FROM Paris: In his eight-minute address before the UNESCO’s General Assembly here in Paris, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo appealed to the 191 member countries (our ASEAN partner Brunei Darussalam was the newest member state) to focus their energies on fighting poverty and building peace. He did this as he also shared some of the significant achievements made by the country along UNESCO’s programs in education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture and communication. Secretary Romulo who led the Philippine delegation) underscored the principles upon which UNESCO was founded — "that since wars begin in the minds of men, it is also in the minds of men that the ramparts of peace must be built." And further recalled the reminder made by his eminent uncle, Philippine Delegate to the UN Carlos P. Romulo who said: "Let us make this floor the last battlefield." Since then, he noted, UNESCO and the UN have been building stone upon stone, the edifice of peace.
Among our program which address many of the survival issues of the day is "Education for All," UNESCO’s flagship program under which the country had offered to become the Asia-Pacific Center for Lifelong Learning and Sustainable Development. This supports the need to bring education to our migrant workers. Along this concern is the recognition of the transformative power of knowledge societies and intercultural dialogue as well as the new information and communication technologies in bringing about social cohesion and tolerance among peoples of various faiths. Romulo noted the strides towards attaining sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals as he emphasized the priorities we have given in disaster and water management and in fighting HIV/AIDS.
The debates in the communication programme were lively and underscored the increasing recognition of commmunication as a resource that has impact on all aspects of human life, and that today we live in a world of contrasts — one is that which has access to information and is inclusive and the other which has limited access, poor and excluded. The consensus on some of the major challenges are: How we can increase access at the community level; how to enhance human capacity and skills; how to improve connectivity and lower costs; how to encourage development of local material; ensure freedom of information and press freedom; ensure media pluralism; mobilize multi-stakeholder partnerships; how to deal with social; cultural and ethical implications of media and the new ICTs how to preserve knowledge or the memory of the world.
Two of the priorities are the development of appropriate content which can be delivered through new information technologies that can reach the underserved and the preservation of our rich cultural heritage in audiovisual and print formats. Our UNESCO National Commission through its Communication and Culture Committees are involved in the preparatory activities needed to get this project off the ground. UNESCO has committed support for the implementation of a Draft Resolution on strategic planning in the use of ICTs for education, science, and culture and to expand this through additional support for an ASEAN eKnowledge Public Domain Project. Already, we have partners from technology industries who are willing to invest through wireless technology. A workshop on Memory of the World will be held in Manila next month: Our proposed program on lifelong learning supports UNESCO’s emphasis on Education for All.
We indeed feel good that the hard work that we have done at UNESCO Philippines is now being rewarded. The next move is to ensure that the commitment of our partners from the government agencies involved would be translated in full support: Please e-mail me at
florbraid at yahoo.com. 
