincreases the atmosphere of crisis. RobertFitzpatrick, a professor at Columbia

C u l t u r e

18. . . . . .

A BALANCING ACTCentral and Eastern European artists and policy experts try tobreathe new energy into a cultural life saddled by economic woes.Is Professor Ralf Dahrendorf right? Thedistinguished German-born sociologist,currently Master of St Anthony’s College,Oxford, has said that if the countries ofCentral and Eastern Europe needed sixmonths to free themselves from dictator-ship and the one-party state, they wouldneed six years to transform their economiesand 60 to revive their cultural and intellec-tual life and develop a civil society. A fa-miliar figure in Hungarian cultural policy,Ivan Vitanyi, questioned Dahrendorf’s the-sis at the end of a UNESCO-sponsored con-ference on the preservation and develop-ment of cultural life in Central and East-ern Europe, held in Budapest from 23-26 January.

According to Vitanyi, who is chairmanof the Hungarian parliament’s culturalcommission, the economic transformationmight need more than six years. But, hesaid, the prospects for cultural renaissancewere better than Dahrendorf thought, sincethe countries making the transition fromsocialism were better off culturally thaneconomically. One Czech speaker went sofar as to declare that from Warsaw to Tallin,from Budapest to Zagreb, from Prague toKiev, people are in some respects cultur-ally more sophisticated than the averagecitizen in Western Europe.

We could argue at length about whether thatdifference can be measured and if such acomparison makes any sense. Personally, Iagree with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin,who once told me that without composerslike Bartok of Hungary and Enesco ofRomania - that is, Central and EasternEuropean cultures - the culture of Europewould not be complete.

This idea was expressed by manyspeakers at the conference. But, they said,this precious heritage is also in danger ofcollapsing under the burden of economictransition. Vitanyi stressed that daily eco-nomic challenges obviously must be met.The question was whether the countries ofthe region were going to replace one formof under-development by another orwhether, once on their feet, they could hopeone day to reach Western Europeanstandards.

●

“MEMORI ES OF ANGKOR” , anexh i b i t i on dep i c t i ng t h e Khmer c ap i t a l o ft h e n i n t h t o 15 th c en t u r i e s , wa s s howna t UNESCO f r om 23 Janua r y t o 11Feb rua r y. Ba s - r e l i e f s , p ed imen t s , f r i e z e sand s t a t ue s we r e p r e s en t ed t h r ough twot e chno l og i c a l p r o c e s s e s d eve l oped ac en t u r y pa r t : c a s t i ng s done by F ren chr e s ea r che r s wo rk i ng i n t h e 19 th c en t u r yand pano ram i c pho t og raph s s pann i ng upt o t en me t r e s , p r odu ced by Ge rmanun i ve r s i t y r e s ea r che r s .

A l ong t he s ame t heme , t h e I n t e rna t i ona lCoun c i l o f Mu seums ( I COM) ha s j u s tr e l ea s ed a new ed i t i on o f t h e bookLOOT ING IN ANGKO R , w h i c hp r e s en t s pho t o s and de s c r i p t i on s o fob j e c t s s t o l en f r om t he Dépô t d e l aCon se r va t i on d ’Angko r w i t h t h e a im o fs en s i t i z i ng p r o f e s s i ona l s , t h e p r e s s andthe pub l i c t o t h i s p r ob l em .Thank s t o t h e p r ev i ou s ed i t i on , r e l ea s edi n 1993 , s i x ob j e c t s s o l d a t au c t i onhou se s we r e i d en t i f i e d , s ome o f wh i c hwe re r e t u rned t o Cambod i a .

☞ I COM1 , r ue M i o l l i s ,

F - 75732 Pa r i s c edex 15

A H E AV Y B U R D E N

A N E N D A N G E R E D B O L S H O I


P L A N E T

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19. . . . . .

C u l t u r e

University (USA), rightly noted that thepost-socialist world was undergoing dra-matic changes. Yet cultural policy is ris-ing from the ashes in all these countriesand responsibility for it needs to bedefined.

A senior Hungarian cultural officialcalled for “a new realism” in the toughprocess of transition. Central Europeans,

living with GDP-levels (gross domesticproduct) similar to that of Turkey, he said,cannot expect to have access to the samerange of cultural offerings as, say, peopleliving in The Netherlands. The “new real-ism” means that the cultural “consumer”has to pay more for the real costs of cul-ture. At the same time, long-term contri-butions by the private sector and individu-als, along with state subsidies, will con-tinue to play essential roles.

The problem is very tricky. What does“long-term” mean? What should be doneabout cultural institutions and activitiesthreatened with closure by spiralling costsand prices? According to the Hungarianofficial, we are living in a true age of mira-cles since, given the financial resources,at least half of all cultural life should havealready disappeared.

I don’t agree with him. It’s more a pe-riod of painful transition than miracles.And besides, there is no ignoring yet an-other unfortunate sign for Central and East-ern Europe: money for culture is also inshort supply in other parts of the world.This doesn’t comfort us, but it forces us tolook beyond the end of our noses. AnAmerican delegate observed that, whilethe Budapest conference was takingplace, the congress in the United States

was debating a proposal to cut off govern-ment funding of the arts.

So we see that our region isn’t the onlyone where concert audiences have fallen off.In the United States too, there’s concern thatconcert halls will soon be turned into clubsfor elderly music-lovers. Young people ingeneral are less and less interested in clas-sical music.

Alain Coblence, the president of theEuropean Mozart Federation - the only pri-vate body to directly sponsor the Budapestmeeting - says cultural financing is in deepcrisis everywhere in the West and warnspoliticians against a laissez-faire attitude.Many speakers said governments shouldplay an important part in maintaining cul-ture and preserving national identity.

Culture is too important to be left tomarket forces. But the state cannot do italone. Only an arrangement involving busi-ness, individuals and better-organized non-profit groups can reinvigorate the ancientcultures of Central and Eastern Europewhich are themselves in full transition.Proof of that lies in the new multinationalshopping centres, which have a cultural roleof their own. At Duna Plaza, central Buda-pest’s new commercial complex, there arealso bookshops and cinemas.

Maybe the experts and decision-mak-ers should follow the advice of General deGaulle: take charge of what’s inevitable. Soa British speaker at the conference was per-haps right to disagree with Dahrendorf andsay that the region’s culture would catch upwith the West in only 20 years, not 60.

József MARTINBudapest

●

Dur i ng an o f f i c i a l v i s i t t o RUSS IA f r om9 t o 14 F eb rua r y, t h e D i re c t o r-Gene ra li naugu ra t ed UNESCO cha i r s f o r : a c u l t u r eo f p ea c e and democ ra cy a t t h e Ru s s i anS t a t e Un i v e r s i t y f o r Human i t i e s ;human i t a r i an edu ca t i on f o r m i l i t a r ype r s onne l a t t h e J oukov sky A cademy ;i n f o rma t i on t e c hno l ogy a t t h e Mo s cowIn s t i t u t e o f E l e c t ron i c s Te chno l ogy ;s u s t a i nab l e deve l opmen t a t t h eA cademgo rodok ( S c i en c e C i t y ) o fNovo s i b i r s k .F ede r i c o Mayo r a l s o i naugu ra t ed a newt r a i n i ng c en t r e f o r j ou r na l i s t s i n Mo s cow,c r ea t ed w i t h UNESCO ’s a s s i s t an c e , t oo f f e r c ou r s e s i n i n f o rma t i c s , adve r t i s i ng ,med i a managemen t and o t he r s ub j e c t s .

▼

Local initiatives providing EDUCATIONFOR ALL are mobilizing entirecommunities. Five such projects shinein a 15-minute video entitled Achiev-ing Education for All. The video movesfrom a community in El Salvadorwhere everyone is pitching in tomanage the school, to isolated villagesin Thailand and Senegal, whereprogrammes for adults and childrenare rooted in local traditions, beforetaking off for a school in Egypt wheregirls make up 80% of the class andending in Canada with some 100communities providing literacytraining for adults.

☞ Available in English, French,Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese

Audiovisual Division,Office of Public Information

W H A T D O E ST H E F U T U R E

H O L D F O RS L O V A K I A ’ S

A LT E R N A T I V ET H E A T R E ?

( P h o t o © A l lR i g h t s

R e s e r v e d ) .

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P L A N E T

P e a c e

20. . . . . .

BEWARE THE POOR MAN’S BOMBScientists meet in Jerusalem to find ways of controllingthe monster they helped to create - biological weapons.“As scientists we must take responsibilityfor our discoveries and innovations, andeven more importantly, we must be awarethat they can be used for evil purposes aswell as positive ones, and thus try to con-trol their uses,” says Yehiel Becker. A pro-fessor of the UNESCO - Hebrew Univer-sity International School for Molecular Bio-logy and Microbiology, Becker organized

the Second International Symposium onScience for Peace, with the Organiza-tion’s support, held in Jerusalem fromJanuary 20-23.

A central theme of the symposium wasthe dangers of biological warfare. Seven-teen countries are suspected of developingthese arms. This research could eventuallylead to the widespread development of mis-siles whose warheads are charged with dis-eases such as anthrax. Indeed some coun-tries already have this capacity. “No oneknows exactly how many warheads like thisexist, but estimates put the number in thethousands,” says Jonathan Levy, a medicalstudent at Northwestern University in theUnited States, who recently spent a year re-searching the subject and presented his find-ings at the conference.

“Biological warfare is not a new prob-lem. During World War II, there was a tre-mendous amount of research done into thepossibility of using diseases to kill peoplequickly. Both the Allies and the Axis pow-ers conducted such research. But Japanwas exceptional in its use of human beingsto test its findings. They’d take a prisonerof war, put him in an empty field, drop ananthrax bomb and see how long he could

survive,” says Levy. “Ten thousand POWsdied that way.”

International attempts to ban the use ofbiological weapons date back to 1925 withthe Geneva Protocol on Poisonous Gases.But it took almost 50 years to see the nextmajor legislative step aiming to destroy orconvert these weapons to peaceful use. TheConvention on the Prohibition of the

Development, Production and Stockpilingof Bacteriological (Biological) and ToxinWeapons and on their Destruction wasdrawn up in 1972. It now has 138 statesparties.

“Some countries, like the US and Brit-ain, did close down sites after the 1972convention,” points out Prof. ArturoFalaschi, the director of the InternationalCentre for Genetic Engineering and Bio-technology in Trieste, Italy. “But manyothers - over 100 - did not ratify the con-vention, including Russia, Egypt, Iran,Iraq and China, although they have signedit.”

Scientists at the conference argued thatbiological weapons are in a sense as much,if not more of a threat to world peace thannuclear or chemical weapons. Biologicalweapons are often called “the poor man’satomic bomb” because once you have adisease organism and a facility to work in,the arm is relatively cheap to produce. Thecost can be as low as one US dollar perdeadly dose. “Not only is it cheap to makebut the gruesome advantage of biologicalweapons is that they can destroy an entirepopulation without destroying cities,” ex-plains Levy. Moreover, there are rising

●

“ Wa te r w i l l r e p l a c e o i l a s t h e p r imet r i gge r f o r i n t e r na t i ona l c on f l i c t s , ”p r ed i c t ed Adnan Bad ran , t h e Depu t yD i r e c t o r-Gene ra l , du r i ng a s em ina r hegave a t UNESCO , 4 F eb rua r y, on“TRANSBOUNDARY WATERS : S ou r c ef o r Pea ce o r Con f l i c t s ” . O f t h e 200 wa t e rs po t s r ep r e s en t i ng “ po t en t i a l f o r c on -f l i c t s ” , h e f o cu s ed on t he A ra l S ea , t h eJ o r d a n R i v e r a n d t h e N i l e ( s e e Sou r c e s ,No . 83 and 84 ) , t h e Mekong ba s i n ,s ha r ed by s i x A s i an c oun t r i e s and t heba s i n o f t h e Euph ra t e s and T i g r i si n vo l v i ng t h r ee M i dd l e Ea s t e r n c oun t r i e s .

▼

It took 16 days for 35 YOUNGEXPLORERS to travel by Russian shipfrom Argentina to Antarctica, wherethey collected scientific data at the last“unspoiled place on Earth”, accordingto Robert Swan, Special UNESCOEnvoy for the Environment and leaderof the expedition.Returning to Buenos Aires on1 February, the team of men andwomen aged 18 to 24 includedmembers of different ethnic andreligious groups from Bosnia,Chechnya, Israel, Northern Irelandand South Africa. Their goal was towork together to overcome differencesand challenges arising during theexpedition.

●

C rea t ed i n 1993 by UNESCO and t heEu ropean Commi s s i on , t h e P EDDROpro j e c t i s an i n f o rma t i on ne two rk onPREVENTAT IVE EDUCAT ION AGA INSTD R U G A B U S E , i n v o l v i n g 1 7 3 i n s t i t u t i o n si n 124 c oun t r i e s .T he two o rgan i za t i on s ag r eed on 20Janua r y t o expand t he ne two rk i n unde r-r ep r e s en t ed a r ea s , no t ab l y t h e A rabS t a t e s , b y d i s t r i bu t i ng an i n t e r na t i ona ld i r e c t o r y and bu l l e t i n i n f i v e l anguage swh i l e c on t i nu i ng w i t h a f e l l ow sh i pp r o g r a m m e .

D E A D LY D O S E SC A N B ED E L I V E R E D B YB O M B S ,R O C K E T S ,M I S S I L E S A N DA R T I L L E R YS H E L L S( P h o t o ©G A M M A / C h a r l e sJ i n g ) .


P L A N E T

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21. . . . . .

P e a c e

fears that these weapons will be made evenmore lethal with the misuse of technologi-cal developments such as recombinantDNA techniques and microbiology.

Under the umbrella of the “Science forPeace” conference, scientists discussedwhat can they can do to try to control themonster that they have helped to create. Itwas a lively debate with many differentopinions on how best to deal with the prob-lem. Prof. Falaschi for example believesthat the best solution is to conduct inspec-tions in the countries suspected of produc-ing them.

“Despite the existing treaty, we knowSaddam Hussein had 25 SCUD missileswith biological weapons mounted on themduring the Gulf War,” says Falaschi.“Clearly, without universal ratification ofagreements, there can be no safety. But wealso need inspection systems. It is almostimpossible not to leave a trace when youmake biological weapons. There is a newtechnique which can detect a single mol-ecule of DNA. So for example you can eas-ily find a trace of anthrax through evidenceof its DNA. It literally leaves a trail we canfollow. We can take wet filters and touchsurfaces in which we suspect there has beencontact with a biological weapon, or usefilters in which air passes through, whichcan tell us if there has been contact.

“These methods can transform thesearch for biological weapons... I believethe UN should be a party in assuring rati-fication (of the biological weapons conven-tion), and also in conducting inspectionsfor the application of the treaty.”

Other scientists, such as Prof. KennethBerns, President of the American Societyof Microbiology, argue that the best wayto stop the proliferation of biological weap-ons would be to concentrate on strictlyregulating the institutions currentlyresearching infectious diseases.

“Recently someone in the US ordereda plague bacillus from an American re-search institute. The researchers sent it, butgot suspicious afterwards and told the au-thorities. It turned out the recipient was amember of a right-wing militia,” saysBerns. “So the US government has startedto formulate regulations to stop that kindof potential for domestic terrorism.”

Others at the conference say the only wayto stop biological weapons is through pro-moting peace with one’s neighbours.

“A disease doesn’t identify you as anArab or Jew, it doesn’t ask if you are fromGaza or Jerusalem. Living so closely to-gether in this region, if a bomb carrying abiological weapon falls, everyone in thearea - Jordanians, Palestinians, Israelis -will be affected. We have to co-operate tostop that danger,” points out Abed AlNasser, a medical student from Gaza nowcompleting his studies at the Hebrew Uni-versity.

But all the scientists agreed on the pro-posal of Prof. Becker, which calls on uni-versities around the world to include in theirgraduation ceremonies for scientists anoath, similar to the Hippocratic oath takenby graduates of medical schools. This pro-posed scientific oath is now being formu-lated by five students who attended the con-ference. The participants also agreed on astatement which will be directed toUNESCO and which was signed by allparticipants.

“Through the Statement for Peaceand the introduction of the Science forPeace Oath we will try to ensure that sci-ence graduates in the future will be dedi-cated to pursuing science for peacefulpurposes and not aggressive ones” saysBecker.

Dina SHILOHJerusalem

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W h a t i s U N E S C O T O D AY ? F o r i t s 5 0 t hann i ve r s a r y, t h e O rgan i za t i on ha sr e l ea s ed a bo l d l y i l l u s t r a t ed b r o chu r e oni t s h i s t o r i c a l h i gh l i gh t s , l e ad i ng f i gu r e son t he i n t e r na t i ona l s c ene , i n s t i t u t i on s ,pa r t ne r s , a c t i v i t i e s , o r i en t a t i on s andcommi tmen t s a t t h e dawn o f t h e t h i r dm i l l e nn i um . UNESCO “ mus t s t e e r t owa rd sone goa l , and one on l y : p ea c e . . . i ns o c i e t i e s a n d b e t w e e n c o u n t r i e s ,” a sunde r l i n ed by t h e D i r e c t o r-Gene ra l i n t h ei n t r o d u c t i o n . “ Edu ca t i on , s c i en c e , c u l t u r eand c ommun i c a t i on a r e o f va l ue on l y i ft h ey c on t r i bu t e t o t h i s end , wha t eve r t h el e ve l o f d eve l opmen t i n ea ch c oun t r y . ”

▼

What is the key to valorising TECHNI-CAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION?What are the links between this kindof training, general education andtomorrow’s job market? Some 15experts discussed these issues duringan international meeting, held inTokyo (Japan) from 3 to 6 February,aiming to promote links between thisfield of study and the world of work.The experts recommended developingflexible, cooperative relations withindustry to offer learning at theworkplace, ongoing training andsupport for new and experiencedteachers, as well innovative use ofmulti-media learning tools.

At the closing of the symposium, the participants called on all individualsand institutions working “in science and for science” to work towards en-suring that all scientific endeavours and achievements be used only forpeaceful purposes and humanity’s greater benefit. They also appealed forthe free flow and sharing of information and knowledge and an open aca-demic environment committed to the free expression of ideas.

THE JERUSALEM STATEMENT

A S I N G L E M O L E C U L E

D A N G E R

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P L A N E T

The first 10-month phase of the project,started last July, is training young peoplewho can “lead, motivate and co-ordinatewith project staff”. It is also providing1,000 young unemployed people betweenthe ages of 15 to 25 with courses in sew-ing, knitting, car maintenance, computerskills, leather work and television repair.

To boostjob prospects,the projectteam is negoti-ating with theministry ofeducation toobtain formalaccreditationfor the courses.Two commu-nity centreshave beenopened to serveas a meetingplace wherepeople fromdifferent ethnicgroups can

gather and socialize. Young men andwomen are also encouraged to take upsports activities, join a dance troupe or pro-duce handicrafts to help foster a commu-nity spirit.

“We want to draw on the knowledgethat already exists in the communities,”said Gilmer. “As half of the population inthe settlements are senior citizens, theyhave been drawn in to pass on their knowl-edge and skills to the younger generation.As far as possible, staff are recruited frominside the settlements on a voluntarybasis.”

The project is part of a larger pro-gramme by the Ukrainian Government, theUnited Nations Development Programme(UNDP), and the UN Office for ProjectServices. This five-year, $15 million un-dertaking addresses issues of health, hous-ing, education, infrastructure and humanrights.

If successful, the UN hopes that the pro-gramme could be used as a model in othercountries facing similar problems of reinte-gration and civil strife.

Y o u t h

22. . . . . .

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN ...A project in Crimea works to keep young returning Tatarsout of the fire.The Crimea, warns the UN, “has become aregion of simmering separatist, ethnic andnationalist tensions that, if unchecked, couldturn the peninsula on the Black Sea into anarea of conflict.”

To help defuse the situation andcontribute to building peace and stabilityin the region UNESCO, joining a largerUnited Nationsprogramme, isrunning an edu-cation and train-ing project formarg ina l izedyouth and, in par-ticular, the Tatarpopulation.

The Tatars,who were ac-cused of col-laborating withthe Germansduring the sec-ond world warand sent into ex-ile by Stalin in1944, startedgoing home in 1991 when the Crimea wasrestored as an autonomous republic withinthe Ukraine. Some 250,000 people have al-ready returned, and as many more are ex-pected back in the near future. Their strug-gle now is against the discrimination andeconomic difficulties wracking the wholecountry.

Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, Cri-mea’s economy - based on agriculture, shipbuilding, light industry and tourism - hasfoundered. Unemployment is soaring: 50%of the returnees are out of work.

Based in two communities, scattered onthe hills around the peninsula’s capital ofSimferopol, where a large number of Tatarsare now resettling, the UNESCO projectaims to provide leadership and organiza-tional skills to young people.“The long-term stability of the Crimea depends to alarge extent on how the young feel abouttheir future,” says Marc Gilmer, aUNESCO programme specialist. “Educa-tion and jobs are the keys to turning thesituation around.”

5 0 % J O B L E S S

L E A R N I N G S K I L L S T O L I V E T O G E T H E R B E T T E R( P h o t o U N O P S / R u t h M a s s e y ) .

●

Some 150 po l i c y -make r s , un i v e r s i t yadm in i s t r a t o r s , s t uden t l e ade r s andr ep r e s en t a t i v e s f r om more t han 40 non -gove rnmen ta l o r gan i za t i on s me t a tHeadqua r t e r s f r om 10 t o 12 F eb rua r y t oex change v i ew s on “H i ghe r Edu ca t i on :The Con sequen ce s o f Change f o r GRADU-ATE EMPLOYMENT ” . D i s c u s s i ng way s o ft r a i n i ng t oday ’s s t uden t s f o r t omor r ow ’sj o b s , t h e y i n s i s t e d o n o f f e r i n g “p r o f e s -s i ona l and t e chn i c a l s k i l l s a s we l l a sl i v i ng s k i l l s ” . T h i s t r a i n i ng “mus t b eba l an c ed w i t h edu ca t i on on human r i gh t s ,d emoc ra cy, p ea c e and s o c i a l j u s t i c e , ” s a i dHanan A sh raw i , t h e M in i s t e r o f H i ghe rEdu ca t i on o f t h e Pa l e s t i n i an Na t i ona lAu tho r i t y.

▼

Fed up with gratuitously violent tele-vision programmes, YOUNG PEOPLEwant to produce their own program-mes in their own language. ThroughUNESCO’s Special Fund for Youth, theZDF German TV Network has contrib-uted to this, providing 500 video cas-settes for youth-oriented programmesin the Balkans and editing equipmentfor a new youth channel in Cuba.

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Re i n f o r c i ng t h e t r a i n i ng and t he r o l e o fAFR ICAN T EACHERS i s t h e t h eme o ftwo new pub l i c a t i on s i s s ued by t h eUNESCO o f f i c e i n Daka r. T he f i r s t(No . 15 ) env i s age s edu ca t i ona l r e f o rmsde s i gned f o r A f r i c a ’s t e c hno l og i c a l f u t u r e ,wh i l e t h e s e c ond pub l i c a t i on (No . 16 )ana l y ze s t h e r e su l t s o f a s t udy o fpedagog i c n eed s c ondu c t ed i n 16un i ve r s i t i e s i n 11 Ang l ophone A f r i c ancoun t r i e s . P r o f e s s o r s i nd i c a t ed a need f o rs uppo r t i n d eve l op i ng and app l y i ngt ea ch i ng s t r a t eg i e s and i n t eg ra t i ngmed i a - ba s ed t oo l s .

☞ UNESCO -Daka rPO Box 3311 Daka r, S enega l


P L A N E T

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23. . . . . .

UNESCO SOURCES is a monthly magazine publishedby the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul-tural Organization [tel: (+33 1) 45 68 16 73; fax:(+33 1) 45 68 56 54]. English and French editionsare produced at Paris Headquarters; the Spanish edi-tion in cooperation with the UNESCO Centre of Catalo-nia, Mallorca 285, 08037 Barcelona, Spain; the Chi-nese edition in cooperation with the Xinhua NewsAgency, 57 Xuanwumen Xidajie, Beijing, China; thePortuguese edition in cooperation with the PortugueseNational Commission for UNESCO, Avenida InfanteSanto, No. 42-5°, 1300 Lisbon, Portugal.

Editor-in-Chief: R. Lefort. Associate editors:S. Williams, S. Boukhari, A. Otchet. Assistant Man-aging Editor: C. Mouillère. Spanish edition:E. Kouamou (Barcelona), L. Sampedro (Paris). Lay-out: G. Traiano, F. Ryan. Circulation and Secre-tariat: D. Maarek.

Photoengraving and printing in UNESCO Work-shops. Distribution by UNESCO's specialized services.

E d u c a t i o n

CHILDREN HAVE RIGHTS TOO!Africa’s development may well depend on the priority it gives tothe right of its children to education.

▼

Tilonia is typical of the many villagesdotting Rajasthan in the northwest ofIndia. But this ordinary village hasmany extraordinary qualities. It is thehome to The Social Work and Re-search Centre which for the past 25years has been a driving force indeveloping this “land of drought”.Entitled THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE...orknowledge demystified, the latest issuein the series Education for All -Making it work, presents the centre’smany activities: setting up 40 nurser-ies, 150 night schools for childrenobligated to work during the day andorganizing associations to offereverything from teacher-trainingworkshops to health care and safedrinking water.

“Dear parents, bringing a child into theworld is not enough in itself to earn the ti-tle of ‘mother’ and ‘father’! A child doesn’tgrow like weeds...” This call to order from12-year-old Déogratices Nitiema, a student

from a provincial college in Burkina Faso,set the tone for the African Regional Sum-mit on Children’s Rights, Education andDevelopment held in Ouagadougou from17 to 21 February. The summit was the firstof a series organized by UNESCO and theFrench-based Fondation pour l’Enfance,designed to implement the Convention onthe Rights of the Child. Almost a dozen ofAfrica’s first ladies, who’ve committedthemselves to this issue, attended.

Déogratice’s opening message, chargedwith youthful directness and simplicity,went further. “We would like the religiousand traditional authorities to know that wehold them partly responsible for our poorlevel of education and the impact this hashad on the development and evolution ofsociety...”

She struck home. “Times havechanged,” protested Dr. Lallé Naaba, theminister for information for the Mossimonarchy - Burkina’s traditional govern-ment that co-exists with the “modern ”one. “Customs have changed. There aremany intellectuals among the traditionalchiefs. They are educated people who un-derstand the importance of education.”

Nonetheless, the statistics for educationin Africa tell an alarming story. In mostcountries south of the Sahara, overall en-rolment wavers between 30% and 40% ofthe school-age population. The situation forgirls is worse. In Burkina, only about 10%of girls go to school. In some provinces

this falls to barely 5%. The situation is iden-tical in other countries such as Mali, Sen-egal, Mauritania, Niger or Chad.

Yet the political will to improve the situ-ation is not lacking - at least publicly. Most

African states have signed the various in-ternational conventions concerningchildrens’ rights. In Addis-Ababa, July,1990, Africa’s own Charter for the Rightsand Well-Being of the Child came into be-ing, proclaiming in Article 11 the right toeducation for every child. Non-governmen-tal organizations are also active in this field.

For most of the conference participants,the problem, for girls especially, arises fromthe big gap between “modern education” in-herited from the colonial powers, and therealities of African social organization andways of thinking. Economic difficulties fur-ther complicate the situation, with educa-tion budgets being squeezed everywhere.

The summit didn’t come up with anyclear-cut answers. However, it helped topush children’s rights, and particularly thatof education, a little higher on the politicalagenda, and fed public debate.

The stakes in Africa are high. Almosthalf the continent’s population, south of theSahara, is less than 20 years old. Futuredevelopment will depend upon these young-sters. Success will depend upon their capa-bilities, their knowledge. As HalidouOuédraogo, the president of Burkina Faso’smovement for human rights and the rightsof peoples, concluded “we need to makepeople aware of the importance of educa-tion ... and we have a long way to go.”

Bamba BOGNA YAYAOuagadougou

D O N ’ TF O R G E TA B O U T U S( P h o t o U N E S C O /P a u l A l m a s y ) .

L O O K I N G A H E A D ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

SOURCESU N E S C O

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Some 25 new Secretaries-General of UNESCO’S NATIONAL COMMISSIONS will at-

tend an information seminar organized at Headquarters from 7 to 18 April. In Dakar (Senegal) from 21 to

25 April, a regional seminar on EDUCATION AND AIDS will gather representatives of health

and education ministries and non-governmental organizations to examine activities aimed at promoting aware-

ness of this fatal disease. The Intergovernmental Committee of the World Decade for CULTURAL

DEVELOPMENT (1988-1997) will hold its fifth ordinary session at Headquarters from 21-25 April

to review proposals for follow-up activities undertaken by the Organization. World BOOK AND

COPYRIGHT Day will be celebrated throughout the UN system on 23 April. From 27 to 29 April,

experts specializing in reading techniques, computer programming and distance education will explore “VIR-

TUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS and the Role of the Teacher” at a meeting in Milton

Keynes (UK). Religious leaders, decision-makers and representatives of NGOs will gather in Dakar (Sen-

egal) from 28-30 April, for a regional conference to promote the VALUES OF TOLERANCE .

World PRESS FREEDOM Day will be celebrated throughout the UN system on 3 May. From 4 to

8 May in Tunis (Tunisia), a regional symposium on the ARAB WORLD AND THE INFOR-

MATION SOCIETY will bring together diverse partners - from telecommunication companies to

health-care providers - to examine national strategies for increasing access to these new technologies. Co-

operation in managing natural resources and limiting coastal erosion and pollution in the NORTH AND

CENTRAL WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN will be the focus of a regional committee meeting

of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission scheduled for 6-10 May in Mombasa (Kenya). The

executive committee for the International Campaign for the Nubia Museum and the National Museum of

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION will hold its ninth session in Aswan from 12-15 May.

(Dates are subject to change.)

OUR NEXT DOSSIER will highlight the key role the media can play in democratization and in

assuring peace by presenting several of the projects receiving UNESCO’s assistance.

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