Message to the Children of the Twenty-first Century: An International Symposium Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Japan’s Participation in UNESCO (3 July 2001, Tokyo, Japan ) The children of the twenty-first century will face many challenges. What should they be learning to help them overcome these challenges, and how should they be learning?

 

2001, the first year of the twenty-first century, marks the 50th anniversary of Japan’s membership in UNESCO, the United Nations organization that has special responsibility for education, science and culture. Established in 1946, following the end of the Second World War, UNESCO was founded in order to promote collaboration between nations in furthering universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for human rights and fundamental freedoms, notably through developing education, encouraging co-operation and exchange in science and assuring the conservation and protection of the world’s tangible and intangible heritage. Japan has actively participated in the Organization’s activities since its foundation; UNESCO now has 188 member states.

Among UNESCO’s most important activities are its educational programmes. Today, 870 million people throughout the world are illiterate, and the Organization’s Education for All programme includes an important literacy component, as well as activities aimed atdeveloping educational methods and contents worldwide. However, UNESCO also works in other areas, such as in the natural sciences, in the social and human sciences, in communication and in cultural development and conservation, all in the spirit of the Organization’s Constitution, which speaks of strengthening, and building upon, ‘the intellectual and moral
solidarity of mankind'.

UNESCO’s World Heritage programme, for example, well known throughout the world thanks to the World Heritage List of outstanding examples of mankind’s cultural and natural heritage, helps to save this heritage from natural and man-made destruction. In addition, the Organization’s activities in conserving and protecting the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and culture in its widest sense – from threatened languages to disappearing customs – are important parts of this work. In a context of rapid globalization, UNESCO is striving to preserve our common heritage, so that children may enjoy it in the twenty-first century.

This book, the text of which is taken from an international Symposium held in Tokyo in 2001 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Japan’s membership in UNESCO, has been published in order to shed light on some of the many challenges that we face as we enter the new century, and to pass on a Message to the Children of the Twenty-first Century.