Challenges for UNESCO and international community

In the years to come, a major challenge for the international community will be to ensure the free flow of, and equitable access to, knowledge, information, data and best practices across all sectors and disciplines. For the free flow to be meaningful, access to knowledge will not be enough. Other needs must also be addressed, such as building human capacities and technical skills and developing effective ways to translate knowledge and information into assets of empowerment and production. UNESCO will be called upon to contribute to all these challenges. In particular, the organization must seek to reinforce the right to education, to strengthen international scientific and intellectual cooperation, to protect cultural heritage (including the increasingly important intangible heritage), to promote media development and to broaden public domain access to information and knowledge.

Above all, UNESCO’s mission to promote improvements in all types and levels of education, but especially quality basic education for all, is essential to the full range of our tasks.

The right to education is a human right and unless it can be secured, all other goals are bound to suffer. It is vital and urgent that the right to education is transformed from ideal to reality: today, even after decades of effort, over 100 million children still do not attend school and 150 million drop out without learning to read, write and use numbers. Gender inequalities constrain access and achievement. The illiteracy of 900 million adults limits their individual growth and the social development of their communities. While in relative terms progress has been registered, in absolute terms the numbers have grown dramatically on a global scale and for many regions. Again, this situation is unacceptable and must be addressed.

Education will also be a key feature in the global campaign to fight HIV/AIDS. The impact of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases in many countries is as devastating as any war. The HIV/AIDS pandemic not only hampers development, it also reverses it by destroying capacity in all areas of social endeavour. In the period ahead, UNESCO’s strategy to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS will place particular emphasis on effective preventive education.

Recently, much international attention has been paid to the so called “digital divide”. It accentuates disparities in development, excluding entire groups and countries from the potential benefits of digital opportunities in networked knowledge societies. Bridging the digital divide between developing and developed countries and within individual countries will thus become a prime strategic challenge pervading UNESCO’s activities. This will entail activities to strengthen capacities and skills, to generate new knowledge, to enlarge access, to foster scientific research and to share knowledge and information through networking and the communication media and information systems.

Given the enormous speed of scientific discoveries and advances, there is an increasing need for international scientific and intellectual cooperation. The 1999 World Conference on Science has charted the way for UNESCO to support and promote scientific co-operation at all levels, drawing on its unique comparative advantage of combining natural and human sciences under one roof.

UNESCO will also be challenged to play a central role in bridging the divide between traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge in ways that respect the contributions that both can make. Developments in biogenetics, new medical discoveries and other scientific and technological advances increasingly require the attention of careful ethical reflection and, possibly, normative action through the elaboration of pertinent policies and standard-setting instruments. UNESCO has an obligation to live up to its ethical mission in these areas, which are largely unattended by other multilateral organizations.

In light of these on-going and new global challenges, UNESCO’s future mission is based on three main strategic thrusts. These three distinct, yet interrelated, axes are:

- developing universal principles and norms, based on shared values, in order to meet emerging challenges in education, science, culture and communication and to protect and strengthen the “common public good”.

- promoting pluralism, through recognition and enhancement of diversity together with the observance of human rights.

- promoting empowerment and participation in the emerging “knowledge societies” through capacity-building and sharing of knowledge.

This, in brief, is what we aim to accomplish within the next few years. You will agree, I am sure, that this is an ambitious agenda and one that no agency can hope to fulfill solely by its own efforts. Partnership and collaboration are essential.

UNESCO recognizes that the speed of change today not only requires flexibility but also rapid communication with partners and supporters. This flexibility may well be needed during the period of the medium-term strategy, parts of which may be overtaken by events of which we have no advance knowledge or warning. As we have noted earlier, globalization is generating new ethical challenges and dilemmas for which existing international norms and principles may be quite inadequate.

2. Read the text and answer the following questions:

a	What is the function of science in the society?
b	Can we say that today the benefits of science are equally distributed between the countries of the world?
c	What benefits has science brought to the society?
d	Why is it so vital today to debate the way of scientific knowledge production, its use and distribution?

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Using the information of the text in small groups discuss the ways and the advantages of scientific research without boundaries.	\|	Science for Society

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