Uganda's contribution to the Task Force Consultation on unesco for the 21st Century

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  Mandate;
  
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  Mission;
  
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  Functions;
  
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  Actions;
  
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  Fields of competence
  

The mandate of UNESCO is spelt out in Article 1 of its constitution. UNESCO is mandated to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through Education, Science and Culture in order to:

The mission of UNESCO is "to lay the foundations of peace by working in the fields of its competence: education, science, culture and communication in order to contribute to the acquisition, transfer and sharing of knowledge and to foster values of liberty, dignity, justice and solidarity among individuals and nations"²

UNESCO functions through the following methods:

1. 
   International Intellectual Cooperation
   

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  Intellectual forum;
  
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  Advancement, transfer and sharing knowledge;
  
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  Clearning house;
  
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  Standard setting actions.
  

2. 
   Ethical function
   

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  Culture of peace programme;
  
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  Human Rights Education;
  
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  Associated Schools project:
  
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  The PEER Programme.
  

3. 
   Cooperation for Development
   

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  Technical assistance and Consultancy services;
  
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  Upstream activities.
  

The above three are cited under missions of UNESCO in the "Practical Guide for National Commission" para 10. Are these mission or functions?

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  Standard setting action (principles to guide actions in Member States);
  
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  Clearing house action (many publications and data bases);
  
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  Research (to generate new ideas, UNESCO: a laboratory of ideas, a think tank);
  
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  Training and capacity building actions (to enhance endogenous capacities and sustainable development);
  
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  Expertise and Advisory services (on upstream activities, projects and mobilization of extra-budgetary resources), within the framework of cooperation for development.
  

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  Education;
  
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  Science (Exact, Social and Human);
  
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  Culture;
  
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  Information Communication and Informatics.
  

Document 28 C/4 approved states that "All UNESCO's functions in the fostering of international intellectual cooperation are useful and even indispensable. They are more over, intricately bound up with each other and mutually reinforcing.

Today the world is faced with problems and challenges. These problems and challenges are of different nature and can be categorized as follows:

1. 
   Political;
   
2. 
   Economic;
   
3. 
   Environmental; and
   
4. 
   Social/Cultural;
   

Although UNESCO has it's own share in finding solutions to the above problems according to its mandate and mission, it is very important to first of all make an analysis of all the problems as they inflict on people who are the central objects for the developmental processes in the world. These problems are dynamic in nature and they overlap in their occurrences and the manner they affect life on the universe. They have inter-linkages and have an interdependent relationship. Therefore before we hasten to pick out or identify only those problems which fall within the fields of competence of UNESCO, we should look at all problems and challenges globally, find their inter-relationship and be able to determine the nature of UNESCO's intervention. For example if a given country is suffering from hunger, malaria, civil war and at the same time, UNESCO comes up to implement literacy, scientific and information technology programmes, the impact is likely to be minimal. It would be like grafting a healthy and viable plant shoot on an infected weathering stalk or one with disease.

UNESCO should lead the crusade to enhance synergy of action among the developmental partners particularly those of the UN family.

The analysis of the problems and challenges should take account of the following categorization:

1. 
   Global or Universal problems
   
2. 
   Regional
   
3. 
   National.
   

UNESCO with her partners should be able to address the identified problems at all the three levels above. The practice of reducing action for national projects or programs is not fair. This is because each member state comes to UNESCO with her unique priority needs. If these needs are not addressed at a national level then UNESCO will have no impact in that member state. Thinking globally only at inter-regional or regional levels deprives member states of specific focus on their priority needs.

UNESCO in its report of Perceptions and Analysis of World Problems of 1986 identified the following problems in each category:

Although a long time has elapsed since 1986 to-date, the identified problems are still in existence and the classification should still be used as a framework although completely new problems and challenges have evolved and old one have changed course.

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  Armed conflicts in the world and the resulting instability
  

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  Peace and Security in the whole world;
  

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  Neo-colonialism in Africa
  

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  Foreign interference
  
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  Human rights and democracy
  
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  Racism and xenophobia
  
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  Genocide
  
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  Dictatorship Ethnic cleansing descrimination.
  

Peace and security in the world:

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  There are at present armed conflicts and wars going on in virtually all regions of the world particularly in the Africa and Middle East;
  

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  International relations have deteriorated or have become distorted;
  
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  Ethnic conflicts have increased and have become a root cause of worldwide instability;
  
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  There are dictatorial tendencies in governance particularly in Africa and various forms of oppression resulting into weakening of dialogue between the state and the society at large;
  
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  Enormous shares of resources are devoted to military budget.
  

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  The public should be educated to raise their level of awareness to issues pertaining to human rights and democracy, good governance etc. and be able to protect them;
  
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  Advocate for participatory democracy whereby there is increased participation of the communities in the decisions that affect them;
  
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  Continue to promote the knowledge of the existing Human Rights instruments including the "African Charter on human rights and the rights of the People";
  
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  UNESCO should support member states to achieve greater justice by improving their legal systems in order to ensure the application of their agreed laws;
  
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  UNESCO should continue to reinforce its project or programme on the culture of peace and continue to demonstrate that without democracy and peace there is no development.
  

2. 
   ECONOMIC PROBLEMS/CHALLENGES:
   

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  Internationalization of the economy and increasing interdependence of the different regions of the world;
  
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  Diminishing Natural resources and call for sustainable development;
  
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  Globalization;
  
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  Privatization amidst the widening gap between the rich and the poor countries caused by the blanket application of the theory of "comparative advantage" in the international division of labour;
  
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  Imbalances in the terms of international trade affecting particularly the developing world and least developed countries (WTO);
  
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  Diminishing national resources resulting into worldwide inflation
  
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  Poverty;
  
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  The debt burden;
  

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  Poor Agricultural methods leading to poor production and therefore earnings;
  
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  Inadequate food and nutrition
  
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  Lack of adequate scientific research and potential;
  
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  Lack of adequate food products, hunger etc;
  
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  Lack of storage and preservation facilities;
  
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  Lack of qualified technicians;
  
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  Difficulties in importing technology;
  
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  Inadequate foreign exchange resources due to poor production of raw materials for export.
  
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  Globalization has increased the migration from under-developed to developed countries, there is already a fear of increased racism and various forms of xenophobia in the industrialized countries; and
  
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  The debt burden will cause a further deterioration in the terms of trade which will increase dependency of certain groups of countries, the developing ones and will cause serious social problems in the countries themselves caused by high rates of inflation and deteriorating capacities in all aspects of development. The structural Adjustment policies of the IMF and the World Bank are a case in point.
  

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  UNESCO should continue advocating and supporting universal basic and primary education putting emphasis on education in the rural areas particularly in Africa;
  
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  Increased efforts should be put to ensuring scientific and technological progress in all member states with great focus in developing and least developed countries. Great importance should be put on more research and the development of Bio-technologies, together with more efficient utilization of the available resources, a quantitative and qualitative improvement in products, better means of preventing the deterioration of the environment and increased use of appropriate technologies;
  
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  Developing Member States should be assisted to improve agricultural productivity by industrialization of agriculture and the development of Agro-food industry;
  
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  UNESCO should lobby donor countries and organizations to cancel all or part of the debt and implement long term rescheduling of the rest.
  

UNESCO should continue to assist Africa to promote Regional Integration and endogenous and regional development.

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  Member States should continue to be assisted to combat desertification and deforestation and to improve water resource management and combat water pollution;
  
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  Programmes to increase ecological awareness should be stepped up and those of research and technological development in the fields of environmental protection solidarity and international cooperation should be stepped up in these areas.
  

2. 
   ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS/CHALLENGES
   

1. 
   global warming/climatic changes;
   
2. 
   natural disasters;
   
3. 
   environmentally related diseases/epidemics of diseases;
   
4. 
   lack of rural energy supply;
   
5. 
   pollution - industrial/waste disposal, air and water pollution
   
6. 
   desertification/drought;
   
7. 
   soil erosion/land degradation/poor land use planning;
   
8. 
   loss of biodiversity/biodiversity conservation;
   
9. 
   Deforestation;
   
10. 
    Poverty;
    
11. 
    Overgrazing/over-cultivation;
    
12. 
    Wetland destruction/lack of water;
    
13. 
    Population growth;
    
14. 
    Fire;
    
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    Water hyacinth;
    
16. 
    Rural urban migration;
    
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    Floods;
    
18. 
    Poor water resource management;
    
19. 
    Limited research capacity/lack of environmental impact assessment experts/lack of environmental issues awareness skills and participation.
    

1. 
   Global warming has led to a number of climatic changes causing big threat to humanity. Therefore the greenhouse gas effects need to be assessed and continuously monitored.
   

There is need to institute corrective measures by development of suitable programmes to reduced emission of gasses, which cause the green house effect.

2. 
   Natural and human induced disasters such as floods, landslides, fires, earthquakes cause untold suffering to mankind and loss of life.
   

Africa especially should be assisted through capacity building to design appropriate structures/buildings which resist earthquakes, provide appropriate monitoring to enhance early warning systems and development of model rescue procedures when disaster strikes.

3. 
   Humanity, particularly in Africa is still afflicted by a number of epidemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS (malaria, Ebola virus and environmentally related disease like guinea worm etc.
   

There is therefore urgent need to develop appropriate vaccinations to save human populations

4. 
   There is a lot of pressure on plant materials as sources of fuel energy. There is therefore need for UNESCO to assist Africa to build capacity for the development of appropriate alternative sources of energy supplies for rural use that is cheap. Great emphasis should be put on the World Solar programme particularly in Africa.
   

All the environmental problems and challenges, which are listed above, are inter-related and therefore call for global and regional programmes to address them.

4. 
   SOCIAL CULTURAL PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES:
   

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  Inadequate Education and training of human Resources;
  
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  Illiteracy;
  
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  Poverty
  
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  Unemployment;
  
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  Over-urbanization;
  
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  Youth (increased population);
  
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  Women;
  
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  Inadequate demographic studies
  
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  Inadequate manpower planning programmes
  
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  Displaced persons;
  
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  Under development;
  
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  Moral decadence leading to increased corruption tendencies;
  
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  AIDS Epidemic
  

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  The vast increase in the number of young people has resulted in limiting the resources to educate and provide for them. Due to limited economic expansion to create jobs for the young people's, there is rampant unemployment. The young peoples anxiety about the future has risen and are demanding for their rights;
  

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  Over-urbanization has increased insecurity and delinquency. It has resulted into a prolification of deviant behaviour patterns. The decline in moral standards has led to ever more widespread use of drugs of all sorts, alcoholism, theft, prostitution and rape and an upsurge in number of robbery and murder. These are likely to increase in the third millennium.
  

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  Increasingly marginalized groups trying by various means to escape, from their degraded way of life by migrating to towns will suffer more severe repression;
  

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  The abject poverty and decline in living conditions and therefore quality of lives of the people will lead to a further decline in traditional values (community spirit, family values, solidarity etc), and the adoption of more materialistic values of an egotistic nature. Another aspect of falling living standards will be increased morbidity and mortality rates, which will put increased pressure on health systems, especially as these conditions favour the spread of contagious diseases;
  

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  These conditions also favour the spread of HIV/AIDS and increase the prevalence of the disease for lack of proper medical care and nutrition;
  

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  Lastly, the number of orphans and children receiving no schooling is likely to increase even further than it is now;
  

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  The widening gap between the rich and the poor will cause destabilizing social tengious between the rich and the poor. The problem will further be aggravated by the fact that corresponding to the poverty of rural areas, which lead to the rural exodus and depopularization of the rural areas, there is increasing popularization of the urban areas leading to worsening problems of over crowding, congestion and disease. This makes the towns a slum area causing the planned facilities over burdened and inadequate for the increased population.
  

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  UNESCO should continue to mobilize the political leaders to allocate more resources to education and training;
  

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  UNESCO should continue to push for substantial innovations into the education systems of Member States;
  
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  Technical and Vocational Education and training should be much encouraged in order to adapt education to the technological environment and the changing work environment;
  
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  Young people represent a force for change and innovation, UNESCO and the member states should take advantage of this;
  

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  UNESCO should assist Member States to achieve balance between towns and rural areas by devoting more and more resources to expansion of infrastructure in the urban or town areas and also construct infrastructure in the rural areas so as to improve the conditions of living and limit the exodius to the urban areas.