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In partnership with UNESCO's Oral Archives Initiative, the authors have set out to capture the voices of those who have played a significant role in the creation and early development of the World Heritage Convention. The recorded interviews with the men and women who were active participants in this early period are designed to supplement the existing literature and voluminous documentation from the statutory and expert meetings. The uniqueness of this World Heritage research project is the important role that the voices of the pioneers will play in illuminating the successes and failures, the struggles and triumphs of the early years. This paper aims to share some of the findings.

The selection of the first group of interviewees has been made on the basis of the importance of the person's involvement in World Heritage matters, age, diversity of interests and geographical distribution. The interviews are structured with specific questions to identify key issues and cases that have affected the development of the World Heritage system. Topics are explored and teased out, adapting to the experience of each interviewee.

To date, the authors have interviewed 31 participants from all geographical regions of UNESCO. The interviews have created a rich and diverse tapestry of information, concepts and opinions on the early days of the World Heritage Convention. Participants in the project have been generous with their time and passionately candid in their views. In this paper, the authors offer a glimpse into the results of this research by presenting some samples from three interviews.

The interviews provide a unique and original viewpoint on the creation and early implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Preliminary results point to a deeper understanding of the forces that led to the creation of the convention and the leadership role played by certain individuals in transforming these ideas for international cooperation into reality. At the completion of the project, this data set of interviews will be deposited in the UNESCO Archives for consultation by future generations of researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse various aspects of education for sustainable development (ESD) drawing attention to the approaching end of the UN Decade on ESD (DESD) in 2014 and to the necessity of the continuation of ESD activities. Defining the internationalisation of education as an ever more significant part of globalisation, the paper insists that the education should be recognised as the foundation for sustainable development and building of the global knowledge society.

The author presents a vision of the education as of a global “soft power” thus introducing a new understanding and a different application of the notion used mainly in a negative sense which, in author's opinion, can serve as educational instrument and technology of attraction. The author's methodology and approach take note of the basic principles of the globalisation theory and include the recognition of the fact that the contradiction between global interdependent problems of the planetary scale on one side and the existing rather fragmentary and desultory way of acquiring knowledge on the other side is the main challenge to the present and future quality of the human potential.

Considering ways how to continue the work on ESD after the end of the UN DESD in 2014, the author expresses a point of view that it should be an innovation project requiring state, public, law and financial support. United Nations Organization for Science, Culture and Education (UNESCO) Chairs have an important role to play as a new instrument of the global educational “soft power” inspired to promote knowledge and scientific experience worldwide.

Authentic experience of the UNESCO Chair creation and activity at the Faculty of Global Studies at Moscow State University is shown. The author having about 40 years of experience of cooperation with UNESCO as a member of a group of experts at the Director General, later – as a diplomat at UNESCO and recently – as UNESCO Chairholder presents an original point of view based on personal findings and conclusions.

The origins of the UNISIST programme proposals are to be found in the concerns of the scientific community itself for the survival of its traditional communication institutions. From the outset, the concern transcended political and ideological boundaries. Scientists of East and West, meeting under Pugwash Conference auspices, in Karlovy Vary in 1964, viewed the tendency toward fractional and unco‐ordinated mechanization of information processing in different countries and in different fields of science with apprehension. Were the sciences in the process of creating in the electronic age a new Tower of Babel? Would the adventitious application of technology defeat the fundamental purpose of free and open scientific communication among all nations?

The purpose of this paper is to describe the emergence of the concept of outstanding universal value and its application from the ancient to modern times culminating with its codification under the auspices of UNESCO in 1972.

The nearly four decades‐long application of UNESCO's World Heritage Convention offers a solid basis for a critical reflection regarding past achievements and future challenges. An entire review of this being beyond the scope of a single paper, it focuses on only a few salient issues which illustrate how this unique international legal instrument evolved in the past 39 years.

The paper singles out for each of the four stages at least one emblematic and most threatened World Heritage property, in order to illustrate major legal issues and how these were addressed by the parties.

As Secretary of the World Heritage Committee as well as Founder Director of the World Heritage Centre viewpoints the author presents that constitute a direct and continuous observation of World Heritage related matters over the last four decades.

This chapter will examine the interplay among actors who took part in the process of consensus building towards a post-2015 education agenda via different channels of global governance, including both formal and informal channels.

Most of the forums and entities established as part of the global governance structure are composed of representatives from UN or UNESCO member states, civil society organizations (CSOs) and UN agencies. However, each of these categories has diverse constituent groups; representing these groups is not as straightforward a task as the governance structure seems to assume. Therefore, based on interviews and qualitative text analysis, this chapter will introduce major groups of actors and their major issues of concern, decision-making structure, mode of communication and relationship with other actors. Then, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the various channels and actors, it will present the structural issues that arose during the analysis of post-2015 discourse and the educational issues that emerged as the shared concerns of the ‘education community’. While most of the analysis to untangle the nature of discourse relies on qualitative analysis of texts and interviews, the end of this chapter will also demonstrate the trends of discourse in quantitative terms.

What was the post-2015 discourse for the so-called education community, which in itself has an ambiguous and virtual existence? The keywords post-2015 and post-EFA provide us with an opportunity to untangle how shared norms and codes of conduct were shaped at the global scale.

The promotion of Education for All (EFA) in today's globalized world is an important responsibility to be borne by the international community as a whole. International cooperation in education is being undertaken in many developing countries under collaborative arrangements of “Actors” with varying positions. Essential as the backbone of such cooperation is a mutually complementary partnership between the public (governments and official aid agencies) and private (civil society). Without this, international cooperation in education is exceedingly difficult to implement. Thus, led mainly by international agencies, the mechanisms for global governance for the promotion of international cooperation in education have been created.

This paper sets out to analyze the mechanisms of governance on a global level as led by international agencies. Moreover, it attempts to elucidate the role of civil society, which has gained in importance as a partner of governments and international agencies, leading to a study of public and political dimensions in international cooperation in education. Furthermore, to see how the international community might close the four critical gaps in the areas of “policy, capacity, data and financing” and assist developing countries in promoting EFA, the paper analyzes an example of a recent international initiative called the EFA Fast-Track Initiative (FTI).

Based on the world report, The World Ahead: our Future in the Making, this article identifies four major challenges which we face at the dawn of the 21st century: peace, social inequality, sustainable development and long‐term global planning. It argues that society needs to be rebuilt and envisages it as an international democracy founded on four pillars or contracts – social, natural, cultural and ethical – and looks at some of the preconditions and costs.

The purpose of this paper is to account for and to justify the UN's recent appeal to “all Member States, intergovernmental bodies, organizations of the United Nations system and relevant non‐governmental organizations […] to ensure a more visible and effective integration and mainstreaming of culture in development policies and strategies at all levels”.

The paper delves into the history of ideas leading up to the UN's belated recognition of culture's influence (a full ten years into the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)). It shows how the post‐Second World War intuitions embraced in UNESCO's Constitution matured in the course of the nation‐building and decolonization processes that have given way to today's context of advanced globalization.

Against that background, rising international awareness of the issues involved in the environment‐development nexus conspired with growing concern for the safeguarding of world heritage and cultural diversity, finally culminating in the establishment of specific international standards that call for sustainable, integrated approaches to development.

Drawing from UNESCO's experience, the paper provides compelling evidence in support of the idea that culture, creative industries and cultural heritage contribute a great deal to development, in terms not only of quantitative economic growth (income, employment), but also of qualitative standards of equity and well‐being. In light of such criteria, examples are offered and plans are laid out for concerted action in view of attaining the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 and of building on from there.

The Seminar for the International Exchange of Publications in the Indo‐Pacific Area, inspired by Unesco and sponsored by the National Diet Library of Japan, was held at Tokyo from 4 November to 11 November, 1957. There were no less than thirty‐two participants, delegates, and observers, from the following countries: Australia, Cambodia, Ceylon, Chile, the Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaya, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the United States of Soviet Russia. Almost all the participating countries deputed librarians of standing to represent them. Among them were Mr. Foster E. Mohrhardt, Director of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Library, Mr. Jennings Wood, Assistant Chief Director, Exchange and Gifts Division of the Library of Congress, Mr. Boris Kanevsky, Chief Librarian, Dept. of International Exchange of Publications of the Lenin State Library, Dr. H. L. White, Librarian, Commonwealth National Library, Canberra, and Dr. Armando Sandoval, Director, Centro de Documentacion Cientifica y Technica de Mexico.

This chapter has three main objectives: (1) to address the qualitative and quantitative impact of globalization in higher education institutions (HEI) and in the higher education systems (HES) in different regions and countries during the past 20 years; (2) stress the need of having specific levels of social equity in order to attain a permanent education for all and for life applying adequate educational policies; and (3) refer briefly to the need of a world report on higher education.

The ideas discussed in this chapter highlight key issues identified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) regarding higher education, such as access, diversification, pertinence (or social commitment), quality, management, financing, new technologies of information and communication (ICT), and international cooperation.