For more than six decades, UNESCO has dedicated itself to be the international agency leader in literacy, even though other aspects of educational development have received greater attention and resources by the broader international community. Resources for UNESCO’s literacy work have not increased, and its programmatic activities have been increasingly debated when seen in relationship to the...

UNESCO's Bioethics Programme was established in 1993. In twenty years it has adopted three international declarations, on the human genome (1997), human genetic data (2003) and bioethics (2005); produced reports on a wide range of bioethics issues; and developed capacity building and public education programmes in bioethics. Yet UNESCO has sometimes struggled to assert its authority in the wide...

The choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this publication and the opinions expressed therein are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territor...

The views and opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Unesco or of the IEP. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this report do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of Unesco or IIEP concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or...

The dry landscape garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, a UNESCO world heritage site, intrigues hundreds of thousands of visitors every year with its abstract, sparse and seemingly random composition of rocks and moss on an otherwise empty rectangle of raked gravel. Here we apply a model of shape analysis in early visual processing to show that the 'empty' space of the garden is implicitly ...

1Department of Environmental Biology and Health, CSIR Water Research Institute, Accra, Ghana 2Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Energy and Natural Resources Sunyani, Ghana 3Department of Agriculture, Methodist University, Wenchi Campus, Brong Ahafo, Ghana 4Department of Environmental Resources, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, Netherlands 5UNESCO Regional Sc...

Figure copying and constructional abilities were examined in 15 healthy adult participants qualifying for illiteracy, following UNESCO criteria. A set of 14 figures was used for copying, 3 of them in perspective. Four figures of the same protocol were used to reproduce with sticks. Mean age of the sample was of 63.86 years old. They were matched for age and gender to schooled (6-7 years) contro...

The UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR), while not originally conceived to include urban areas, was intended to include sites representing all significant ecosystems with the goal of support for sustainable development locally and globally. Drawing on the example of the New York Metropolitan Region (NYMR), which has a population of 21.4 million, it is argued here that the eventual...