Welcome to the United Nations
Addressee: UNESCO
Full Text
The Permanent Forum recommends that UNESCO, as the primary United Nations agency dealing with education, science and culture, implement and strengthen strategies based on recommendations from the Permanent Forum’s six sessions, placing emphasis on the quality of education and taking into account the visions and pedagogies of indigenous peoples. This recommendation should be reflected in the contents and activities of the global plan of action and in the medium-term financial strategy 2007-2013.
Responses
In 2008, UNESCO has been carrying out the following
activities: (a)An e-forum on languages in education that contribute to and enrich data on mother-tongue instruction and bilingual education, with the active participation of indigenous organizations, individuals and experts;(b)Advocacy for enhancing quality learning through mother-tongue-based education; case studies of good practices from Canada, Mali, Papua New Guinea and Peru will be published and disseminated;(c)A series of regional workshops on inclusive education, in preparation for the international conference on education to be held in Geneva in November 2008 by the UNESCO International Bureau of Education.
Indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems, as well as their rights and aspirations related to culture and education, are highlighted in the UNESCO contribution to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. In 2007, two projects launched with indigenous communities in the Central African Republic and Niger and entitled Heritage education for sustainable development: dialogue with indigenous communities, aim at developing input to policy and programme formulation in the field of education that builds on safeguarding the natural and living cultural heritage of those communities and fosters their sustainable development.
Integrating indigenous knowledge into school curricula has been a central focus of the UNESCO Local and indigenous knowledge systems (LINKS) programme. In Solomon Islands, the project has been furthered this year by reprinting and shipping the publication Reef and Rainforest: An Environmental Encyclopaedia of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands (UNESCO, 2005) for distribution to schools; the pilot development of an accompanying teacher manual is now under way. A Maori language version of the interactive CD-ROM learning tool entitled The Canoe is the People: Indigenous Navigation in the Pacific was produced, launched and disseminated with a view to expanding indigenous knowledge and language content in Pacific Island schools. A volume in Mayangna and Spanish on indigenous Mayangna knowledge of the aquatic ecosystem in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve (Nicaragua) will also be published shortly.
An international workshop on improving quality of mother tongue/bilingual literacy programmes and activities was organized by the UNESCO Dhaka office. The workshop aimed to support participating countries in their efforts to undertake research with the participation of linguists and community members, to prepare context-specific literacy materials using mother tongue/bilingual approaches, and to train locals in the use of these teaching materials as educational tools for community members.
UNESCO field offices have undertaken a number of activities related to indigenous education at the community level. These include the Tribal adolescents development programme, which is implemented by the UNESCO Dhaka office and aims to promote literacy among the adults and adolescents of the tribal communities in Bangladesh, notably through the channel of community learning centres. The UNESCO office in Moscow, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, has launched the project “promoting literacy of indigenous pupils through capacity-building for the system of community education of nomadic peoples of the north of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)”.
Final Report of UNPFII Session 6 (2007)
Area of Work
