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In 1958, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the US ambassador to the United Nations, summarized the role of the world organization: “The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace.  Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.”  Some 30 years later another ambassador expressed a different view. “In the developing countries the United Nations… means environmental sanitation, agricultural production, telecommunications, the fight against illiteracy, the great struggle against poverty, ignorance and disease,” remarked Miguel Albornoz of Ecuador in 1985.

These two citations sum up the basic dilemma of the United Nations.  It has always been burdened by high expectations: to keep peace, fix economic injustices, improve educational standards and combat various epidemics and pandemics. But inflated hopes have been tempered by harsh realities. There may not have been a World War III but neither has there been a day’s worth of peace on this quarrelsome globe since 1945. Despite all the efforts of the various UN Agencies (such as the United Nations Development Programme) and related organizations (like the World Bank), there exists a ‘bottom billion’ that survives on less than one dollar a day. The average lifespan in some countries barely exceeds thirty. According to UNESCO 774 million adults around the world lacked basic literacy skills in 2011.

Given such a seemingly dismal record, it is worth asking whether the UN has outlived its usefulness. After all, the organization turns 69 today (October 24th, 2014), a time when many citizens in the industrialized world exchange the stress of daily jobs for leisurely early retirement. Has the UN not had enough of a chance to keep peace and fix the world’s problems? Isn’t the obvious conclusion that the organization is a failure and the earlier it is scrapped the better?

The answer is no.  The UN may not have made the world a perfect place but it has improved it immensely. The UN provides no definite guarantees of peace but it has been – and remains – instrumental for pacifying conflicts and enabling mediation between adversaries. Its humanitarian work is indispensable and saves lives every day. In simple terms: if the UN – or the various subsidiary organization that make up the UN – suddenly disappeared, lives would be lost and livelihoods would be endangered.

In fact, the real question is not whether the UN has outlived its usefulness, but how can the UN perform better in addressing the many tasks it has been charged with?

The answer is twofold. First, the UN needs to be empowered to do what it does best. Today, for example, one of the most pressing global challenges is the potential spread of the Ebola virus. Driven by irrational fear, politicians in a number of countries suggest closing borders in order to safeguard their populations. But the only realistic way of addressing a virus that does not know national borders is surely international collaboration. In practical terms this means additional support for the World Health Organization (WHO), the only truly global organization equipped to deal with infectious diseases. But the WHO, much like the UN itself, is essentially a shoestring operation with a global mandate. Its budget in 2013 was just under 4 billion dollars. The US military spent that amount of money in two days.

Second, the UN must become better at ‘selling’ itself. Too much of what the UN and its specialized agencies do around the world is simply covered in fog. What about child survival and development (UNESCO)? Environmental protection (UNEP) and alleviation of poverty (UNDP)? Peaceful uses of atomic energy (IAEA)? Why do we hear so little about the UN’s (or the International Labour Organization’s) role in improving workers’ rights? Does anyone know that the UNHCR has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize twice (out of a total of 11 Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to the UN, its specialized agencies, related agencies, and staff)? It’s not a bad CV!

We tend to hear, ad nauseam, that the 21^st century is a globalized one, filled with global problems but apparently lacking in global solutions. What we tend to forget is the simple fact that there exists an organization that has been addressing such global challenges – with limited resources and without fanfare – for almost seven decades.

Indeed, it seems that in today’s world the UN is more relevant than ever before. At 69 it is certainly not ripe for retirement.

 Featured image credit: United Nations Flags, by Tom Page. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The post Ripe for retirement? appeared first on OUPblog.

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Happy Book Day! No, I haven´t got my dates mixed up. 23rd April,  is the UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day, a worldwide celebration of the book, the publishing industry and the intellectual property rights of the author. (Britain and Ireland as always are out of step with the rest of the world!)

The date was chosen by UNESCO because both Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616) and William Shakespeare died on that day (although that is not strictly true because of the difference in the Gregorian and Julian Calendars).

In Spain, Cervantes Day has been celebrated since 1923 and Cervantes is treated with the same veneration and respect as Shakespeare.  In Cataluña, the day coincides with the feastday of their national saint, St. George or Sant Jordi, and there is a longstanding tradition there of people exchanging roses and books on 23rd April although this custom is widespread throughout Spain now. Many bookshops present you with a rose when you buy a book and nearly all stay open late. There are thousands of book related activities throughout the country.

If you were in Madrid today, you could celebrate the life of Cervantes by going to the Convento de las Trinitarias, an old convent in the Barrio de las Letras (The Arts Quarter), where the Academy hold a memorial Mass with an empty coffin on display. Cervantes chose to be buried here because the Trinitarian Monks had helped organise his release after he was kidnapped and enslaved by Algerian corsairs on his return from the Battle of Lepanto (where he lost an arm): unfortunately, the location of the grave has long been lost.

Or you could take the train out to the old university town of Alcalá de Henares where Cervantes was born, the son of a barber-surgeon and a minor impoverished aristocrat.  His home is now a casa-museo and is a fascinating glimpse into 16th century domestic architecture.

Or you could go farther afield to Argamasilla in Castilla La Mancha. This small town claims to be the home of Don Quixote, "the place whose name I do not wish to remember"  - (el) lugar de La Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme. It is now firmly on the literary tourist map, on the Ruta de Don Quijote, a fabulous landscape with its wide horizons, crumbling castles and dozens of white windmills on the crests of the hills.


Cervantes, always poor, always unfortunate in business and in love, was thrown into prison in Argamasilla.  It was here that he said he had the idea for Don Quijote, who may have been based on the local Duke Rodrigo de Pacheco, the duke of the long countenance, who suffered from mental illness. His ex voto portrait hangs in the local church (he´s the man in the ruff, bottom right hand corner):



Or you could simply take down a copy of Don Quixote, the Ingenious Hidalgo of La Mancha and browse. Often cited as the first modern European novel, and nominated again and again by writers as their favourite book, it is funny, touching, wise and full of beautiful language - and yes, there are boring bits too but you can skip them. There are literally hundreds of editions, including ones illustrated by Honoré Daumier, Gustave Doré, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso.  In the whole literary canon, are there any profiles as recognisable as the long skinny lance-wielding hidalgo and his small round companion Sancho Panza?

Can I also recommend Don Quixote´s Delusions - Travels in Castilian Spain by Miranda France, an unusual travel book/memoir/literary biography. It will make you laugh out loud but is also a scholarly and insightful introduction to Don Quijote.

I have not been above borrowing a little from Cervantes. My books Tiger Lily - A Heroine in the Making, Tiger Lily - A Heroine with a Mission, Tiger Lily - A Heroine for All Seasons all feature a girl who, like Don Quijote, has also become a little mad from reading so many books and determines to become a heroine and escape from her home in the Middle of Nowhere in search of adventure.

"When Don Quijote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel." Milan Kundera

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By Lucas Lixinski

In June this year, developments around the Great Barrier Reef were excitedly discussed and closely scrutinized by the World Heritage Committee, a subsidiary organ of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). More specifically, the region around the reef, mineral-rich soil in northeastern Queensland (Australia), has been developed by Australian and foreign mining companies. So the coal, Australia’s second largest export (amassing a whopping AUD 46.8 billion in 2011), can actually head to countries like China, ports as needed. The world’s largest coal-exporting port just so happens to be nearby.

The development of ports requires dredging, and that dredged soil is usually dumped at sea. The soil, rich in heavy metals, releases those metals into the water, and they slowly drift on to reefs, killing coral life.

Why does the World Heritage Committee care? Well the Great Barrier Reef is on the World Heritage List, along with 980 other properties in 160 countries around the world. Does that automatically give the World Heritage Committee, a body whose headquarters is in Paris, and just so happened to be sitting in Cambodia last June, any authority to tell the Australian people and government that they cannot fully exploit their natural resources, in pursuance of their right to Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources?

As it turns out, yes. That is what international heritage does: creates exceptions to States’ sovereign rights so certain goods, deemed worthwhile, can be safeguarded for generations to come. UNESCO, established in 1946, has since its establishment pursued the objective of protecting and safeguarding heritage. To this effect, it has passed on a number of international instruments, including recommendations, declarations, and a number of treaties. Of these, five are particularly relevant:

• The 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
•  The 1970 Convention on the Exports and Traffic of Cultural Property
• The 1972 World Heritage Convention
•  The 2001 Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention
• The 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention

These conventions, spanning 50 years, present on their own an important record of the evolution of this field of international law, and of international law more generally.

When it comes to the field specifically, the titles of these instruments alone already signal to one of the most important changes, the shift from cultural property to cultural heritage. This shift means distancing from notions of property and ownership, and a move towards stewardship of these goods. They mirror, to a certain extent, the consolidation of human rights internationally, which, at least if Samuel Moyn is to be believed, only really took off in the 1970s.

More importantly, and closely related, this shift also prefaces a shift that took place in the field in 2003, when the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention was approved. This instrument had been in the minds of some for a long time: the first mention to the need for such a convention dates back at least to the 1970s. And it responds to an important gap: protecting cultural manifestations which do not necessarily have a permanent physical presence. The fact that they do not have a permanent physical presence does not mean they are any less important than, say, the Great Barrier Reef. They are in fact perhaps even more important, as they are closely connected to identity. Because intangible heritage does not exist externally, it must exist internally, close to the heart of identity.

Also known as living cultures, intangible cultural heritage means “the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development.”

More specifically, it safeguards heritage as a process, as opposed to its icons. Physical manifestations of heritage are important, to be sure, but what matters most is how people connect to heritage, and the ways in which this connection influences people’s relationship to the environment, to human rights, and others. This notion reinforces the shift in UNESCO away from heritage as a symbol of sovereignty to heritage as a symbol of shared humanity. In international law more generally, it is another instance of the erosion of sovereignty in favor of a cosmopolitan ideal where peoples, and not necessarily States, coexist in full harmony.

This brings us back to the Great Barrier Reef. Protected under the World Heritage Convention, it is still formally protected as a site, and not as a process to which people feel connected. However, people’s connections to their heritage, and the process through which this connection is entrenched, is becoming more and more part of the equation even in protecting heritage. The notion of heritage as a process, enshrined in the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, is spreading to other heritage regimes, and triggering the rebirth of the field, from monuments and sites to living cultures. In the Great Barrier’s case, it is now less about the Reef itself than it is about what it means for our shared humanity. The good at stake is not only coral reefs, it is now the Reef standing for a humanity hopeful in a sustainable future, hopeful in reverting the negative effects of development, and saving the reef from ourselves, for the sake of present and future generations.

Lucas Lixinksi is a Lecturer at the University of New South Wales and is author of Intangible Cultural Heritage in International Law, part of the newly launched Cultural Heritage Law and Policy series.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in Public International Law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide.

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Image credit: Great Barrier Reef. Photo by NickJ. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.

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This Day in World History - One of the twentieth century’s most recognizable buildings, the Sydney Opera House, officially opened on October 20, 1973. The Opera House, situated on the shores of Sydney Harbor and with a striking roof line, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the comment that the building “brings together multiple strands of creativity and innovation in both architectural form and structural design.”

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Today is World Poetry Day.   Declared by UNESCO in 1999, the purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, teaching and publishing of poetry throughout the world.  Check out this UNESCO website for ways you can celebrate poetry for the day.  Are there any events you know of in your area that is celebrating the occasion?  Do let us know!  At PaperTigers, we often feature children’s poetry on Friday blog posts where we interact with a community of bloggers that contribute to the phenomenon known as Poetry Friday.  Do check out one of our Poetry Friday posts to link in with this community of bloggers who all share a love and interest in poetry.   PaperTigers will be hosting Poetry Friday on April 9.

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The Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations

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The United Nations’ International Mother Language Day has been celebrated annually on February 21st, the anniversary of the Bengali Language Movement, since 2000. It is a time when people across the world join efforts to remember the power of language to preserve our cultures, and to raise awareness of the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity and multilingual education.

Organized for the occasion of this year’s IMLD, and in the framework of the 2010 International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures

, an International Symposium on Translation and Cultural Mediation is happening today and tomorrow at the UNESCO House in Paris, covering themes such as “Bridging Global and Local Languages”, “Translation and Cultural Mediation” and “Translation, Mutual Understanding and Stereotypes”. Information sessions on languages and multilingualism will include one on the New Atlas of Endangered Languages, and a presentation entitled “Technology and the Mother Tongue” Friend or Foe?”.

In her official message as Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova speaks about the importance of language to create inclusion and promote peace:

Languages are the best vehicles of mutual understanding and tolerance. Respect for all languages is a key factor for ensuring peaceful coexistence, without exclusion, of societies and all of
their members.

Multilingualism, the learning of foreign languages and translation are three strategic axes for the language policies of tomorrow. On the occasion of this 11th International Mother Language Day, I am appealing to the international community to give the mother language, in each of these three axes, its rightful, fundamental place, in a spirit of respect and tolerance which paves the way for peace.

As IMLD grows in importance each year, more and more countries organize educational and cultural events, such as Endangered Languages Week, in the UK. Another example of a country that is embracing IMLD’s goals is Serbia, which, according to UNESCO’s website, will be marking the occasion this week by devoting one lesson in every school to mother languages.

For an an overview of UNESCO’s work on languages in all its areas of competencies, click here.

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Some of my ‘babies’ promoting STORY as a way to reach the world for 2010 are:-

International Conference in GOA India – January 2010 

SCBWI International Conference at The Hughenden 17-19th September 2010

The Kids & YA Literature Festival at the NSW Writers Centre Rozelle 3rd July 2010

My new book ALWAYS JACK comes out for Breast Cancer Awareness month October 2010

I AM JACK in the USA published by Tricycle (Random House USA)

PEACE for Kids – 5th Nami Island Children’s Book Festival, South Korea – IBBY (IBBY), UNICEF, UNESCO - November 2010

Storytellers, Partners in Crime, Sydney Writers & Illustrators Network, Launch of ‘Fear Factor – Terror Incognito Picador – at The Hughenden 2010 www.thehughenden.com.au

More News coming … let’s make 2010 an amazing year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR  TO ALL!  

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Fabulous children’s author Lauren Child, creator of the impossibly endearing Charlie and Lola (I will never not ever eat a tomato! and others) has been recognised for her work with UNESCO’s Programme for the Education of Children in Need. Child spent the last 18 months visiting Unesco projects around the world, “from Mexico to Mongolia.” The result is the documentary, “My Life is A Story.”

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April 23rd: Celebrate World Book and Copyright Day...

My IT professional brother emailed me this morning to tell me that today is World Book and Copyright Day according to UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (Maybe I should have brought cupcakes to work. Every celebration need cupcakes.)

The UNESCO website says that on this date in 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. April 23rd is also the birthday or death date of other noted authors like Maurice Druon, K. Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.

The purpose of World Book and Copyright Day, says UNESCO, is "to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright." Sound good to this editor.


P.S. The theme of Bob Dylan's radio show today: birds--all songs about birds.

P.P.S. My brother just emailed me again to say that it's also National Jelly Bean Day and National Cherry Cheesecake Day. (When is National Cupcake Day?) Apparently my brother is not very busy at work.

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Meerkats Don’t Fly
By Mark Miller
Illustrated by Cathy Butterfield
Good Turn Publishing
ISBN: 9780979439308
Copyright 2007
Hardcover
Ages 4-8

Reviewed by Mayra Calvani

Meerkats Don't Fly is an adorable picture book! The story is sweet, humorous and engaging and the illustrations, done in color pencils, are beautiful.

Little Meerkat Benny is obsessed with the idea of flying, possibly because the first thing he saw from his hole in the ground after he was born was a bird in the sky. The other meerkats constantly remind him that ha can't fly, that it's against the nature of meekats to do so. But Benny has a dream, and none or nobody can get that dream out of his mind. He's going to find a way to fly, no matter what it takes. He comes up with various ideas that don't work, some even dangerous, but he must follow his dream. At the end, he comes up with an ingenious idea... but will it work and will he be able to run free from the dangerous eagle?

This is a story that both teaches and entertains. The dialogue is smart and funny, the story suspenseful as we wonder what will happen with the dangerous eagle, and the illustrations are cute and evoking. This is a winner that will be enjoyed by all young children ages 4--8.

*Originally published on Armchair Interviews

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