THE UNESCO

CourierApril-June 2019 Reinventing Cities

Alain Mabanckou Jorge Majfud Thomas B. Reverdy Read the Subscribe to UNESCO the digital version

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2019 • n° 2 • Published since 1948 Production and promotion: Information and reproduction rights: Ian Denison, Chief, UNESCO Publishing courier@unesco.org The UNESCO Courier is published quarterly by the United 7, Place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. and Branding It promotes the ideals of UNESCO by sharing ideas on Eric Frogé, Senior Production Assistant © UNESCO 2019 issues of international concern relevant to its mandate. Digital Production: ISSN 2220-2285 • e-ISSN 2220-2293 The UNESCO Courier is published thanks to the generous Denis Pitzalis, Web Architect/Developer support of the People’s Republic of China. 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French: Gabriel Casajus, proofreader Co-editions The designations employed in this publication and Russian: Marina Yartseva Portuguese: Ana Lúcia Guimarães the presentation of the data do not imply the expression of Spanish: William Navarrete Esperanto: Trezoro Huang Yinbao any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning Digital edition: Malahat Ibrahimova Sicilian: David Paleino the legal status of any country, territory, city or area of its Photographs and illustrations: Danica Bijeljac Korean: Eun Young Choi authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Translation and layout coordination: Veronika Fedorchenko Articles express the opinions of the authors and do not Administrative and editorial assistance: necessarily represent the opinions of UNESCO and do not Carolina Rollán Ortega commit the Organization. Editorial 2014 was a watershed year for humanity: greenhouse gas emissions and produce We have seen this at UNESCO, which is for the first time in history, more than half seventy per cent of global waste. As cities home to no less than five city networks, of the world’s population now lives in expand, they threaten biodiversity, and each of which is working to harness the cities. By current estimates, this will rise place urban infrastructure and resources extraordinary capacity for innovation and to seventy per cent by 2050. These cities – from water to transport to electricity – connection that is a hallmark of cities. of tomorrow will, in many ways, mirror under enormous strain, multiplying the For instance, cities account for seventy their forbearers; from the early city-states impact of natural disasters and climate per cent of the global economy, including of Mesopotamia, to the Italian cities of change. Unchecked development and a large portion of the creative economy, the Renaissance, to the megacities of mass tourism place cultural heritage which generates annual global revenues today – cities have historically advanced sites and living heritage practices at of $2,250 billion and employs more human development, serving as melting risk. Rising inequality and migration – young people than any other sector. pots for people of diverse backgrounds to driven in many cases by conflict and That is why the 180 cities that form the exchange and dialogue. disaster – make cities the focal points for UNESCO Creative Cities Network are new social cleavages, for exclusion and Yet the cities of today and tomorrow working to leverage the ability of cities discrimination. are also facing new, unprecedented to bring creative people together, to challenges. Although occupying only Given the magnitude of these challenges, spark economic growth, to foster a sense two per cent of the world’s landmass, cities across the globe have concluded of community and to preserve urban they consume sixty per cent of global that new ways of thinking, citizen identities. UNESCO’s Global Network energy, release seventy-five per cent of engagement and, crucially, city-to-city of Learning Cities is working to make cooperation, are the only paths forward. cities sustainable by ensuring that all urban residents can benefit from lifelong learning. From learning to ride a bicycle to make the urban environment cleaner, learning to make local products using traditional practices and knowledge or organizing community theatre workshops in marginalized neighbourhoods, each new educational opportunity brings with it the potential for social transformation and development. As one of the world’s foremost laboratories of ideas, UNESCO is working to bring these networks of cities together, encouraging them to exchange and collaborate on the policies and practices that can respond to the growing needs of urban residents. The Pulitzer-winning journalist, Herb Caen, once said, “A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.” UNESCO believes that when cities share these dreams, and take inspiration from the vision of others, they can overcome the challenges of our new urban era. This issue of the UNESCO Courier is full of stories of creativity, innovation and resilience. I hope they inspire you, and perhaps push you to engage with these issues in your own city or community. Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO

The probability of a city, imaginary urban map by French artist Fabrice Clapiès. © Fabrice Clapiès

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 3 Contents

WIDE ANGLE 6-35

7 Warsaw, the invincible city Joanna Lasserre

10 A warm welcome versus hostility Gabriela Neves de Lima

12 Street smarts in Kinshasa Sylvie Ayimpam

14 Russia: From monotowns to pluritowns Ivan Nesterov

17 Havana: Where everyone pitches in Jasmina Šopova

18 Eusebio Leal : Havana, mon amour Interview by Lucía Iglesias Kuntz

21 When art takes over the street Mehdi Ben Cheikh, interviewed by Anissa Barrak

24 The city, a circus under a starlit tent Thomas B. Reverdy

28 Under the auspices of UNESCO … cities in networks

36-43 ZOOM

Lighting up the world! Photos: Rubén Salgado Escudero Text: Katerina Markelova

4 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 In this issue Cities have always been centres of power, attractiveness and prosperity. But the frenetic urbanization of recent decades is jeopardizing their historical function as melting pots that integrate and absorb newcomers. As they become more populated, they become dehumanized. Violence, inequality, discrimination – the larger the cities, the more these ills overwhelm them. Nevertheless, even as they are dehumanized, cities are reinventing themselves. From street smarts as a survival strategy in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) to major national projects for the rehabilitation of single-industry cities in Russia; from 44-49 the personal initiative of a gallery owner who revitalized the small town of Erriadh (Tunisia) to the mobilization of the masses against the authoritarian IDEAS appropriation of public spaces in Warsaw (Poland); and from solidarity movements Racism does not need racists 45 with migrants in London (United Jorge Majfud Kingdom) to synergies that revive the heart of Havana (Cuba) – creative forces 48 The other side of the coin are emerging and organizing themselves Katherine Levine Einstein to give urban life new meanings and new perspectives. We may believe these are “tiny resistances” – to use the expression of the French writer Thomas B. Reverdy – but they make all the difference. Two other writers share their views with our readers in this issue. Our Guest, 50-53 the French-Congolese author Alain Mabanckou, talks about “mobile Africas” and the courage to write, while highlighting contradictory moments in colonial history. The Uruguayan-American OUR GUEST writer Jorge Majfud condemns the racist attitude towards migrants in the Ideas The mobile Africas of Alain Mabanckou section, which also provides an analysis of Interview by Ariane Poissonnier migration policies in the United States. In the Current Affairs section – on the occasion of World Africa Day, 25 May – we publish an interview with Tshilidzi Marwala (South Africa), on CURRENT 54-61 the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) on the continent. To mark the AFFAIRS International Day for Biological Diversity, 22 May, we visit Gran Pajatén, Peru, with Roldán Rojas Paredes – the man who 55 Open books, open minds Ghalia Khoja initiated its inscription on UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves. 56 Artificial intelligence, at Africa’s door We also go to Sharjah (United Arab Tshilidzi Marwala, interviewed by Edwin Naidu Emirates), which launches its World Book Capital programme in April 2019. 58 The Rwandan miracle Alphonse Nkusi Finally, with Zoom, we travel to India, Mexico, Myanmar and Uganda, to visit 60 Gran Pajatén, “our geographical fortress” places without electricity. An illuminating Roldán Rojas Paredes, interviewed by William Navarrete trip around the world!

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 5 © Selçuk Demirel Wide Angle Warsaw, the invincible city

Joanna Lasserre

Faced with mounting conservatism, progressive civil society in Warsaw is demonstrating a strong capacity for protest in order to defend democratic values. The “rebel” Polish capital – so often occupied, mistreated and destroyed – has held firm through many episodes of its history. It is still being reconstructed, in a constant

quest for fulfilment. © Jaap Arriens / NurPhoto March through the old town of Warsaw in November 2018 to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage. Rebel city Warsaw is not what you would call a You have to walk through the city’s Most often, the confrontation crystallizes beautiful city. It does not offer itself in all streets to let yourself be invaded by the in front of the presidential palace. Until its magnificence to the hurried visitor, as energy that drives it, and let yourself April 2018, this was the arrival point of does Krakow, the former Polish capital. be drawn into its many unexpected the religious procession that left the old A city with a hundred shades of grey, it corners, to meet at random a group that town every tenth day of the month to was invaded by the younger generations marches here, another that parks there commemorate – with a mass, prayers, after the fall of the communist regime in – when it’s not a human tide protesting, hymns and speeches – the Smolensk 1989. They squatted in the abandoned brandishing banners and signs. disaster of 10 April 2010. On that day, factories and turned them into places ninety-six prominent people, including Silent marches and noisy demonstrations of artistic creation. They defended President Lech Kaczynski, were killed are frequent scenes in Warsaw. the architecture of the communist in a plane crash. A monthly ceremony, White flowers, black clothes, candles, period in the face of pressure from raised to the national level, was therefore firecrackers – all these mingle under a new real-estate developers. The Palace to be repeated ninety-six times, till April surge of white and red flags. But while of Culture and Science, for example, a 2018. It occupied the historic centre of some also bear the blue flag of Europe “gift” from Comrade Stalin, completed Warsaw and attracted crowds of citizens with its golden stars, others wave the in 1955, still dominates the city centre who turned up regularly to protest black or the green flags of the nationalist today – whether its many critics like it against what they considered to be an patriots, nostalgic for a “Greater Poland or not. As imposing as it is unloved by authoritarian and religious appropriation from sea to sea”. While some proclaim: the people of Warsaw, this immense of the public space. “Let us not leave democracy to die in building of more than 800,000 square silence!”, others demand a “pure Poland”, The citizens’ opposition to the nationalist metres was a veritable cultural multiplex a “white Poland”. trend started mobilizing in 2015, through before its time – housing museums, a civic non-governmental organization, convention halls, workshops, theatres and This is the national paradox, which in the Committee for the Defence of art‑house cinemas. recent years has turned into a veritable Democracy (KOD). On 13 December, rupture between two Polands, which defy Over the last thirty years, a myriad of the anniversary of the traumatic day or ignore each other. And this rupture new meeting places – galleries, clubs, when martial law was imposed in Poland gushes forth in the public square, both bars – have flourished here and there by General Jaruzelski in 1981, tens of literally and figuratively. in post-communist Warsaw, which thousands of people march in Warsaw continues to attract students, executives every year. The street demonstrations on of international companies, artists and that day in 2016 saw the largest turnout adventurers from all over the world. since the first free elections in 1989.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 7 The citizens of Warsaw, joined by protesters from around Poland, took this opportunity to challenge state manipulation of the constitution, institutions, and the rights of citizens, particularly women. Women are at the forefront of all civil society movements, bringing together a large part of the society. In 2016, a draft bill to ban all abortions sparked mass nationwide strikes and protests. The proposed legislation would have drastically curtailed Poland’s already- strict abortion laws, which allow for the voluntary termination of pregnancy only in cases of severe fetal malformation, if there was grave danger to the mother’s health, or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. That time, the protesters won, and the government was forced to abandon the plan. But on 11 November 2017, when women sat on the Poniatowski Bridge to block the path of nationalists marching during Poland’s Independence Day, they were forcibly removed – and then brought to justice on charges of obstructing the freedom to protest. © John Bob & Sophie Art The same scene is repeated every Independence Day. A handful of women, Rebel city The result was that in 1939, Warsaw brandishing “Women against Fascism” looked like other European capitals. banners, are pushed around by scores This wave of rebellion and freedom is not It had an elegant city centre and many of men dressed in black, uttering sexist new in Warsaw. Does it come from its river areas inhabited by workers, who made vulgarities, alternated with xenophobic, that cannot be tamed? The Vistula, with up half its population. A large Jewish anti-Semitic and racist slogans. its vast and steep valley that prevents the neighbourhood, teeming with life, The same mob shows up outside theatres. right and left banks from getting closer, spread over at least a third of the area, After each performance of a controversial remains impetuous and wild. Bordered stretching from the centre to the north play that contradicts the sacred codes by sand and bushes, it gives the city of the city. its character. of “Polishness”, the Powszechny Theatre It was then that the bombs of Germany’s prepares to face a new riot organized by For a long time, Warsaw retained its invasion struck Warsaw, until the coup small groups of the far-right. The theatre rustic style. Its emancipation began in de grâce in October 1944. Hitler wanted – along with Krzysztof Warlikowski’s 1915, under the reign of the Germans, to make the city an example of total New Theatre and some other famous who recaptured it from Russia during the annihilation, following the failed Warsaw theatres in the country – has always been First World War. Although it was severely Uprising led by the underground Polish a symbol of the struggle for the artistic exploited economically by the occupiers, resistance movement from August to freedom that remains a thorn in the side the city was driven by an extraordinary October 1944. The city’s right bank of authoritarian powers. determination and hope. Municipal was almost completely destroyed, and Could this be a coincidence? Poland’s elections were held, and the university the surviving population deported. student revolt in 1968 – a milestone in and polytechnic opened. Warsaw was Warsaw was nothing more than a vast the struggle for liberation from Soviet preparing to take on the role of capital of field of ruins, and the possibility of its oppression – began with the withdrawal a sovereign state, which it finally attained reconstruction seemed doubtful, given of a classic, Adam Mickiewicz’s poetic at the end of the war, in 1918. the magnitude of the task. drama, Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve) from the During the twenty short years Yet, as early as in January 1945, Warsaw National Theatre’s repertoire. following independence, the entire homeless revenants were already flocking From fall to reconquest, so goes the life city became a construction site under to the banks of the Vistula, to stir up of this amazing city that draws its ardour Marshal Józef Piłsudski, a leader who the frozen rubble. and energy from its human resources. was both adulated and controversial.

8 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 From fall to reconquest, so goes the life of this amazing city that draws its ardour and its energy from its human resources

Palimpsest city Ringelblum and his team built a bridge from nothing towards the future. Defying Another fascinating chapter in Warsaw’s all prohibition, they left us testimonies history is its ghetto. Many of us have on the clandestine organizations, lists heard about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of deportees, chronicles, literary texts, in the spring of 1943 and its resistance, works of art, diaries, private letters…. as determined as it was hopeless. But It was here, in the Ringelblum Archives, how many know the exact location that we discovered the first detailed of this huge enclosure, the largest in descriptions of the Chełmno and Demonstration outside the Royal Castle Nazi-occupied Europe? Built in 1940, Treblinka extermination camps. Thanks to in Warsaw, July-August 2017, to protest it was erased from the map in 1943. these archives, a team of contemporary against the monthly commemoration Even the residents of Warsaw had only researchers and writers have been able to of the Smolensk plane crash. a vague idea of it, as the subject was reconstruct in detail – at least on paper – taboo during the decades of communist this district of the Polish capital that has rule. The barbed wire had disappeared, disappeared. and when the city was liberated, only A palimpsest city that writes its history on fragments of its eighteen-kilometre wall, They thus began, on their own initiative, the pages of the past, without ever really several metres high, remained. It had a reconstruction that would soon turn erasing it, Warsaw is a vast mosaic that is been somewhere north of the Palace of into an extraordinary achievement constantly reinventing itself in time and Culture, it was said. for the entire nation. Fortunately, space. More than stone and concrete, architecture offices and schools had A new Warsaw was rising over the buried it is made up of flows of human energy clandestinely compiled inventories Jewish city, the memory of which would and the currents that traverse through of historic buildings during the Nazi have vanished at the same time as its it – constructing and deconstructing its occupation. All was not lost. The market 400,000 or 500,000 inhabitants, if one identity, made of rebellious memory and square, the town houses, the circuit man had not survived. His name was salutary oblivion. of the ramparts, the Royal Castle and Hersz Wasser. He was the assistant of the important religious buildings of the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who, with “invincible city”, as it was called then, some sixty friends, worked hard to build would rise from the ashes – driven by a the clandestine archives of the Warsaw unifying national impetus encouraged ghetto they inhabited during the Second by communist propaganda. This led to World War. Some 25,000 pages, carefully An architect with degrees from the Warsaw’s inscription on the UNESCO filed in metal boxes, were extracted from Polytechnic University, Warsaw, and World Heritage List in 1980. The Archive the rubble between 1946 and 1950. These France’s Université de Marne-la-Vallée, of Warsaw Reconstruction Office unique documents, collected in total Joanna Lasserre (Poland) is involved (BOS Archive), which kept track of this secrecy, were inscribed in the Memory of in civic action in Poland and France, in memorable period, was added to the the World Register just after the fall of the parallel with her professional projects Memory of the World Register in 2011. communist regime in 1989. in architecture, urban planning and communication.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 9 A warm welcome versus hostility Gabriela Neves de Lima

Faced with a policy against migrants, the inhabitants of London’s Haringey borough have launched a welcome campaign that has been shaking up British immigration legislation. Proving that finding common ground is always possible, the borough works with local communities, and the central government funds some of its projects. The idea of everyone working together to create a more welcoming neighbourhood is catching on.

Since the emergence of what is commonly notes a report from the local council to Another highlight was the support of referred to as the “migrant crisis” in the the Cabinet, dated 15 November 2016. elected officials for a motion introduced 2010s, the local authorities in Europe It was around that time that the founders by Haringey Welcome in November have been at the forefront of ensuring the of Haringey Welcome took their first steps, 2018. This, says Nabijou, provides integration of migrants and refugees into demanding that the neighbourhood a great opportunity “to put all the their communities. Some act within the implement the central government’s problems on the table and to rebuild framework of political agendas defined by voluntary resettlement scheme for Syrian local management”. governments, others are more proactive. refugees. Claire Kober, then council leader The Haringey Welcome campaign in of Haringey and chair of London councils, Threatened social north London has chosen to adopt a pledged to relocate ten Syrian families – collaborative approach, while remaining to give them “a place of safety” and the relations an activist and independent organization support they needed “in order to start The need to rebuild local management that takes a more antagonistic stance rebuilding their lives”. is essential in a context of an upheaval in when necessary. But, as Nabijou points out, the council social relations. This is because the so- suffers from a lack of financial resources, called hostile environment policy, which Moral obligation training and dialogue with residents and targets undocumented immigrants above community groups, which undermines all, and aims to deter migrants from against social injustice its effectiveness. This is why Haringey crossing territorial boundaries, actually Haringey Welcome is based on the Welcome has adopted a more collaborative affects the entire population. approach in its negotiations with the local notion of political solidarity, defined by Migration policies involve not only council, emphasizing the need to create the American philosopher Sally Scholz the different ministries and local new communications channels and build as a positive moral obligation which representations involved in border relationships based on trust. encourages collective action in the control and immigration management, face of a situation of injustice or social The programme’s purpose is not to but also the private sector and ordinary vulnerability. Her ideology is the polar advocate that elected councillors or citizens. In practice, this means that there opposite of a hostile environment policy, local council employees violate national are also borders within the country. All explains Lucy Nabijou, coordinator law per se, Nabijou insists, but rather, to aspects of social life are monitored and of the residents’ group that initiated increase transparency and accountability potentially reported, with increased risks the campaign. “It is about solidarity and to better navigate through available of deportation. As a result, migrants and and justice, about fighting for values, instruments to provide adequate services asylum seekers are discouraged from contesting bad law and really trying to for migrants and refugees. accessing essential services. work together with the local government, seeking a real collaboration with local The Haringey council already seems to For instance, private landlords are obliged authorities to improve services,” she adds. be moving in this direction. In September to check whether their future tenants have 2018, it launched the Connected the right to reside in the country, and to With forty-five per cent of its population Communities programme, with funding keep proof of this, at the risk of paying a born outside the United Kingdom and from the central government. It aims to fine or being imprisoned for a maximum five per cent having moved there in the improve local support for migrants in the period of five years. With a more stringent last two years, Haringey is one of London’s areas of employment, housing, learning redefinition of the “habitual residence” most cosmopolitan boroughs. “Haringey the English language, childcare and category, access to free health care has has a strong and proud history of community empowerment. Although been curtailed, and temporary non- welcoming asylum seekers and refugees she welcomes this initiative, Nabijou has European immigrants have been forced and people who have chosen to re-settle expressed her reservations about the to pay an annual surcharge for the in London. There are generations of choice of keeping it in-house, the viability duration of their stay. Between 2016 and people from around the world who have of the project if it is tied to the current 2018, schools were required to provide moved here and made Haringey one of funding stream, and its ability to reach the state with information on children the UK’s most open and diverse boroughs,” more vulnerable migrant groups. with a migrant background.

10 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 However, data collection has been stopped as a result of a campaign that is currently fighting for the destruction of this data. Joining forces Writing about the shift in focus of recent UK In this context, Haringey Welcome Beyond the political aspect, Nabijou immigration legislation, British academics contributes to improving social relations observes that the Haringey Welcome Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss and on the ground, by building solidarity campaign has another side-effect, Kathryn Cassidy have concluded that it networks within the borough. The that is equally central to the initiative. amounts to “everyday bordering in which group has been working with schools, “Through mobilization, you get to know ordinary citizens are demanded to become for example, to raise awareness of the your neighbours, you meet new people, either border-guards and/or suspected implications of the hostile environment. you are better informed about what is illegitimate border crossers”. A relative, It has also garnered support from other happening, and all this blends together a friend, or a neighbour could become an local community groups and migrant to produce an extremely strong sense informer. As Latvian anthropologist Dace support organizations – all of whom work of community that transforms the place Dzenovsca suggests, personal conflicts together to create a more welcoming where you live,” she enthuses. could interfere with the defence of borough. borders. These practices disrupt social and By forging these links and working political relations, creating fear, suspicion directly with elected and government and tensions within communities, officials, Haringey Welcome promotes a and threatening local solidarity and form of multi-stakeholder collaboration A political scientist, Gabriela Neves conviviality. It is also important to note involving all interested parties. Some de Lima (Brazil) is a research assistant that certain social categories (such as of the ways in which this can be done at the Department of Geography and those based on race, class or gender) are includes bidding for funding for Environment at the London School disproportionately impacted by these integration initiatives from the Controlling of Economics and Political Science, policies, indicating the relative fragility Migration Fund of the Ministry of Housing, United Kingdom. She is a co-author of of their rights. Communities, and Local Government. Cities Welcoming Refugees and Migrants: Establishing a working group of local Enhancing Effective Urban Governance advisors, migrant organizations and legal in an Age of Migration, published by experts to develop a strategy for migrants, Collage by children at the Sterrenbos UNESCO in 2016. especially more vulnerable groups, would pre-school in Hamme, Belgium, also be beneficial. which received a special mention at the UNESCO Associated Schools Network global art contest, “Opening Hearts and Minds to Refugees”, 2017. © UNESCO / Pataphonique Productions

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 11 Street smarts in Kinshasa

Sylvie Ayimpam

How do you survive when you’re poor and caught up in an interminable series of social and economic crises? You learn how to get by! This is the motto of the inhabitants of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Showing great ingenuity, they never miss an opportunity to invent a new job. Romains, chargeurs, and other gaddafis swarm the markets and streets of the megacity, closing the gaps in the system.

We are in the Democratic Republic of It is at the heart of all economic survival the Congo. The scene takes place in the strategies, especially among young city centre of Kinshasa, the capital. Three people, who make up more than half of young shoe-shine boys sit on rocks at the city’s population. the entrance of a school, equipped with stools, footrests, brushes and sponges. Creativity born Next to them, a young man has set up Kinshasa, market town. a stand and watches over a cleverly- of necessity crafted electric charging system. On a Like the chargeurs, who fill the gaps in the small wooden panel, he has mounted home electricity distribution system now several electrical outlets which are illicitly that mobile phones are hugely successful, connected to electrical wires emerging other inhabitants show remarkable from the ground, where they are attached ingenuity by inventing diverse sources to the base of a defective street light. This of income, taking advantage of every man calls himself the chargeur (charger). opportunity to make themselves useful. While shoe-shine boys have long been Starting with next to nothing, they launch an integral part of the urban landscape, new activities to meet different needs. battery chargers have emerged at the A table, a bench, some cooking utensils same time as mobile telephones. In the and charcoal are enough to set up a 1970s and 1980s, the city was full of malewa, or cheap restaurant where micro-production units – shoe or paint you can eat for ten times less than factories, carpenters or jewellers, weaving anywhere else – even if hygiene is or dyeing workshops sprouted like sometimes compromised. Are the buses mushrooms, mainly in backyards. Since overcrowded? No problem! The wewas the mid-1990s, small businesses and (motorcycle taxis) are there to transport services have taken over. you. Are the streets flooded after the You have to know how to fend for rain? All right, back carriers will ferry yourself if you live in Kinshasa, among pedestrians across. Others, like second- some 11 million inhabitants. The hand spare-part dealers, mobile-phone economic crisis, the failures of the state repairers, or bottled-water vendors, are and public services, and the scarcity of also at hand to help you out at any time. salaried jobs are forcing city dwellers to A colloquial terminology is developing earn their living through various forms of to keep up with these new activities, self-employment made up of small tasks characterized by intermediation. The and expediencies. gap left by the lack of organization of In a context of anomy and extreme public and private infrastructures is poverty, la débrouille – the French word filled by all kinds of agents, brokers and for resourcefulness, making do, getting subcontractors who offer their services by or improvising – has become a way individually or through networks. of life at which city dwellers excel.

12 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Plying their trades in the streets and “Article 15, my dears, make do to survive,” Admittedly, in the midst of an markets, but also in any place of he sang in Lingala. “Look at the river port: incomplete modernity, institutions are commercial transaction, including car the dock workers carry heavy loads. Look bankrupt, administrations shaky, civil parks, major intersections, bus stations at the bus conductors: they shout from society unstructured and traditions and river ports, are romains (dealers in morning to night. Look, there are stalls worthless. Yet what never ceases to smuggled merchandise), bana kwatas all over the city. Look at the taxi and bus amaze in Kinshasa is the resourcefulness (touts dealing in second-hand clothes), drivers: they drive from morning to night. and creativity of the people struggling to chayeurs (wholesalers’ agents), gaddafis Look at us, the musicians: we sing to earn get by, reflecting the inventive spirit of (informal fuel-sellers), chargeurs (touts our living. Look at the students: they individuals and the community. working for taxis and public transport, not study to prepare for the future.” to be confused with battery chargers!), But the future we dream of, often cambistes (street money-changers), and remains distant, and in the meantime, mamas manoeuvre (middlemen trading we get by in Kinshasa, as in many food products in river ports). other African cities. Resourcefulness has become a way of being, a marker A Congolese social scientist affiliated Article 15 of urban identity that spans the entire with the Institut des mondes africains Kinshasa social space. The informal (IMAF) in Aix-en-Provence, France, In the mid-1980s, the song “Article 15, economy, which proliferates mainly Sylvie Ayimpam’s work focuses on Beta Libanga” by the Congolese musician due to chronic shortages, poverty and the issue of the informal economy Pépé Kallé (1951-1998), was a big hit political instability, is far from being free in African cities. She is the author of across the continent, probably because of schemes, swindles, risks, conflict and Économie de la débrouille à Kinshasa. so many Africans could identify with violence. Nevertheless, it also includes Informalité, commerce et réseaux sociaux it. Article 15 is an imaginary article in social values, such as conviviality, (The economy of resourcefulness in the DRC Constitution that says: “Make solidarity, respect and loyalty. Ultimately, Kinshasa. Informality, commerce and do to survive!” All the Congolese know it contributes to a form of social social networks), 2014. it and refer to it on a daily basis. “Beta self‑regulation. libanga” literally means “Break the stone”. “Making do is not easy,” Kallé warns us.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 13 © Baudoin Bikoko Russia: From monotowns to pluritowns

Ivan Nesterov The money needed to resolve the financial The first Russian factory towns were The crisis in Detroit, America’s issues (including employees’ salaries, built in the eighteenth century, in the money owed to raw material suppliers and wake of reforms by Tsar Peter the Great, Motor City, was splashed all over transporters) was allocated by the Russian who encouraged linen manufacturing the international press when the state-owned bank, the VTB Group, and and industrial forges. The second wave city filed the largest municipal production at the plant was resumed. of rapid development took place in the nineteenth century, with the emergence It is clear, however, that the personal bankruptcy in American history, of textile mills and the development of intervention of a head of state cannot in July 2013. The stories about light industry. But most of these towns become a sustainable model for were established in the 1930s, as part of the fall and then, the renaissance resolving crises. Especially since in most Joseph Stalin’s grandiose industrialization of this once-great city, which cases, the problems do not stem from plans, which focused mainly on defence. had staked everything on the disagreements between owners but automobile industry, abounded. from market exigencies. Indeed, Russia’s Today, there are more than 400 large transition to a market economy in the enterprises in monotowns – including But we don’t hear as much early 1990s has created a series of acute Russia’s largest coal producer, the Siberian about the monogoroda, Russia’s problems for monotowns. Coal Energy Company (SUEK); the metal and mining companies, Severstal and long-forgotten industrial At the top of the list is unemployment – Mechel; and the world leader in diamond jobless rates in these towns are twice as towns, that share a similar fate. mining, Alrosa. The number also includes high as the national average in Russia. In There are 319 of these single- state-owned enterprises, like Rostec, addition, these towns were designed to the industrial conglomerate, which factory towns, where a single accommodate the industry that supports manufactures and exports high-technology industry or factory accounts them, rather than with the well-being industrial products for military and civil of their residents in mind. Problems of for most of the local economy. use, and the Rosatom State Atomic Energy pollution, and the lack of infrastructure, How are they faring? Corporation (ROSATOM), the nuclear health and education are recurrent. To energy company, among others. make matters worse, these towns are often situated in far-flung corners of the There are factory towns all over Russia, It is 2 June 2009, and the world is in the country, with exorbitant airfares making it but they are mainly concentrated in throes of one of its most severe financial impossible for people to travel. If they do Siberia and the Urals region. There crises. In north-west Russia, the federal finally make it on a plane, it often means are twenty-four of them in Kemerovo highway linking Novaya Ladoga and they’re leaving for good! oblast, for example, fifteen in Sverdlovsk Vologda is blocked. More than 300 oblast, and fourteen in the autonomous residents of Pikalyovo, a small town okrug[district] of Khantis-Mansis. Some of in Leningrad oblast [a region, with St. Origin of monotowns them have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, Petersburg as its capital], have formed a Around 13.2 million inhabitants – almost like the mining village of Beringovsky, roadblock. They are protesting because one in ten Russians – live and work in Russia’s easternmost town. Others they have not been paid for months. The one of these 319 factory towns. Whatever have populations in the hundreds of three state factories that supported the their differences, they have one thing thousands, like Togliatti, home to the town changed hands, taken over by three in common – their livelihood is entirely country’s automobile industry, with private owners: BaselCement, EuroCement dependent on a single company or 712,000 inhabitants, and Naberezhnye and PhosAgro. However, these companies, consortium, which employs at least a Chelny, where Kamaz heavy-duty trucks who formed a single production line, could quarter of the population. They have all are manufactured, with a population of not agree on a series of issues, including been formed around factories, major 517,000. Most monotowns, however – raw material prices, production volume industrial forestry centres and the around 216 of them – have no more than and development prospects. To such an availability of raw material deposits (gold, 50,000 inhabitants. extent that in this small town of 21,000 iron, coal, oil, gas, apatite, etc.). In the case inhabitants, 4,000 remained unemployed. of Pikalyovo, the town and its cement New strategy factory were built in 1935, in the vicinity It was only when Russian Prime Minister of the station of the same name, where The problems facing Russia’s monotowns Vladimir Putin intervened in person that deposits of limestone and cement clay is one of the main threats to the social the conflict was resolved. On 4 June, he had been discovered, five years earlier. and political stability of the country. arrived in Pikalyovo, and brought the owners together – they eventually signed agreements to supply raw materials and drew up various long-term contracts.

14 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 © Kirill Kukhmar / TASS ABACA A copper-smelting workshop at After the Pikalyovo crisis, the state In 2014, the government adopted a strategy the Nornickel factory in Norilsk, Russia. government drew up a list of these for the development of monotowns, towns, which experts classified into based mainly on the diversification of their three categories – towns with the most economies, investment and the creation complex socio-economic conditions ( red of new jobs. It called on Russia’s state Once the strategy was in place, teams zone, consisting of ninety-four towns); development bank, VEB, which finances of representatives from the monotowns towns at risk of deterioration of their large-scale projects to develop the country’s received training in investment and socio-economic situation (amber zone, infrastructure, industry, social activity, and entrepreneurship. This training was with 154 towns), and towns with a stable technological potential. The bank was provided by a top private business socio-economic situation (green zone, instructed to set up financial instruments, school, in Skolkovo, Russia’s answer to with seventy-one towns). primarily to aid red-zone factory towns Silicon Valley. to emerge from their crises. With this aim, the bank created a fund specifically for the development of monotowns.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 15 The state pitches in For Pikalyovo, for example, this would Maximum Allowable Pollutant Emission mean that more than 1,700 jobs of various Project, an automated air pollution Today, the Monocities Development kinds – the production of greenhouse monitoring system which has since been Fund works with teams of entrepreneurs, vegetables, sportswear, furniture, etc. regarded as something of a standard for municipal and regional administrators. – are expected to be created by 2030. controlling harmful emissions. In 2016, Most of the factory towns have The development plan also provides Nornickel shut down the oldest and most developed and approved development for an investment of 20 billion roubles polluting nickel plant in Norilsk, reducing programmes that take into account ($303 million) in the town’s economy. harmful emissions by thirty per cent. their particular territorial, climatic, socio- Another significant privilege is that In 2017, Mechel installed collectors economic and production features areas of advanced socio-economic that capture ninety-eight per cent of – these are integrated into regional development have been created, where the dust and gas in its coal enrichment strategic development plans. companies benefit from unprecedented plant in Neryungri. And Kolmar has built The Fund also provides the regions with tax advantages. The incentives include closed-circuit enrichment plants, which the money needed for the projects, reductions in taxes on corporate income, recycle waste water for reuse in the implemented by local and national property taxes and mining royalties, and production process. enterprises, in cooperation with the also on insurance premiums. By the end The tangible results of all these measures municipal authorities. It contributes of 2018, sixty-three such territories had are expected by 2025. Meanwhile, in the resources and skills, monitors spending, been established in factory cities, with a first half of 2019, the Fund will already and shares best practices. In 2016-2017, total of over 200 companies registered. be announcing the list of the eighteen it concluded twenty-nine co-financing towns with sustainable economies that agreements with the regions to attract Corporations lend no longer classify as monotowns. The investment projects worth 14.3 billion leading candidate is Cherepovets, a roubles (over $217 million), for the a hand former steel manufacturing centre with reconstruction of infrastructure. In the The state alone cannot solve the a population of 318,000. In 2017, a major long term, it is expected to invest more problems of Russia’s monotowns, mineral fertilizer production unit was set than 106 billion roubles (over $1.6 billion) however. Large companies have also lent up here by PhosAgro. Twenty thousand in factory towns. a hand. In 2017, Nornickel, a mining and individual companies have also been A priority programme for the “Integrated smelting company, laid an internet fibre- established here, employing one in four Development of Single-Industry Towns” optic cable worth 2.5 billion roubles (over of the active labour force. came into force at the federal level $38 million) in Norilsk, a city situated in 2016. Aimed at creating small and 300 kilometres north of the Arctic circle. medium-sized enterprises, or individual, In 2018, CC Kolmar LLC, a coal-mining one-person businesses, linked to new and processing company, undertook to activities, the programme is expected develop regional tourism in Neryungri, to generate some 230,000 jobs. a town in Yakutia, and co-invested in the Russian journalist Ivan Nesterov has reconstruction of the local airport. worked on promoting the integrated In addition, large corporations have development of South Yakutia, a large started to promote green industry. investment project, between 2008 Polar climate, pollution and isolation. In 2008, Taneko, the oil and natural gas and 2018. He has also been involved in In her series, Days of Night – Nights company in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, mobilizing investment for socio‑economic of Day, Russian photographer invested in the development of a Single development projects in the Far East. Elena Chernyshova investigates the capacity of the inhabitants of Norilsk to adapt to extreme living conditions. © Elena Chernyshova

16 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Havana: Where everyone pitches in

Jasmina Šopova

Havana is finalizing preparations for a grand celebration of the 500th anniversary of its founding, in November 2019. Emblematic buildings in the historic centre of the Cuban capital are being restored. An exceptional renaissance has been underway for the past three decades, driven by the commitment of its inhabitants, the determination of one unyielding man, and a strong

political will. © Sebastian Liste / NOOR A scene from everyday life in Havana, against the backdrop of the Capitolio, 2015.

“What the heart demands, the hand About a decade later, in 1993, the state Recognized by international experts, the performs.” This proverb, engraved in adopted a decree, making the city centre plan has won over twenty-five national Chinese ideograms on the roof of one a priority preservation area. A Master and global awards and figures on of the most magnificent buildings in Plan for the restoration of Old Havana UNESCO’s list of best practices in world Havana, expresses the love that its was quickly drafted, overseen by the heritage management. inhabitants have for their city. “A land Office of the City Historian of Havana One feature of the plan is that it involved of passage for so many years, people (see our interview, p. 18). the local population in the rehabilitation of the most diverse origins from Africa, The effects of climate and urban growth of their quarter. Over the years, more than Europe, China, Yucatán have met here have taken their toll on the old quarter, 14,000 jobs, calling for different degrees in a kaleidoscopic amalgam that has which has suffered severe deterioration of expertise, have been created by the produced our unique but varied ethnic, since the beginning of the twentieth Office of the City Historian for residents of ethical and aesthetic identity,” wrote century. Cuba has rallied together to save the old town and nearby communities. the Cuban author, Manuel Pereira, in his its city. “It is impossible to rescue 465 years article, Enchanted seashell: a portrait An education system has been set up of stone overnight, but Old Havana will of Old Havana, published in the Courier specifically to meet the needs of the plan. be saved. Its splendid face will be restored in July 1984. It integrates the University of Havana, and be converted, not into a lifeless founded in 1728, and three specialist That was two years after the inscription of museum but into a museum that is living schools, to offer training to students aged the historic centre of the Cuban capital on and can be lived in,” wrote Pereira, thirty- 16 to 21. Twelve subjects are taught there, UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Old Havana five years ago. Time has proved him right. over a two-year period. To date, around comprises of more than 3,000 buildings, Based on a self-management strategy 1,500 young people have been trained in housing 50,000 people today. and adopting an approach that vocations related to the restoration and encompasses heritage, society, education rehabilitation of cultural heritage. and culture, the Cuban plan has become a model for the restoration and enhancement of historical urban centres, particularly in Latin American countries.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 17 The Museum Classroom project brings primary schools and museums together Eusebio Leal: to teach young children about the history of Old Havana. This is one of many ways to raise public awareness of heritage values among people of all ages. The City Historian’s office, which has established these values, also promotes them. Thousands of families have benefited Havana, from cultural tours of the city, watched Havana Walks on television or read the monthly series, Habana Nuestra (Our Havana), in print and online. Once subsidized by the state, the mon amour restoration of the historic centre now benefits from a system of self-financing, with the development of a local economy. Interview by Lucía Iglesias Kuntz, Companies and tourism agencies UNESCO were started to create a gastronomic, commercial and hotel network in the Unusual flooding caused by priority protection area, compatible When you speak of Havana, you climate change threatens the with the cultural interests of the quarter. speak of Eusebio Leal Spengler. Malecón, Havana’s famous Museums, galleries and theatres have also Which other city has its own waterfront promenade. been established in the most beautiful personal historian? On the eve buildings, attracting a large number of national and foreign visitors – tourism of the 500th anniversary of the is one of the most important sources of founding of the Cuban capital, finance for the restoration of Old Havana. the City Historian of Havana – Since the quality of life of its inhabitants is who has been in charge of the one of the main criteria of the restoration restoration of its historic city plan, a significant part of the resources it generates are used to finance social centre for over thirty years – institutions. These include the Doña takes us on a journey through Leonor Pérez Cabrera maternity hospital, its streets and monuments, the Santiago Ramón y Cajal geriatric showing us its strength, its centre, which provides specialized care to around 15,000 elderly people, and beauty ... and its ailments. the former Belén convent, which houses the Office for Humanitarian Affairs. This department focuses on the most vulnerable members of society, including victims of natural disasters, such as the frequent hurricanes. Here they have access This year, Havana celebrates five centuries to a pharmacy, a physiotherapy centre, of its existence. How is the city faring? an ophthalmology clinic, and also a food If I were to put myself in the city’s place, store, a hairdresser and a barber. Socio- I think the ailments you have are what cultural activities and meetings for people you feel when you’ve lived so long. Five of all ages are organized here, including centuries is little in comparison with workshops on the environment, traditional ancient cities like Athens in Greece, or medicine, and other topics of interest. Istanbul in Turkey. But it’s a lot for us The development of squares, green in our Americas – with the exception areas, pedestrian streets and recreational of the great pre-Hispanic cities like spaces, and municipal services like street Cusco, the Inca city of Peru, the Aztec lighting, gas supply, waste collection and Tenochtitlán in Mexico, or the Mayan the cleaning of public spaces are all an cities of Central America. Havana was integral part of this massive reconstruction part of the new wave that began with plan. The most fundamental aspects – like the Spanish conquest and colonization making sure that people living in buildings at the beginning of the sixteenth under renovation are not rendered century. The Cuban cities were founded homeless – have not been neglected immediately after the cities of Santo either. Through the plan, more than Domingo, La Vega, San Pedro de Macorís 11,000 families have so far benefited from and Santiago de los Caballeros, in the a decent roof over their heads. Dominican Republic.

18 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 I believe these cities have reached a of all the cultural, intellectual, political, noble antiquity, and also show the aches historical and social values of the Cuban and pains of all the historical moments people. It is also a catalogue of the most they have lived through. In our case, it is beautiful and dazzling architecture fundamentally the new era that began that the island has ever produced, sixty years ago with the victory of the with features that can also be found in Revolution – the resistance of the Cuban Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba, or Trinidad. people, of which Havana has been an The Moorish architecture, for example, Havana is emblem and a symbol. which was influenced by the Hispano- The historic centre, Old Havana, has been Islamic tradition, is very characteristic a living city, inscribed on the World Heritage List since of the historical centre. Then, there is 1982, for its “outstanding universal value”, also the timid but passionate baroque that any visitor can appreciate. But what, architecture of the Havana Cathedral of wisdom from your personal point of view, is the – which is more like a state of mind, a value of Havana? kind of feeling or atmosphere that the Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier, so vividly and of The range of values is very large. There described in his great novel, El siglo de las is the symbolic value – it is the capital luces (Explosion in a Cathedral), 1962. of the nation, the country’s head. But at memory the same time, it is very representative © Benjamin Norman

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 19 There is also the neoclassical city, with El I would like to emphasize that culture In other words, in spite of the setbacks Templete, the monument to the founding is the key word in our master plan for and mistakes we suffered in the search for of Havana. It is rather a small-scale model, the rehabilitation and restoration of Old a rehabilitation model, we finally found it that has been reproduced with great Havana. Any development project that (see p. 17). originality in other Cuban cities, like ignores culture, leads only to decadence. You have also put a lot of effort into Matanzas and Cienfuegos. On the other hand, the human factor is restoring the Malecón, Havana’s And then there is the eclectic city in just as important. I would like to ensure emblematic avenue that stretches along Centro Habana that is so impressive that these commemorations generate a the coastline. You have defined it as – filled with gargoyles, Atlanteans, passion among the people. If they don’t “Havana’s smile”. extraordinary figures, imaginary touch people’s hearts, all we will have I must confess that I have almost lost creatures. The Art Nouveau – the Palacio done is made a few official speeches, the battle against the sea, a battle that Cueto in the Plaza Vieja – and then the moved some stones and printed a could only be fought by Neptune with considerable splendour of the Art Deco few articles. his trident. I cannot forget the images of – as in the Emilio Bacardí building – are Would you say that cultural heritage has the devastating waves crashing against almost subversively introduced there, more to do with everyday life, and is not the Castillo del Morro, which has stood making the architectural dialogue even just about museums? in front of the sea for centuries. These are more intense. Dantesque visions that are repeated at Of course I believe that museums are Finally, there is the Havana of modernity, every step of a cyclone. essential for history, memory and culture. which reaches the height of its splendour The Museo de la Ciudad [City Museum] is The tornado that hit us recently, during with the work of the Viennese architect, of vital importance for the entire nation, the night of January 27 and 28 [2019], Richard Neutra – the Casa de Schulthess, and not just for the people of Havana. But causing the death of several people and one of the most beautiful houses in the I have also fought against museumization wounding some 200, reminds us that residential quarter where Quinta Avenida and defended the cause of a living city. the time has come to understand that [Fifth Avenue] takes us. climate change is a hidden threat to the One of the challenges facing World Havana is a living city, of wisdom and elegant silhouette of the Malecón, which Heritage cities is the difficulty of of memory. In this lively metropolis, we will always be that beautiful smile that reconciling tourism – sometimes on a find the acropolis of knowledge that is Havana gives to the sea, and that we have massive scale – and the preservation of the beautiful university campus – and a duty to protect. heritage values. Has Havana had to face the great monumental cemetery, the these contradictions? We have lost the battle against the sea, necropolis, is beautiful too. but we must win our fight against climate We must ensure that Havana does Could you tell us what the November 2019 change. Great challenges and new not disappear under a tide of tourists. celebrations will consist of? adventures await us. But at the same time, I believe that The city government has developed an tourism – a necessary activity and an Don’t you ever tire of working for Havana? extensive commemoration project. The important economic factor – should not It’s true that everything has always led plan we drew up in the Office of the City be demonized. In the case of Cuba, given me to Havana. It’s really been many Historian of Havana, which we designed its isolation, it is also an opportunity to years of work, hard work. I don’t regret specifically for the historical zone, is initiate a direct dialogue with visitors it. If there were another life than the one harmoniously incorporated into that from all around the world. That is we know here on earth, my soul would project. Our task is to promote the idea something wonderful. wander eternally through Havana. It has of preserving the memory of the city, not While the rehabilitation is completed, been the greatest of my loves, the best only when it comes to commemorating many buildings in Old Havana still of my passions, and the greatest of my its fifth centenary, but also in everyday remain inhabited. challenges. I really do not know why life. I’ve dedicated more than three I always mysteriously return to it, in light decades to this, and I have to confess In many cases, the buildings that were and silence, in life and in dreams. that sometimes it felt as though I was in ruins, and that we have restored, were preaching that cause in the desert. inhabited by very poor families. This is still the case for many of them. The answer Currently, we have developed a series of has been to provide safe and dignified events, radio and television programmes, shelter for thousands of people, offer and the publication of a number of education for young people and create different works. We also continue to work safe jobs for adults. We have tried to simultaneously on the restoration of the Cuban historian, author and researcher implement what UNESCO defined, at the city’s monumental symbols – the main Eusebio Leal Spengler is the City Historian time, as “a unique project”, something example of this will be the completion of of Havana, and director of the Master Plan different. Unique does not mean better. major work on El Capitolio [the national for the rehabilitation and restoration of its We do not claim to have done better than Capitol building], the Castillo de Atarés historic centre. His works include Patria other parts of the world. Rather, it was and other iconic buildings in the heart of amada (Beloved Homeland), Regresar done according to our own experience. Havana. We will remember and celebrate en el tiempo (Back in Time), La luz sobre el not only the story of the act of the city’s espejo (The Light on the Mirror), Fundada founding, but also its history and culture. esperanza (Founded Hope) and Poesía y palabra (Poems and Words).

20 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 When art takes over the street © Inkman & Nilko / Galerie Itinerrance photo : Chrixcel A collaborative mural by Tunisian artist Mehdi Ben Cheikh, interviewed Inkman and French artist Nilko. by Anissa Barrak How was the Djerbahood project born and why did you choose Erriadh as Long considered marginal, a location for it? street art today represents a In 2013, I had completed the Tour Paris history, the legendary hospitality of its major trend that democratizes 13 project, which received exceptional inhabitants. Let’s not forget that if Djerba access to art and infuses urban media coverage. This high-rise building is indeed, as we believe, the land of the spaces with a new social and in the 13th arrondissement of the French Lotus-Eaters of Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses capital, was condemned to destruction was its most famous visitor! economic dynamic. In the and was demolished in April 2014. But Formerly known as Hara Essaghira, heart of the island of Djerba, before the deadline, about 100 artists Erriadh is located near the famous of eighteen nationalities volunteered Tunisia, some 100 artists have Ghriba Synagogue, one of the oldest in to transform it into a collective work of the world. A Jewish pilgrimage site to illuminated the small town art. Façades, common areas and thirty- this day, it was built by the exiles who of Erriadh – now known as six apartments were taken over by the fled Jerusalem after Nebuchadnezzar masters of street art. These works, though Djerbahood – with about II destroyed Solomon’s temple around ephemeral, are now available on the Web, 250 murals. Mehdi Ben Cheikh, 586 BC. Its population was therefore to a huge audience around the world. a French-Tunisian gallery owner mainly composed of Jews and Muslims, who initiated this promising This success encouraged me to set up who lived there together, as evidenced another project that I had been working by its five synagogues (two of which are project, tells us how the idea on for some time – organizing a street- still in operation) and its two mosques. continues to grow. art event in Tunisia, which would make But following the massive departure of people talk about the country in positive the Jewish population from the island in terms. Erriadh, on the island of Djerba, the 1960s, the small town fell into a state seemed to me the ideal place – with of lethargy – remaining at the margins its luminosity, its beautiful traditional of tourism, the island’s main economic architecture, its urban development activity. Even though it’s only six minutes structured around a central square, its from an international airport!

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 21 Street art was not created with the intention of bringing art to the people, but in reality, that’s what it does

Did you face any difficulties getting the project accepted locally? I quickly obtained permission from the national authorities to start work in

the public space. The country was in a © Wissem el Abed / Galerie Itinerrance photo : Aline Dechamps period of transition after the revolution, Mural by Tunisian artist Wissem el Abed. municipal authorities had been dissolved throughout the country and replaced by provisional committees, but in Erriadh there wasn’t even a provisional committee. So the project was started You brought in about 100 renowned Since this experience, the artist’s place with private donations. With the support artists. What persuaded them to join has gained more respect in Djerba. The of some hotel owners in Djerba, I was also the project? inhabitants have understood not just the able to get a financial contribution from economic benefits that this art represents The project makes sense. What interests the Ministry of Tourism. for them, but also the essence of the artists is to create, and to share their work artistic approach. They met the artists, with as many people as possible. The As for the inhabitants, we had to they forged close ties with them. The contracts signed with them concerned negotiate with them at first, of course. artist is no longer perceived as the village only image rights. Our objective is to They didn’t know what we were going madman, marginal, but as someone promote the reputation of artists and to do with the spaces they owned. gifted – who creates a structured not to earn money directly through We explained the idea, the process, and imaginary universe and who, at the same these events. And there’s something for it was mainly the women who persuaded time, can contribute concretely to the everyone – artists, cities, the public. their men to let us go ahead with it. improvement of daily life. Once the first works were completed, The artists represented thirty-four the inhabitants began to ask us to Some people tend to think that street different nationalities and produced decorate their houses. art can only succeed in a country where 250 murals! Groups of them took turns there’s already a cultural and artistic working every week, for a period of three Suddenly, Erriadh woke up. It has dynamic – in other words, in the West. months. They were free in their creative become a destination and a transit Djerbahood has proven the opposite. approach. Of course, we were all aware point for thousands of tourists (the taxi It shows that not everything is done that we shouldn’t shock the inhabitants drivers were thrilled!), many restaurants elsewhere. That any place in the world with images of naked bodies, for and several galleries have opened, and can become, at some point, the capital of example. It was necessary to respect the property prices have risen sharply. The street art, even if it’s located at the far end population, its culture. But beyond that, lives of the inhabitants have completely of an island. changed. That’s what matters most they were free to do as they pleased. Each to me. artist interacted with the space according to his or her own inspiration.

22 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Artists play with urban infrastructure, Therefore, it’s a whole system parallel with architecture, with light and shadows. to contemporary art that’s being Graffiti can measure seventy centimetres established. I have mentioned the project or as many metres high! Regardless of the launched in Paris in April 2019. It’s on medium used, the most important thing Boulevard Vincent Auriol, where we are is to take over the streets. creating a real museum of a new type. Everything has been thought about – This kind of artistic expression has always the lighting with projectors using solar existed – the Lascaux cave that dates energy, the sound system, the durability back to the Palaeolithic period is proof. of the works. Street art does not have But street art is now booming, particularly to chase museums to be shown – it in Latin America, the United States, plays with the city, it’s created under the Europe and the Arab world. Street artists public’s eye, it has exchanges with the el Seed, Shoof and KOOM – to name just urban population, and it is accessible to a few artists of Tunisian origin – have now everyone for free. acquired international reputations and embody the exceptional dynamism of And anyone can become a street artist! this art form that wants to build bridges But in the absence of gallery owners or between people. museum curators, isn’t there a risk that this art will alter cultural heritage sites? El Seed, for example, has transformed In Kairouan, for instance, the domes have the face of Kairouan, a Tunisian World recently been painted. Heritage site, and paints his calligraffiti all over the world – South Africa, Canada, We can indeed question the aesthetic South Korea, Dubai, Egypt, US, France. value of certain works that emerge in Hosni Hertelli, whose pseudonym the public space. But we can also say Shoof means “look” in Arabic, has also that instead of white domes, some of our resurrected traditional calligraphy in his mausoleums now have colourful domes! own way – through painting on ancient Even if it’s more or less well done, I think Tunisian façades, but also through that in a few years’ time, we will end up music and light. His show White Spirit with interesting results – street art is an attracted thousands of spectators in art that is constantly being renewed. Australia and France. Musician and There is no need to fear art. Sometimes calligrapher Mohamed Koumenji we want to pass off certain creations (KOOM) combines these two arts in as art, when they don’t deserve the his plastic and luminous works, while name, because they serve abominable drawing inspiration from Sufi tradition ideologies. But these are extremely In what condition are the works that have and incorporating modern technologies. rare exceptions. Art has never been a been in Djerbahood since 2014? An example that showcases his great threat to anyone, quite the contrary. talent is his multidisciplinary creation, Very few of them remain. The great I am convinced it’s the best weapon On the Roads of Arabia, co‑organized difference in temperature between the against obscurantism. by Paris’ [founded by Cheikh] Galerie winter and summer, the humidity, the Itinerrance at the Louvre Abu Dhabi in lime smeared on the walls – all this has November 2018. affected the conservation of the works. Bringing art to the people rather than In the new project I am launching in Paris confining it to the places reserved in April 2019, we use resistant materials for it – is that what street art is about? like marine varnish, and restoration is A French-Tunisian visual arts teacher, part of the plan in the city’s specifications. Street art was not created with the Mehdi Ben Cheikh founded the It is in this spirit that I would like to intention of bringing art to the people, Galerie Itinerrance (http://itinerrance. perpetuate the Djerbahood project, but in reality, that’s what it does. fr/) in Paris in 2004. He stages street-art which enters its second phase this year. Because it’s practised in public spaces, projects involving artists from all over My objective is to make Djerba a huge it’s offered to people free of charge, at the world, and has published two books street-art lab – like Ibiza, in Spain, is the street corners. It’s the most democratic based on the two major projects he island of musical creation and electro. artistic movement there is, but also the set up in Paris and Erriadh respectively: most appropriate for its time – relayed How can street art be defined? L’événement street art Tour Paris 13 (2013) on the Web through photos and videos and Djerbahood, le musée de street art à Street art is an appropriation of urban generally taken by the artists themselves, ciel ouvert (2014). space through an artistic approach, its reputation is based on the recognition whatever its nature. It includes as many of the greatest numbers, through social styles and worlds as there are artists. media. Once the artist is recognized, she It goes from graffiti to gestural or or he can choose to exhibit in galleries, chromatic figuration, from sound and which link street art to art in places light installation to physical performance. dedicated specifically to art.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 23 The city, a circus under a starlit tent

Thomas B. Reverdy my second novel, I moved part of my The French writer Thomas plot to Brooklyn, opposite Manhattan, I was obeying this need to ward off my B. Reverdy has almost always subject. I distanced it twice: first to New chosen urban spaces as the York, which I knew well from going setting for his novels. Obsessed there frequently, but where I did not live; and then to Brooklyn, which is not the by the “unbearable presence of The ephemeral world of fairgrounds, New York we imagine, from France. This as seen by French artist Cyrille Weiner. absence” in our dehumanized decentring was certainly fundamental Untitled No. 9, from the Jour de Fêtes cities, he imagines the for me, it gradually tipped me towards (Holiday) series, 2016. emergence of tiny resistances. the novel – before that, my first story was very autobiographical. But this shift had an unexpected effect: it imposed a space on me. As I “These are cities!” The words, famous, intentionally moved away from more are from Rimbaud. This is the sentence familiar territories, I suddenly had to that opens one of the Illuminations, in increase my documentation, verifying which the poet describes not a city, details, the effects of reality, images. but a circus tent, its machines and its I discovered, at the heart of fiction, at inhabitants-acrobats, the myriad spaces, the heart of its fabrication, a complex acts, routes and noises that populate entanglement of reality and words: it, chaotic, blind to each other, and yet I needed the displacement that the regulated like a music score. Around foreign city offered me, but as soon as 1872, three years after the posthumous the story was situated, I needed reality publication of Baudelaire’s Le Spleen to feed it. Not brute reality – otherwise de Paris [Paris Spleen], the city had thus I would have remained in Paris, at become an image. It could be used as a home – but mediatized reality, images, metaphor, and this metaphor did not say symbols, fragments, words. Starting from what a city is, but what it evokes. Not the memories, but also from testimonies, production, the commerce, but already photos, stories, novels and films, maps, the displacements, the anonymity, the I had to recompose a space, make it trades being lost and the poverty that “real”, give back this city its circus life. is suddenly noticeable in the cracks of apparent wealth. Since the island of Thomas More, most utopias are urban. Blind to each other All dystopias are. The city is an imaginary I have the greatest admiration for writers place. A show. A circus. whose imaginations unfold in the great natural spaces, like Cormac McCarthy, but Travelling places I had other reasons, for myself, to prefer the space of the city to move my novels I have almost always placed the setting in. This is because I also had the idea that of my plots in the city. I should say I modern fiction must account for our have moved it to the city. Cities make it blind journeys and our anonymity. Today possible to be everywhere, both at home in Paris, I live in a building where people and abroad, and this displacement is greet each other by lowering their heads fundamental. It is the step sideways, the when they meet in the elevator. In the oblique vision, it is the gap in reality, the Metro, most of the time, they scarcely displacement that suddenly creates space dare to look each other in the face. for the deployment of fiction. When, in

24 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 It is rare to be able to make an entire trip We are an anonymous people, advancing around the city without coming across at in our miniscule lives, blind to each other. least one person who is talking to himself Our existences timed by the schedules in a disturbing way, one or two beggars, a of the suburban trains, still resist a little, Cities make it visibly sociopathic and perhaps psychotic deep in our hearts, the city-machine, but individual, and at some stations, a we must admit that a simple encounter possible to be drug addict at the end of the platform, has become a miracle. We can no smoking crack. Sometimes, someone longer write the lives of Julien Sorel, you’ve seen before. A person we may Frédéric Moreau or Bel-Ami1 today. everywhere, have come across in the neighbourhood There were the terrorist attacks, too. or on the Metro at the same time. But It may perhaps be because of that. both at home we’ll never know what her name is, or September 112. All the names engraved what she does for a living, or why she since in black stone, to give a name to the looks happy that day. This beggar who nameless. Today’s heroes are anonymous. and abroad speaks loudly and chooses his words, with his slight foreign accent, where does he come from and how did he find his way 1. Names of the protagonists of French novels: Julien Sorel in The Red and the Black (1830) by Stendhal; here? These young people who appear Frédéric Moreau in Sentimental Education (1869) by disguised, are they going to a party? To Gustave Flaubert; Bel-Ami is the nickname of the main character of Guy de Maupassant’s novel of the same a concert? What are they studying? Who name (1885). do they dream of becoming and will they 2. Reference to the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 make it? These are the modern fictions. that targeted symbolic buildings in the United States.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 25 © Cyrille Weiner Fragile, like a human Because that’s what mourning is, like The anguished and prophetic dream of memory, like ruin, and the cursed material a planet rid of us. memory of the writer, or of any artist, this is what it I didn’t go to Detroit while I was writing is: the unbearable presence of absence. I returned to New York in 2008 to the novel. There were countless photos, write L’Envers du monde (Towards the I started tracking it. In Japan, post- stories by journalists like Charlie LeDuff World). The action is set in the crater of Fukushima3, where I lived to write Les of the Detroit Free Press, and others. Ground Zero, in 2003. A racist murder is Evaporés (The Evaporated), in which a Getting information, knowing what was committed, at least it is assumed that it man who deliberately disappears crosses happening, where to place things, was is racist. We follow the characters who the path of the damned uprooted by not a problem. On the contrary, Detroit revolve around this story as if around the disaster. I tracked it down to Detroit, was documented to saturation. The an empty centre, an incomprehensible Michigan, where an entire metropolis problem was getting out. absence, and it is obviously the shadow was sinking into bankruptcy, two-thirds of the twin towers that looms. The city of its inhabitants fleeing, swept away by here offers another of its characteristics, the economic and financial crisis of 2008. Resisting the charm which could be called its geology: the city Detroit, the machine city, the city of Ford of the Pied Piper is made up of strata. It forgets them in its and General Motors (GM), the Metropolis4 One of my ideas was the analogy of use, but the places bear the traces. of the American dream that devoured this automobile crisis with the German The city makes History part of our daily lives. its children. Detroit that was suffocating medieval tale of The Pied Piper of Hamelin 2003 was the time when the United States without inhabitants, the first city of this – a village in the throes of the plague calls was transitioning from the punitive war in size to experience this, like the canary in in a magic flute player, who takes the rats Afghanistan to the preventive war in Iraq. the coal mine, warned those who accused far away from the village and drowns It was also the year that Daniel Libeskind’s banks and the business community of them in the river. But when he comes magnificent project was accepted. The being irresponsible. Detroit, whose ruins, back, they refuse to pay him: they don’t Ground Zero crater, historic and symbolic, like those of another distant civilization, have the money. The ruthless Pied Piper where the towers of the World Trade Center of factories, supermarkets, schools and then casts a spell on all the children of the had turned inside out like a glove in the theatres, invaded by vegetation, resembled village and takes them away with him. ground, this place laden with meaning a sort of tragic Planet of the Apes5. He drowns them in the river. became a strange and transient place – it was no longer the esplanade of the Twin At the beginning of the twentieth Towers and it was not yet the Freedom 3. Reference to the catastrophic nuclear accident in century, the Pied Piper of industrial Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011. Tower. A place of memory as fragile as a capitalism attracted all the poor workers 4. Metropolis is a sci-fi film by Austrian-born German- human memory. It seemed to me it was American director Fritz Lang, made in 1927 and in the rural south of the US, many of them the work of art today, to establish this kind inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. blacks, to Detroit, with the promise of a of place that is also a moment. The work of A dystopian vision of the twenty-first-century city. bright future. At that time, the Pied Piper 5. The Planet of the Apes is a science-fiction novel Libeskind, admirable in its intelligence, also (1963) by the French writer Pierre Boulle, which sold houses and cars on credit. says this in its own way by digging, at the inspired American director Tim Burton’s film of the site of the vanished towers, those endless same name in 2001, and also series of films produced by Twentieth Century Fox, the US film studio. The shafts of shadows that imprint, in the space, American media franchise also covers television the place of the absent towers. series, books, comics, and video games.

26 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pied Piper of industrial capitalism attracted all the poor workers in the rural south of the US, many of them blacks, to Detroit, with the promise of a bright future © Silvana Reggiardo Panoramic photomontage from the I finally decide they can hold on until And the city becomes a circus once Les présences désagrégées (Disaggregated Christmas. It’s a reasonable maximum. But again, where the destinies of anonymous attendances) series, Paris 1998-2000, that forces me to twist the whole reality. acrobats play out, without a net, sliding from trapeze to trapeze, brushing each by Italian artist Silvana Reggiardo. In the novel, GM is no longer GM, it other without seeing each other, catching becomes “the Company”. The chronology each other in flight, in the hope of a rest, is disrupted. I have all my documentation But when people did not want to pay the of an encounter, like a miracle at the in two months. And suddenly, everything price, when they rebelled during the 1967 height of man, under the starlit tent. is clear. The logic of fiction imposes Detroit riots, the Pied Piper was offended. itself on reality. If my story of dystopia, He left for China with the jobs, and in bankruptcy and urban jungle runs until Detroit people fell back into poverty little Christmas, then I go into the winter. by little. In spite of its cruelty, this tale It’s cold in Detroit in the winter. And appealed to a child’s imagination. One suddenly, this city of which I had seen a of the stories in the novel, therefore, is French author Thomas B. Reverdy thousand images becomes a bit more about a group of runaway children who has received numerous awards for than a backdrop. It comes alive in an take advantage of the disorganization of his novels, notably for Les Derniers Feux organic way. I mentally observe the public transport and schools in the city, to (The Last Fires, 2008), L’Envers du monde snow falling on the lawns, muffling the live a kind of adventure, in a vacant lot, an (Towards the World, 2010), Les Évaporés sound of footsteps. I see the wind rushing abandoned school. Something that was (The Evaporated, 2013), Il était une ville through the empty windows of vacant a little bit like Treasure Island6. (There was a City, 2015) and L’Hiver buildings, whistling as it turns around du mécontentement (The Winter of But I had a problem with reality. My the abandoned houses. I can feel the Discontent, 2018). story was set between two bankruptcies: cold with its metallic taste creeping into that of Lehman Brothers, 15 September humid clothes that nothing can warm up 2008, and that of General Motors7, 1 June again. I see the halos of street lighting go Names mentioned 2009. These were historical and objective out, replaced by the mysterious glitter milestones. However, the kids couldn’t of the snow under the silvery moon. • Baudelaire, Charles (1821-1867), survive all that time. I started following And this Detroit of phantasmagoria, of French poet them on the eve of All Saints’ Day, on fiction, is no more real than the real one • LeDuff, Charlie (1966-), Devil’s Night8: they were setting fire to – in the real Detroit at that time, people American journalist an abandoned house. A few days later, were dying every day. But it becomes • Libeskind, Daniel (1946-), they run away. It’s early November. communicable, representable. In the Polish-American architect machine city, we can once again imagine human destinies. Tiny resistances. If the • McCarthy, Cormac (1933-), 6. Treasure Island (1883) is an adventure novel by the American writer Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson. story runs until Christmas, it’s because 7. Lehman Brothers was a multinational investment it’s a tale, which doesn’t have to be cruel. • More, Thomas (1478-1535), bank that collapsed, in its 158th year, in September Maybe the kids will make it. English philosopher, theologian, 2008, triggering a global financial crisis. General jurist and politician, author of Utopia Motors is a US carmaker, which was placed under US bankruptcy protection in June 2009. • Rimbaud, Arthur (1854-1891), 8. Devil’s Night, 30 October, is the night before French poet Halloween.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 27 Under the auspices of UNESCO

Reviving the spirit of Mosul

In February 2018, UNESCO launched The ISIL occupation completely It is being deployed in collaboration with the “Revive the Spirit of Mosul” initiative devastated Iraq’s education system, from the Government of Iraq, along these at the International Conference for pre-primary to higher education. When three lines, and involves multiple actors the Reconstruction of Iraq in Kuwait. It subjects such as history or the arts were – neighbouring countries, international brought the international community replaced with content designed to incite organizations and the European Union together under its aegis, to participate hate, the vast majority of families decided (EU). The initiative aims to give a new in the reconstruction of this city, which to take their children out of school. perspective, a new impetus, to Mosul. has been decimated by war, looting and Those who remained were subjected In addition to the restoration of destruction. This reconstruction must be to systematic indoctrination, mainly by monuments and the rehabilitation of part of Mosul’s history – a plural history, teachers who were forced to relay the Mosul’s historic urban fabric, a project at the crossroads of the cultures and group’s extremist ideology. to rebuild houses in the old city (Mosul religions of the Middle East. Considering these observations, it is and Basra), and to train cultural heritage Mosul has seen its heritage ransacked, its not just the cultural heritage that needs professionals, will be implemented identity bruised, at the hands of ISIL. The to be restored, but also dignity and with the support of the EU. This is destruction targeted places of worship memory. UNESCO therefore decided to based on a participatory approach that (mosques and churches), the shrine of mobilize the international community, focuses on skills development and job Nabi Yunus and the Assyrian and Parthian to propose an initiative that would creation to promote social cohesion and statues and frescoes of the Mosul combine heritage, culture and education. community reconciliation. Museum. The city’s library, with its several thousand ancient texts, was deliberately set aflame. Antiquities were trafficked. © Zaid AL-OBEIDI / AFP

28 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 cities in networks

Learning in cities

Along the same lines, the inventory Two projects will aim to ensure that The UNESCO Global Network of religious sites damaged by ISIL has the primary schools in the Old City of of Learning Cities (GNLC) is an resulted in a publication that will serve Mosul are safe places where students international policy-oriented network as a support for interfaith dialogue can flourish, learn and interact with that provides inspiration, know-how workshops, permitting the recreation others with respect, thus contributing and best practice. Based on the sharing of links between communities. An to tolerance and peaceful coexistence in of ideas and solutions between cities, emergency plan for the safeguarding of the long term. the network has a two-fold objective intangible heritage in danger and the – to ensure quality education that is These projects, supported by Japan and creation of “cultural mobile spaces” for inclusive and equitable, with lifelong the Netherlands, are based on a holistic displaced persons and host communities learning opportunities for all; and to approach that involves children, but is being prepared. make cities open to all, safe, resilient also teachers, communities, parents and sustainable. At the same time, the Iraqi government and educational staff in the prevention has called on UNESCO to develop a of extremism. The upgrading of higher An international conference on national education strategy for the education will also be a key action in Learning Cities is held every two years, period 2020-2030, in order to rebuild rebuilding the country and its system of providing a platform for policy dialogue the foundations of an education system production. Beyond a purely economic and the exchange of best practices. that meets the needs of its population. approach, it is a matter of enabling The UNESCO Learning City Awards Simultaneously, educational projects are institutions such as Mosul’s university are presented on this occasion. At the being implemented with the purpose of library to once again become the fourth International Conference on preventing the resurgence of extremism cultural and intellectual epicentres they Learning Cities in Medellín, Colombia, and recreating the conditions for used to be. in 2019, ten cities are being awarded living together. for their exemplary commitment. These different projects pursue the same They include Aswan (Egypt), Chengdu goals: to protect, rebuild and educate. (China), Heraklion (Greece), Ibadan Because culture and education are (Nigeria), Medellín (Colombia), the only long-term responses against Melitopol (Ukraine), Petaling Jaya Iraqi cellist Karim Wasfi performs with the violence of extremism and its (Malaysia), Santiago (Mexico), an orchestra in Mosul’s war-ravaged destructiveness. This approach is aligned Seodaemun-gu (Republic of Korea), Old City, on 10 November 2018. with the vision of the Iraqi government, and Sønderborg (Denmark). as it is up to the Iraqi authorities to conduct this initiative locally, while To highlight just a few examples: UNESCO continues its coordinating role. Chengdu has combined learning with thematic city walks; Medellín has reintegrated over 4,500 school drop-outs into the education system by focusing on Stefania Giannini and Ernesto Ottone each individual; Petaling Jaya provides Ramirez, Assistant Directors-General for free bus services on four city routes, Education and for Culture, UNESCO. which also disseminate information through onboard screens.

Culture: the DNA of cities Crafts and popular arts, digital arts, design, film, gastronomy, literature, music. These are the keys that open the doors to UNESCO’s Creative Cities. Linked through an ever-expanding network since 2004, these cities rely on creativity and the cultural industries, considered strategic factors for sustainable development – whether economic, social, cultural or environmental. The network currently includes 180 member cities in seventy-two countries. It serves as a platform for action for the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the city level. Indeed, among the seventeen objectives of the 2030 Programme, the eleventh – “ensuring that cities and human settlements are inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” – affirms the essential role of culture in urban areas. This is why UNESCO launched an international initiative in 2015, which resulted in Culture: Urban Future, the UNESCO Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Urban Development (2016). It provides a global overview of the safeguarding, conservation and management of urban heritage, and the promotion of cultural and creative industries. According to British author Charles Landry, who has popularized the concept of creative cities since the 1980s, culture is the DNA of cities. “It is who we are, where we are, where we’ve come from, and where we might go,” he says.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 29 Under the auspices of UNESCO

Aleppo: A first step towards healing © Hani Abbas (Palestine/Syrie) / Cartooning for peace Challenge of mass, Aleppo, Syria 2013, from the collection of Cartooning for Peace, the international The conflict in Syria has caused heavy loss This is the first comprehensive inventory network of editorial cartoonists, of life and extensive damage to cities and of the material damage and memory supported by UNESCO. infrastructure, devastating the economic loss suffered by this ancient city and social life of the Syrian people and between 2013 and 2017. The capital their cultural heritage. Once hailed as of the Amorite kingdom of Yamhad, an example of best practice in urban Aleppo experienced a tremendous conservation, the Ancient City of Aleppo, boom at the beginning of 2000 BC. inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage It was considered the seat of the storm List in 1986, was added to the List of god, Halab, according to the authors of World Heritage in Danger in 2013. Heavily the book, Ruba Kasmo, a Syrian architect affected by the conflict, the city has been from Aleppo, and Jean-Claude David, reduced to ruins in many places. a French geographer. Over 500 damaged properties – from the Twenty cultural heritage experts, Citadel of Aleppo to markets, museums, historians, archaeologists, architects and places of worship, and other historical satellite imagery analysts participated buildings – have recently been identified in this project, which began as soon in a study* conducted by UNESCO and as the shelling of the city stopped in the United Nations Institute for Training December 2016. and Research (UNITAR).

30 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 cities in networks

It is not just Welcoming cities 13 November 2015. The French capital is in the grip of a series of suicide attacks, the stones that the deadliest the country has seen in recent history – stirring up emotions all around the world. Meanwhile, far from the commotion in Paris, six cameras have been closely follow the daily lives of a father and his daughter in Bologna, Italy; a family in Seville, Spain; a couple in love in Riga, Latvia; a lonely young man in Hamburg, Germany; a determined teenager in Toulouse, France; a couple destroyed. getting together in Loures, Portugal. Scattered all over Europe, these people have nothing in common except that they are all migrants. A group that will pay the high price for increased security and border controls in the aftermath of the The soul of the Paris bombings. Their story is told in 13.11, a six-episode TV mini-series (fiction), produced in city has been 2017 by Elenfant Film, an Italian video and film production company. It aims to show the human face of migration, and to prompt us not to forget that every shattered minute, twenty people are displaced from their homes in our world today. The city of Bologna was the driving force behind this project. The city is leader of the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR), launched at the end of the fourth European Conference of Cities for Human Rights in 2004. Illustrated with photos of the city and its buildings before and after the conflict The same year, UNESCO created a vast global network of cities united around began, and providing QR codes with the fight against racism, discrimination, xenophobia and exclusion in urban which to access satellite images and 3D areas. The International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities (ICCAR) documentation, the study offers a solid brings together the regional coalitions created in Europe (2004), Africa (2006), technical basis for the planning of the Latin America and the Caribbean (2006), Asia and the Pacific (2007), Canada restoration and rehabilitation of Aleppo. (2007), Arab States (2008) and North America (2013). It reveals that more than ten per cent of Mobilizing cities to adopt a culture of solidarity and cooperation takes Aleppo’s historic buildings have been place through a variety of channels, including regular meetings of mayors, destroyed and that more than half the international conferences, and publications. In May 2016, for example, UNESCO buildings assessed showed moderate to and the foundation of its Goodwill Ambassador, Marianna V. Vardinoyannis, severe damage. launched the Welcoming Cities for Refugees: Promoting Inclusion and But it is not just the stones that have been Protecting Rights initiative. Conducted in partnership with ECCAR, the initiative destroyed. The soul of the city has been resulted in the 2016 publication of the same name. It provides the first thorough shattered. The restoration of memory is as, international mapping and analysis of city and migration issues, with a focus on if not more, important, than reconstructing Europe. The publication also reviews perspectives of international networks on buildings. The Great Mosque of Aleppo, for cities and migration, and identifies a set of common principles, guidelines and example, was a jewel of Seljuk civilization. actions to be carried out in the field of urban governance. It was unique not only for its minaret and exceptional decoration, but also for its social role. This place of worship has been a fundamental element of Syrian culture, with generations of Syrians gathering here over the course of nine hundred years. Its devastation strikes at the very essence of Towards smart cities this community. Water security, sanitation, urban violence, inequality, discrimination, pollution, The inhabitants of Aleppo are the unemployment. In a world where urbanization is burgeoning, these are some custodians of the history and memory of of the critical challenges that cities will have to face. Home to half the world’s their city. It will be up to them to revive population today, cities are expected to shelter two-thirds of it by 2050. its cultural, social and economic life. The authors have dedicated this book to them, Born in the early 2000s, the concept of the smart city seeks to provide answers to help them overcome the trauma of war. to these challenges by combining new technologies with humanist ideals. Through innovative urban systems, smart cities promote socio-economic development while enhancing the quality of life. Huge opportunities are opening up with smart cities. But to be effective, this Chantal Connaughton, British writer, “smartness” must adopt a humanistic approach, and leave no one behind. This is editor and communications specialist. the key message of the new publication Smart Cities: Shaping Societies for 2030, co-edited by UNESCO and the Netexplo Observatory, and presented at the 12th * Five Years of Conflict: The State of Cultural Heritage in Annual Netexplo Forum, 17 to 19 April 2019, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. the Ancient City of Aleppo, published by UNESCO and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research To evaluate the contribution of smart cities to sustainable growth, UNESCO (UNITAR). The study was conducted in partnership and the World Technopolis Association (WTA) jointly organized the 15th WTA with the Syrian government’s Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) and EAMENA H-Tech Fair and the 2018 Global Innovation Forum in Binh Duong New City, Viet (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East & North Nam, in October 2018. Under the theme “Towards a better place to live: Smart Africa), based in the United Kingdom. It was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and City”, sustainable development strategies and policies were discussed, and the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund. 143 pages, technological solutions to various urban problems were proposed. December 2018.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 31 Under the auspices of UNESCO Yazd: Living in symbiosis with the desert

Modern cities and cultural traditions may be perceived as contradictory notions. Synonymous with modernity, new ways of life and multiple opportunities, we always imagine that cities look to the future. Entrenched in the past, traditions, on the other hand, are thought to obstruct progress. The preservation of heritage is often viewed as costly and time-consuming for a relatively low return on the investment, and is therefore accorded less attention than infrastructure development. Even so, traditions continue to have a life of their own, and cities would be empty shells without them. These customs are passed on from generation to generation and are constantly evolving – allowing communities to respond to new needs and to adapt to changes in their environment. More than we can imagine, they are able to provide tailor-made solutions to current problems. The qanats of Iran In the heart of Iran, for example, the old town of Yazd has greatly benefited from the ingenuity of its inhabitants, who over the centuries, have developed the art and technologies necessary to live in symbiosis with the desert. They have harnessed the harsh nature of CC BY-SA 4.0 photo: Bernard Gagnon their environment to make it a source of artistic creation. This is expressed through Gently sloping underground channels, Farmers maintain a sustainable balance their architecture, and especially through or tunnels, collect water from aquifers between the water flow and cultivated innovative urban planning. with the help of gravity, transferring it areas by adjusting – depending on downhill for drinking and agricultural their reserves – the water distribution Yazd’s elegant earthen architecture has purposes. A series of vertical well shafts between water-intensive farms and low- thus been able to withstand the ravages are drilled at regular intervals along the consumption orchards. The core concept of time and extreme climate, leading route, communicating with the surface of of the qanats is that it is up to humans to the historic city to be listed on the World the ground. This assists the construction adjust to available water resources, not Heritage List in 2017. In spite of the aridity and maintenance of the qanat, providing the other way around. of the climate, agriculture employs a ventilation and access for workers, Qanats are not just examples of well- significant proportion of the inhabitants equipment and debris. The technology of preserved ancient infrastructure. The of the city and the surrounding region. these underground aqueducts has stood search and control of water are so vital This is mainly due to the preservation the test of time and is now a model for for life in the desert, that considerable of an infrastructure that dates back sustainable groundwater use. a thousand years – the qanats. efforts have been made by communities Today, 37,000 qanats are still operational to maintain and improve this essential The ingenious system of qanats is in Iran, supplying eleven per cent of the know-how from generation to generation designed to capture groundwater. country’s water. They have been used – and to adapt it to current realities. Devised in Iran centuries ago, it has been mainly for irrigation since the installation adopted in many parts of the Middle of a water distribution network in 1961. East and the Mediterranean Basin.

32 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 cities in networks

Cities and living heritage Every spring, the city of Recife, in the far east of Brazil, dons its carnival clothes. It’s time for music, dance, optimism and euphoria. At the heart of the festivities is the Frevo. In this frenetic carnival dance music, we recognize the regular cadence of military marching music, the marked beats of the Brazilian tango, the harmonic patterns of the Caribbean quadrille, the lively tempo of polka and the polyrhythm of jazz – a mélange of musical The historical garden of Dolat Abad genres of diverse origins, but all typically urban. in Yazd, Iran, with its fountains and ornamental pools. You need athletic skills to dance to the sounds of the Frevo! The Passo, the accompanying dance, has more than a hundred rigorously structured steps – its high jumps and other acrobatics give it an air of extraordinary joy and freedom. The Carnival lasts only a week, but its spirit lingers in the city all year round. The residents of Recife, across all social classes and generations, gather together in their spare time to prepare for the next festival. Everyone contributes their skills, talents and knowledge. New pieces of music are composed, new dance feats are invented, new costumes and disguises are made – all competing in imagination. If the inhabitants of Recife have something in common, it is the Frevo – it nurtures their sense of belonging to the same culture, and strengthens community values and social cohesion. It is these values that led to the inscription of the Frevo on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2012. Intangible cultural heritage is a bridge between traditional and contemporary cultural values. It is the living expression of oral traditions, craft skills, artistic, social or ritual customs, knowledge and know-how handed down to us by previous generations. In urban areas, this living heritage is a creative force that binds and strengthens communities.

To ensure that this ancestral occupation The cultural flourishes, the International Centre on Qanats and Historic Hydraulic Structure backgrounds of (ICQHS), affiliated to UNESCO, and inhabitants the Faculty of Qanat in Taft, provide education in the field. Located about Yazd is living proof that intangible cultural twenty kilometres south of Yazd, the Taft heritage can provide or inspire ingenious college has been offering a two-year solutions, adapted to local conditions. apprenticeship since 2005. Students are By basing their strategies on local trained by traditional masters in theory practices and making the most of their and practice, in the Yazd desert. The cultural resources, cities are more likely to profession has also received additional mobilize their populations to participate recognition – master moqannis can now in their development projects. This be licensed by the Ministry of Justice to requires, of course, that living heritage is settle qanat disputes. valued through appropriate safeguarding measures and the active participation of Of course, water management in a the holders of traditional knowledge. The social fabric has largely been country with many desert areas such woven around the principles of sharing, as Iran is extremely complex. In recent Cities vibrate and prosper to the rhythm ownership and distribution of water decades, new technologies for the of the activities and exchanges of their resources. These days, however, an exploitation and sharing of water inhabitants. Whether they have been elected qanat council has replaced the resources have been developed to meet settled for a long time or have arrived traditional public gatherings of the past, the needs of a growing population and only recently, they all bring their own to facilitate decision-making processes. economic imperatives. This modern cultural backgrounds with them. Their infrastructure sometimes competes with knowledge, beliefs, traditions, customs traditional systems, leading to water and worldviews shape their identities Perpetuating know-how shortages in extreme cases. and relationships with others – and, consequently, their cities. The trade of the moqannis, the well- Nevertheless, the qanats and the resulting diggers or geo-hydrological experts who know-how remain a pillar of Yazd’s urban maintain the qanats, has also evolved. In planning and an integral part of its the past, the wide range of skills needed future projects. This is why institutional Vanessa Achilles (France), – to find underground water, deciding on management and safeguard mechanisms independent researcher and writer. the best location for the wells, mastering have been adopted to complement the the techniques of excavation, cleaning customary system. Three government and repair of wells and tunnels, and the agencies oversee qanat management, wisdom of managing the water – were while the ICQHS carries out research and passed down from father to son. capacity-building activities.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 33 Under the auspices of UNESCO

Saving urban landscapes: the Island of Mozambique

Ilha de Moçambique, which gives the of paradise is a cultural melting pot of Bantu, country its name, is a crescent-shaped Swahili, Arab, Persian, Indian and European coral island four kilometres from the coast influences. The island’s rich architecture of the northern Mozambique mainland, reflects its dramatic and colourful history. at the entrance to the Indian Ocean’s Inhabited by Bantu speakers in the year 200 Mossuril Bay. and recorded on navigation routes of the Indian Ocean since the first millennium, the Barely three kilometres long and 200 to Beyond the decay of its built heritage, Island of Mozambique was dominated by 500 metres wide, with an urban area of the town of Macuti faces the challenges Arabian trading between the eighth and of overpopulation and poverty. about one square kilometre, this little slice sixteenth centuries. © Peter Hess

34 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 cities in networks

Water and megacities More than half the world’s people live in cities and by 2050, it is expected that sixty-eight per cent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. In Latin America, this threshold has already been reached. Migration is a major force in urbanization, with over a third of the world’s 68.5 million displaced people living in cities. In 1970, three cities had over ten million inhabitants. Twenty years later, Then, for four centuries (1507 to 1898), there were ten such megacities. By 2014, there were already twenty-eight, and this fortified town was the capital and according to estimates, there will be forty-one by 2030. trading post of Portuguese East Africa, at the centre of Portuguese maritime routes Launched in 2015, The Megacities Alliance for Water and Climate (MAWaC) is between Western Europe and the Indian a forum for international collaboration and dialogue to help megacities adapt subcontinent, and later, Asia. to, and mitigate the effects of climate change. With a secretariat provided by UNESCO, the forum brings together all stakeholders in the water sector, allowing The island’s incredible architectural megacities to learn from each other’s experience, collaborate with the appropriate unity is derived from the consistent technical, academic and financial institutions and implement responses to the use – since the sixteenth century − of challenges of climate change and urban growth. the same building techniques with the same materials and decorative principles. In 2016, UNESCO studied fifteen megacities in collaboration with the French Recognizing its international historic non-profit, ARCEAU IdF, releasing a joint publication, Water, Megacities and Global importance, its exceptional urban fabric, Change: Portraits of 15 Emblematic Cities of the World. In particular, it reveals the fortifications and other examples of common challenges these cities face – from their gigantic size to their social architecture, the Island of Mozambique disparities, to access to water and sanitation, and the sustainable management of was inscribed on UNESCO’s World natural resources. Heritage List in 1991. Indeed, these densely-populated human settlements face new threats every Two different types of dwellings and day due to population growth, climate change and the deterioration of urban urban systems co-exist here – the city of infrastructure. This is especially true in Asia’s developing countries, where stone and lime, and the city with palm more than twenty per cent of the GDP comes from megacities. Managing and leaf roofs. providing water and safe, affordable and sustainable services in these cities can prove challenging. The Stone Town, with its houses made of limestone and wood, has Swahili roots, This was the main theme of the seminar, Building Urban Resilience, organized by with Arab and Portuguese influences, UNESCO in February 2018, during the 9th World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur, and dominates the island’s northern Malaysia. The discussions focused on ways to adapt water management to the half. It is a living museum, with religious, impacts of climate change in megacities, and the need to raise public awareness administrative, commercial and military and train people in this area. Various management initiatives and practices were buildings testifying to its role as the first also presented, enabling cities to improve basic services, including access to fresh seat of Portuguese colonial government. water and sanitation. Occupying two-thirds of the island, it Planning and managing cities, making them resilient and equipping them to is inhabited by a relatively small part of provide water security for residents is key to a city’s success. This is the mission the population. of the Urban Water Management Programme (UWMP), which helps UNESCO The city of Macuti, named after the Member States to solve the problems they face in this field – through training original palm leaf roofing (macuti) of support, the sharing of scientific knowledge and guidelines, and the exchange of the houses, hosts many variations of information on different approaches, solutions and management tools. the vernacular Swahili architecture, For more than ten years, UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (IHP) and lies to the south. Organized into has published the Urban Water Series, which informs the work of practitioners, seven bairros or districts, which are the policymakers and educators, working in the field of urban water management densest settlements on the island, it is around the world. not surprising that Macuti suffers from an acute water shortage, a lack of sanitation and a serious threat of seasonal flooding. This has prompted UNESCO-driven These new strategies have helped The island’s outstanding universal initiatives on the island to focus on two strengthen the governance mechanism value has borne the brunt of multi- major areas: the condition of life and for the sustainable management faceted threats, such as uncontrolled habitation in the bairros of Macuti and the and development of the Island development and the impacts of a general degradation of the built heritage of Mozambique. globalized culture. A lack of financial of the Stone Town. resources, inadequate infrastructure, a low awareness of conservation Following the adoption of the UNESCO among the local population and a weak Recommendation on the Historic Urban Albino Jopela, programme manager, institutional capacity for conservation Landscape (HUL) in 2011, it was decided African World Heritage Fund (AWHF), management have all contributed to to apply the HUL approach to the island. South Africa. the degradation and poor upkeep of As part of the UNESCO World Heritage the island’s built heritage. For example, Cities Programme, HUL provides technical an evaluation of the condition of the assistance and helps World Heritage cities buildings in the Stone Town has shown across the globe to better reconcile urban that they have deteriorated by fifteen per heritage conservation into strategies cent between 1983 and 2012. of socio-economic development.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 35 Zoom Zoom

Maria Magdalena Carmen Mendoza at her home in Guerrero state, Mexico, makes panela, unrefined cane sugar derived from the boiling and evaporation of sugarcane juice. A third of the world’s population rely on solid biomass to cook their meals (2017). About 1.4 hours are spent each day collecting firewood – a burden borne mostly by women.

36 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Lighting up the world!

Digging a household latrine in Kayah state, Photos: Rubén Salgado Escudero Myanmar. In South-East Asia, 65 million people live without electricity, ninety-five per Text: Katerina Markelova cent of them in four countries – Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines. This photo essay is being published to mark the International Day of Light, celebrated on 16 May.

“Do I even have a right to be here?” On forty-three per cent of the population can achievement of many of the Sustainable more than one occasion, Rubén Salgado light their homes at nightfall. Development Goals (SDGs) set out by the Escudero asked himself this question as United Nations in its 2030 Sustainable Once his mission was completed, Salgado he travelled through rural Myanmar with Development Agenda, which includes his expensive photographic equipment. continued on his path as a freelance poverty eradication (SDG1), universal The Spanish photographer, who visited photographer. He decided that he would access to quality education (SDG4) this country in 2014 on behalf of a earn the right to be there. He didn’t know and gender equality (SDG5). Clean and humanitarian organization, was amazed how yet, but he wanted to draw attention affordable energy for all is, in itself, one by the glaring lack of access to electricity. to the problem. The idea of Solar Portraits of these objectives (SDG7). This is the “Most of the villages I went to, didn’t have came to mind when he met villagers first time that the fundamental role of electricity,” he explains. equipped with solar panels. “The quality energy has been recognized on this scale, of life of these people was so vastly according to the report. Out of more than 53 million people in different from everyone else’s around Myanmar, 22 million are deprived of them,” he recalls. Yet, “having access to electricity is this commodity, which until now had still a privilege in many countries been so commonplace in his eyes. While Energy is indeed “essential for humanity and not a right,” the photographer seventy-nine per cent of urban dwellers to develop and thrive”, as highlighted says indignantly. In 2017, there were are supplied with power, this rate drops in the 2017 Report of the International nearly one billion people in the world dramatically in rural areas – where only Energy Agency (IEA). It is essential for the without electricity.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 37 Guru Deen Shukla pumps water for his grandson outside his home in India, 2015. Delivering on a high-priority commitment, the Indian government completed the electrification of all villages in early 2018.

Faustina Flores Carranza and Juan Astudillo Jesus in their home in Guerrero, Mexico, recently lit by solar energy. This is the first time the couple, married forty‑eight years, have been able to look into each others’ eyes after dark.

38 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Cristóbal Céspedes Lorenzo and his young associate, Francisco Manzanares Cagua, carry freshly-picked coconuts across the river to Copala, Mexico, which they will sell to a company which makes coconut butter and oil.

But how do we attract the attention of The funds collected were used to equip In 2017, the photographer travelled all the public, who are increasingly jaded three villages with solar panels in 2016, over Mexico. In 2019, he plans to visit the by the negative news that reaches them benefiting 400 inhabitants. Navajo in New Mexico (United States), every day? “By finding new creative Since then, the project has continued Guatemala, Colombia and the Philippines. ways to tell stories, to capture people’s to expand. The novice photographer Nowadays, Salgado organizes workshops attention,” Salgado responds. was noticed by the American magazine in the schools of each community he He takes his photos with only the light National Geographic, which sent him to encounters in the course of his work. of LED bulbs powered by solar panels. Uganda in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, Through practical experiments with This light, which gives them an air of to complete the series. It is estimated solar bulbs, students are introduced to Rembrandt portraits – and undoubtedly that by 2030, this region will be home the concept of renewable energy, which the positive energy that emanates to 600 million of the world’s 674 million is, according to the IEA, the cheapest from it – aroused an interest that the people living without electricity. solution for three-quarters of the new photographer did not anticipate. In the same year, Salgado visited India, connections needed in the world. “The Published in Time, the American weekly, which is currently performing one sooner we can make children conscious and the German monthly, GEO, the of the greatest feats in the history of of the importance of this issue, the more Myanmar portraits were enthusiastically electrification. Half a billion Indians have leaders we will have in future who will received by the public. So much so that been connected to the power grid since care, and take us in the right direction,” the photographer, with the help of an 2000, giving the country hope that it he explains. Austrian reader, launched a crowdfunding will reach its goal of universal access to campaign, Let there be light Myanmar. electricity by the early 2020s.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 39 An innovative photovoltaic film to aid education in Togo On 21 February 2019, a cargo ship left the port of Saint-Nazaire, France. On board: sixty-five kits, which included portable rechargeable LED lamps and solar chargers in the form of pouches. These pouches are equipped with a flexible, ultra-thin and organic photovoltaic film, with minimal environmental impact. The shipper: ARMOR, a French company which developed this innovative photovoltaic technology in 2016. Its target audience: 212 students from Agou Akplolo, a non-electrified village north of Lomé, Togo. Only thirty-five per cent of the 7.7 million inhabitants in this sub-Saharan country have access to electricity. The project is the result of a partnership that UNESCO signed with ARMOR in December 2018. Its objective is to provide light for children, so they can study after sunset.

Students do their homework in a solar-powered after-school community centre in Yangon, Myanmar. Studies have shown the pivotal role of electricity in promoting literacy and improving the quality of education. In 2017, only twenty-seven per cent of schools in the country had electricity. In India’s Odisha state, villagers trap fish using cone-shaped baskets and solar lighting. According to the government, 9.6 million households in the state have electricity.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 41 Daw Mu Nan, a Padaung farmer in Kayah state, Myanmar. Solar panels have become cheaper and more efficient, making them a viable and instant source of energy.

After a day of fishing on Lake Victoria, Ugandan Lukwago Kaliste spends the evening breaking rocks into small pieces, which he sells for use in building foundations. It takes him three hours to fill a small truck with rocks, which earns him $10. Only nineteen per cent of Uganda’s population had access to electricity in 2016.

42 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Thanks to solar energy, Ugandan mechanics Ibrahim Kalungi and Godfrey Mteza can work longer hours and earn more money. The electrification rate in sub-Saharan Africa is currently forty-three per cent.

Too Lei, an oozie or elephant handler, poses on his elephant in Myanmar’s Bago region. For 300 years, oozies have worked with elephants to ensure sustainable logging.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 43 Ideas

We are all migrants

Poster by American graphic designer, Valerie Pettis, part of the Freedom of Movement campaign run by Poster for Tomorrow in 2017.

© posterfortomorrow / Valerie Pettis 44 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Racism does not need racists

New world map, drawing by Rafat Alkhateeb, Jordan. Jorge Majfud © Rafat Alkhateeb / Cartoon Movement

The debate on what we call In my classes, I always try to make clear For some reason, students tend to be a “migration crisis” has a racial the difference between opinions and more interested in opinions than facts. facts. It is a fundamental rule, a very simple Maybe because of the superstitious idea component. It is a pattern which intellectual exercise that we owe ourselves that an informed opinion is derived from consistently repeats itself in laws, to undertake in the post-Enlightenment the synthesis of thousands of facts. This is narratives and practices, like it has era. I started becoming obsessed with a dangerous idea, but we can’t run away done over centuries, according such obvious matters when I found out, from our responsibility to give our opinion in 2005, that some students were arguing when it’s required. All that we can and to Uruguayan-American writer that something “is true because I believe should do is take note that an informed Jorge Majfud. Taking us on it”, and they weren’t joking. Since then, opinion continues to be an opinion which an instructive detour through I’ve suspected that such intellectual must be tested or challenged. history, he points out the total conditioning, such a conflation of physics with metaphysics (cleared up by Averroes absence – in this same heated almost a thousand years ago) – which year An opinion debate – of any mention of half a by year becomes increasingly dominant On a certain day, students discussed million European immigrants who (faith as the supreme criterion, regardless the caravan of 5,000 Central Americans of all evidence to the contrary) – has its live illegally in the United States (at least 1,000 of whom were children) origins in the majestic churches of the fleeing violence and heading for the and another million Americans southern United States. Mexican border with the US. President living illegally in Mexico. But critical thinking involves so much Donald Trump had ordered the border more than just distinguishing facts from closed and called those looking for opinions. Trying to define what a fact is refuge “invaders”. On 29 October 2018, On the occasion of World Refugee Day, would suffice. The very idea of objectivity he tweeted: “This is an invasion of our June 20, we dedicate the Ideas section itself paradoxically originates from a Country and our Military is waiting to displaced people around the single perspective, from one lens. And for you!”. The military deployment to world. According to the latest figures anyone knows that with the lens of one the border alone cost the US about published by the United Nations photographic or video camera, only one $200 million. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number part of reality is captured, which quite of forcibly displaced people worldwide often is subjective or used to distort reality reached a record 68.5 million in 2017. in the supposed interest of objectivity.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 45 Since one of my students insisted on Therefore, the idea that a few thousand certain cultural practices and voicing your knowing my opinion, I started off with poor people on foot are going to invade support for some law or another is quite the most controversial side of the issue. the most powerful country in the world often all it takes. I observed that this country, the US, was is simply a joke in poor taste. And it’s I drew a geometric figure on the board founded upon the fear of invasion, and likewise in bad taste for some Mexicans and asked students what they saw there. only a select few have always known on the other side to adopt this same Everyone said they saw a cube or a box. how to exploit this weakness, with tragic xenophobic talk that’s been directed The most creative variations didn’t depart consequences. Maybe this paranoia came at them – inflicting on others the same from the idea of tri-dimensionality, when about with the English invasion of 1812, but abuse they’ve suffered. in reality what I drew was nothing more if history tells us anything, it’s that the US than three rhombuses forming a hexagon. has practically never suffered an invasion Some tribes in Australia don’t see that same of its territory – if we exclude the 9/11 A critical view image in 3D, but rather in 2D. We see what attacks in 2001; the one on Pearl Harbor, In the course of the conversation, I we think and that’s what we call objectivity. which at the time was a military base in mentioned in passing that in addition to foreign territory; and, prior to that, at the the foundational paranoia, there was a very beginning of the twentieth century, racial component to the argument. “You Double standards the brief incursion of a Mexican named don’t need to be a racist to defend the When President Abraham Lincoln Pancho Villa mounted upon a horse. But the borders,” said one student. US has indeed specialized in invading other emerged victorious from the American countries from the time of its founding – it True, I noted. You don’t need to be a racist Civil War (1861-1865), he put an end to took over the Indian territories, then half to defend borders or laws. At first glance, a hundred-year dictatorship that, up of Mexico, from Texas, to reinstall slavery, the statement is irrefutable. However, if to this day, everyone calls “democracy.” to California; it intervened directly in we take history and the wider current By the eighteenth century, black slaves Latin American affairs, to repress popular context into consideration, an openly had come to make up more than fifty protests and support bloody dictatorships – racist pattern jumps out at us right away. per cent of the population in states like South Carolina – but they weren’t even all in the name of defence and security. And At the end of the nineteenth century, citizens of the US, nor did they enjoy even always with tragic consequences. the French novelist Anatole France minimal human rights. wrote: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under Many years before Lincoln, both racists bridges, to beg in the streets, and to and anti-racists proposed a solution to the Missing home, by students of the Colegio steal their bread.” You don’t need to be “negro problem” by sending them “back” Americano Anáhuac in San Nicolás de an elitist to support an economically to Haiti or Africa, where many of them los Garza, Mexico. It received second prize in the Primary School category of stratified culture. You don’t need to be ended up founding the nation of Liberia the UNESCO Associated Schools Network sexist to spread the most rampant type (one of my students, Adja, is from a family global art contest, “Opening Hearts and of sexism. Thoughtlessly engaging in which comes from that African country). Minds to Refugees”, 2017. © UNESCO / Pataphonique Productions

46 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 You don’t need to be racist to spread and shore up an old racist and class‑based

© Tomas / Cartoon Movement paradigm, Stop the racism, by Italian cartoonist Tomas. while we fill The English did the same thing to “rid” our mouths England of its blacks. But under Lincoln, blacks became citizens, and one way to You don’t need reduce them down to a minority was not to be racist... with platitudes only by making it difficult for them to vote (such as by imposing a poll tax) but Clearly, if you’re a good person and you’re also by opening the nation’s borders to in favour of properly enforcing laws, it about immigration. doesn’t make you a racist. You don’t need to be racist when the law and the culture The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the compassion already are. In the US, nobody protests French people to the American people to Canadian or European immigrants. The commemorate the centenary of the 1776 same is true in Europe and even in the and the fight Declaration of Independence, still cries Southern Cone of South America [the with silent lips: “Give me your tired, your southernmost region of Latin America, poor, your huddled masses yearning to for freedom populated mainly by descendants of breathe free...” In this way, the US opened Europeans]. But everyone is worried about its arms to waves of impoverished the blacks and the hybrid, mixed-race and human immigrants. Of course, the overwhelming people from the south. Because they’re majority were poor whites. Many were not white and “good”, but poor and “bad”. opposed to the Italians and the Irish dignity Currently, almost half a million European because they were red-headed Catholics. immigrants are living illegally in the US. But in any case, they were seen as Nobody talks about them, just like nobody being better than blacks. Blacks weren’t talks about how one million US citizens are able to immigrate from Africa, not just living in Mexico, many illegally. because they were much farther away than Europeans were, but also because With communism discarded as an they were much poorer, and there were excuse (none of those chronically failing hardly any shipping routes to connect states where migrants come from are them to New York. The Chinese had more communist), let’s once again consider opportunities to reach the west coast, the racial and cultural excuses common Professor of Latin American Literature and perhaps for that reason a law was to the century prior to the Cold War. and International Studies at Jacksonville passed in 1882 that prohibited them from Every dark-skinned worker is seen as a University in Florida, in the United States, coming in, just for being Chinese. criminal, not an opportunity for mutual Jorge Majfud is a renowned development. The immigration laws are I understand that this was a subtle and Uruguayan-American writer, who themselves filled with panic at the sight powerful way to reshape demographics, regularly contributes to the international of poor workers. which is to say the political, social and media. He is the author of many novels racial make-up of the US. The current It’s true that you don’t need to be racist including The Queen of America, Crisis, nervousness about a change to that to support laws and more secure borders. Tequila, and books of essays such as make-up is nothing more than the You don’t need to be racist to spread and A Theory of Semantic Fields. continuation of that same old logic. Were shore up an old racist and class-based that not the case, what could be wrong paradigm, while we fill our mouths with with being part of a minority group or platitudes about compassion and the being different from others? fight for freedom and human dignity.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 47 The other side

Katherine Levine Einstein of the coin

A recent survey – covering over a hundred mayors in the United States – illustrates that What’s more, even those mayors Local governments can opt, in many a lot depends on whether these who do support fighting the Trump states, not to enforce some aspects of officials are willing to demand administration’s immigration policies national immigration law – becoming are not quite sure about their capacity sanctuary cities. As the US Conference equal rights for their newest to do so. Only thirty-one per cent of of Mayors noted in a statement issued entrants, and to affect change mayors believed that they could do on 25 January 2017: “Local police in the face of a more stringent a lot to counteract or oppose federal departments work hard to build and immigration policy. In comparison, when preserve trust with all of the communities federal immigration policy. it came to federal policing initiatives, they serve, including immigrant seventy-four per cent felt they could do communities. Immigrants residing in our a lot to countermand or revoke them. cities must be able to trust the police and These disparities make sense. While all of city government.” many American public policies have In June 2018, a bipartisan delegation Cities can also make government itself been devolved to the state and local of mayors – including the president more welcoming. They can create offices levels, immigration firmly remains in of the United States Conference of of immigrant inclusion; provide city federal hands. Mayors, Steve Benjamin – travelled to services in multiple languages; conduct Tornillo, Texas, to protest the family State laws may further limit the policy outreach in immigrant communities; hire separation policy of President Trump’s autonomy of cities in this arena. Multiple staff from diverse backgrounds. administration. America’s mayors have states are considering legislation also stretched across party lines, in April prohibiting sanctuary cities,* though 2017, to call for immigration reform some, notably, are pursuing policies that Starkly separated and to protest the proposed expansion explicitly permit sanctuary jurisdictions. communities of public charge rules in October In Texas – a state that has been Mayors and cities might also promulgate 2018, which penalized “lower-income demographically transformed in recent policies promoting equal access to immigrant families by denying them decades by immigration – the governor quality local government services visas and green cards because they signed a state law banning sanctuary across immigrant and non-immigrant have received vital non-cash benefits cities; the law made police officials and communities. America’s cities are highly to which they are legally entitled.” This local leaders subject to misdemeanour segregated, with white people and bipartisan action contrasts sharply with charges if they failed to honour requests people of colour – those of African the rancorous partisan polarization that from immigration agents to hold descent, Asians and Hispanics – starkly defines the current national political non-citizen inmates who are subject separated into different neighbourhoods. conversations surrounding immigration. to deportation. In Boston, for example, sixty per cent of Yet, in spite of this mayoral public Moreover, even in those American Hispanics would need to move from their activism, there are many obstacles cities where the state governments are current neighbourhood of residence to locally-driven immigration reform. more permissive, cities face important in order to be evenly spread across the Indeed, these public actions belie stark constraints. They are often cash- metropolitan area. internal divisions among American strapped, and limited from raising This racial and ethnic segregation leads mayors. In the 2017 and 2018 Menino additional resources by onerous tax and to concentrated poverty – in which socio- Survey of Mayors, our team at Boston expenditure limits imposed by their economic deprivation is clustered in one University’s Initiative on Cities asked state governments. over a hundred mayors of cities – with place. Concentrated poverty is associated That said, there remain many local populations of over 75,000 – their views with a whole host of negative social and policies at the disposal of mayors that on immigration, race, and racism, among economic outcomes, including fewer job could appreciably affect conditions on other issues. In contrast with the partisan opportunities and higher crime. These the ground for immigrants – perhaps unity adopted by the US Conference of areas, on average, have lower-quality most notably in the realm of policing. Mayors, mayors appear to be sharply government services. divided on these issues. Eighty-six per This neglect of disadvantaged cent of Democratic mayors believe communities has a myriad of causes. that immigrants should receive local Residents in these communities are government services, regardless of their * Sanctuary cities are those that are committed to less likely to make demands of their protecting the rights of all its citizens, including legal status, in contrast to a mere twenty- undocumented immigrants, and providing basic government. They are less apt to have nine per cent of Republicans. services to them. In the US, these cities also ensure that time to contact their government undocumented immigrants who are not otherwise engaged in criminal activity are prevented from being or trust that their government detained or deported by the federal authorities. will take action if asked.

48 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Moreover, politicians are, on average, percentage points more likely than more responsive to affluent constituents; Republicans to perceive discrimination so, even when asked to take action by against immigrants in their cities. these communities, they are less likely to Depending upon the policy area, do so. The effect of historic disinvestment Democrats were between twenty and Assistant professor of political in these communities is cumulative, and fifty percentage points more apt than science at Boston University, challenging to overcome. Republicans to believe that access to Katherine Levine Einstein received her Ph.D. in Government and Social Policy What’s more, many mayors are reluctant social and public goods like jobs, health from Harvard University. Her work on to acknowledge local discrimination care, and fair treatment by the courts was local politics and policy, racial and ethnic and inequities in public services. better for white people than for people politics, and American public policy has Only nineteen per cent of mayors of colour. While mayors across party appeared in multiple academic journals. believed that immigrants faced a lot of lines have taken symbolic action against discrimination in their cities. Over eighty Trump’s immigration policies, Democratic per cent of mayors of both political mayors are substantially more likely to parties viewed the quality of their mass provide vocal support for undocumented transit, street maintenance, and parks immigrants, acknowledge local as equal for white people and people of discrimination against immigrants, and colour. Acknowledging inequality and admit that access to key public, social, discrimination are key prerequisites to and economic goods are racially unequal. taking concrete policy actions that tackle Immigrants thus face an uneven these issues. patchwork of services to navigate, This is not to say that all mayors eschew as some (largely Democratic) local acknowledging and addressing racial governments aggressively promulgate inequality. Here, again – as with views initiatives to welcome immigrants and on immigrants receiving public services redress disparities, and others – due to Giant picnic organized at the – the partisan divide was substantial. limitations or local prejudices against United States-Mexico border in 2017, Democratic mayors were twenty newcomers – choose not to. by French artist JR.

© JR-ART-NET

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 49 © NicoTherin French-Congolese writer. Alain Mabanckou, Our Guest

The mobile Africas of Alain Mabanckou

Alain Mabanckou, interviewed by Ariane Poissonnier, French journalist

Alain Mabanckou browses through a “tri-continental attic”, searching the past to shed light on the present. How should colonial history be read? What meaning should be given to the restoration of African cultural heritage? And what is the role of the novelist in all this? The French- Congolese writer discusses these issues, in all simplicity.

With this interview, the Courier © Collection privée A. Mabanckou participates in the celebration of The young Alain Mabanckou with World Africa Day, 25 May. his mother, Pauline and father, Roger.

You divide your time between three So, it’s a kind of tri-continental attic that And who would question the universality countries – the Congo, France, and the I sneak into, to retrieve whatever might of Return To My Native Land by United States. How does this arrangement help to explain tomorrow’s world. The Martinique’s Aimé Césaire? Who can work out for you? world of tomorrow is the sum of different doubt the power of analyses of another cultures. Martinican, Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin, As an advantage! This tri-continental White Masks? These writers have attacked culture has allowed me to encounter Some say that today the neo-liberal system the colonial system and its corollaries the variety of the world and to discover is such a hegemony that we no longer even from within, using the tools that the what I call mobile Africas. First of all, a have the words to criticize it… system provided them. mobile Africa within the continent. When Frankly, I can’t identify with that! That I lived in the Congo, I came across West “The Belgians are trying to recount would mean that all the tools for criticism Africans, and that made me aware of their colonial history”, you commented have been corrupted by the neo-liberal Africa’s diversity. When I came to France, recently on Instagram, after visiting the system – I am not that pessimistic. I discovered the Western world, but AfricaMuseum in Belgium. Why did you There are always ways to thwart a also the Africans who had settled there say that? system, and it is sometimes by entering through migration, travel, the history of into the vocabulary of that system, by A museum is like an individual, who slavery and colonization – a mobile Africa deconstructing it and demonstrating how sends out a message by the choice of his in Europe. And then, when I am in the empty it is, that a new way of thinking clothes, which can be honest or biased. United States, I perceive my continent can emerge. Just because the peanut has Some wear a wig. You may fall in love through a distant magnifying glass that a shell doesn’t mean I won’t break it to with this beautiful hair and be deeply allows me to discern the floating shadows see what’s inside, and eat it! disappointed when you discover it’s fake! of yet another mobile Africa, deported by Similarly, when you enter this museum, slavery and the slave trade. Take the example of African civilizations. you say to yourself that it’s very beautiful They have used Western thought to I got acquainted with this African- and finally... nothing. I went around in establish African thought. The Negritude American world in New York, through circles, but I didn’t see the arms that were movement was born in Europe, in Richard Wright, Chester Himes and James cut off during the time of Léopold II. the minds of the Black and Caribbean Baldwin, writers of the Harlem Renaissance students who came to study in France. – a movement they launched in the One of them, the Senegalese [poet and first half of the twentieth century, that statesman] Léopold Sédar Senghor, revolutionized so-called Black thinking. entered the Académie Française.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 51 Admittedly, this [recently renovated] museum has given some African descendants an opportunity to tell their stories – it is good to have thought about this. That is not necessarily the case in France where, as soon as there is any mention of colonial history, everyone rears up and takes refuge behind Jules Ferry, who apparently brought us the alphabet! But if you gave this same museum to Africans to build – indeed, from the front door to the back door, they would have shown the White man whipping the Black man, putting him in the holds, plundering the continent, building a railroad where people die. Know that I would also have written about them on Instagram, that they “are trying to write their colonial history”. The colonized will present the apocalyptic version of colonization, the Westerner, its supposedly civilizing version. All this must be synthesized. For now, we have only subjective interpretations. Do you believe it is important for countries to start returning cultural heritage to African countries, such as France is currently undertaking? I like Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy’s report on the restitution of African cultural heritage [submitted to the French Elysée on 23 November 2018], but let us wait to see what happens in practice.

Restitution raises the same question – © Finbarr O’Reilly how do we reread our colonial history? Why are these looted objects never mentioned in French and European Does African literature occupy its rightful to think of me as a spokesperson – that history books? The colonizer made a place in world literature? would be too Christ-like a destiny – but big mistake in thinking that what we to think instead that we are writing the African literature in French is still young, produced artistically was junk. Today, books I write, together. it’s not even a hundred years old, and these are the missing elements in the needs time to become established. What You could have become a lawyer. In 1989, explanation of the global imagination. is interesting is that it has been able to you won a scholarship and left your Africans simply want us to recognize that follow the path of globalization – it takes modest family in Pointe-Noire to study the world’s imagination also includes into account the fragmented dimension law in France. those elements of African culture of the world and enters into the great My parents wanted me to become a that have been plundered – and that dialogue that is taking place here and judge or a lawyer. The University of there would not have been a Surrealist there, about the current social challenges. Nantes offered me a place – I studied movement, for example, if these painters Do you sometimes feel like the voice private law for a year and then came to had not had the exposure to African art. of Africa? Paris to obtain a postgraduate degree Going beyond restitution, there is the in business and social law at the Paris question of the recognition of Africa as an That would be pretentious. It’s true that Dauphine University. artistic power. I am always flattered to see that more and more Africans, including English But writing took precedence over law. speakers, read what I write, identify with It’s a jealous activity that doesn’t like it, and are enthusiastic about it. All I do competition. And then, when my parents is reciprocate, through stories that speak died, I had the feeling that I had no one of their world. I would like people not left that I needed to make proud of me.

52 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 We really only discovered the novel in 1979, with the publication of La vie et demie [Life and a Half] by Sony Labou Tansi, whom I consider to be the greatest writer in Congo. There, we realized that we could also recount something that was not necessarily about personal pain. In the novel, the state of mind no longer belongs to the novelist – it belongs to the character. Your friend, the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière, says that when it comes to creation, “talent is important, but the most important thing is courage”. Do we have to dare, to create? Courage is everything that you do not see in a literary work. A novel or a collection of poems is the finished product. We do not see in it all the author’s tribulations, his anguish, his living conditions, his cracks. If you do not have the courage, if you do not have the obstinacy, if you do not have the obsession, then talent is worth nothing! Writing a novel means polishing each sentence and coming back to it as many times as necessary, to really express the feeling it is meant to. The courage that Dany Laferrière speaks of is synonymous with obsession and strength. The writer is obsessed with the aesthetic project he bears, and he uses all his strength to defend it within his imaginary universe. When you write, do you expose yourself? Yes! There is also the political courage, the recklessness to expose one’s self. Writing is not a walk in the park, it is rather a steep road, with potholes, mud, rainwater, stones. Those who don’t have the courage, wear boots. The writer, he walks barefoot and makes it to the end of the The new Museum of Black Civilizations road, even if he’s covered with wounds. in Dakar, Senegal, retraces the cultural He has accomplished the project that was Was there a day when you said to contributions of Africa around the world. within him, the force of the world that he yourself: “I want to write”? Shown here, a Bamoun statue from wanted to give birth to. He did it! Cameroon, left, and a 2018 painting, I started writing poems in high school, and, Redresseurs, from the Cuban art basically, I only wanted to write poetry. I collective, The Merger. wasn’t aware then that writing could be a main activity. For me, it served to calm my anxieties, to control my loneliness. It A novelist, journalist, poet and academic, became a confession for me, as an only Before you published your first novel, Alain Mabanckou is among the most child – a way of refusing the world as it Bleu Blanc Rouge (Blue White Red) in recognized writers in French contemporary was written, in the present, so that I could 1998, you had published four collections literature. Born in 1966 in Pointe-Noire, the invent my own version of the world. of poems. How do novels and poetry work economic capital of Congo, he currently together? Maybe that’s where the writing began, teaches literature and creative writing in the even if I can’t put a date on the moment Poetry corresponds to the romantic Department of French and Francophone when I became aware that this was what soul of teenagers – it is the place of first Studies at the University of California, Los I had to do. I continued to write, telling loves, the moment one describes one’s Angeles (UCLA). Mabanckou has held the myself that I would work, and, in parallel, disappointments, or falls in love with Artistic Creation chair at the Collège de France from time to time, I would write. By doing Lamartine, Hugo, Vigny, or some other in 2015 and 2016, and has received numerous it on a regular basis, I was building up romantic poet. And also, poetry was international prizes. His work has been my strength for what would become my highly regarded in my country, with great translated into thirty languages. His twelfth principal activity – and an obsession. national authors like Tchicaya U Tam’si. novel, Les Cigognes sont immortelles (The Storks are Immortal), was published in France in 2018.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 53 Current Affairs

54 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 © Selçuk Demirel Open books, open minds Ghalia Khoja

The city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became the World Book Capital for the year, starting in April 2019. It invites the public to embark on the bridge of knowledge to discover the diversity of the world’s cultures and peoples.

With this article, the Courier participates in the celebration of World Book and Copyright Day, 23 April.

“The book is, in all circumstances, the best of companions.” This quote from Al- Mutanabbi, the illustrious tenth-century

Arab poet, has become an adage that © Sharjah International Book Fair lovers of literature, poetry and knowledge The Sharjah International Book Fair, in general, take pleasure in repeating – 2018. In partnership with twenty even today, when social networks and representatives of the public, private audio-visual media have considerably and civil society sectors, the secretariat overshadowed the role of books. even international prizes, including the is organizing a series of cultural and UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture, The book remains a privileged medium artistic events throughout the year, not the Sharjah Award for Arabic Poetry, the for promoting the values of tolerance, only in the Emirates but also in other Sharjah Award for Translation and the coexistence and peace, for defending countries in the region. The event aims Sharjah Award for an Emirati Book. freedom of expression and fighting to contribute to the development and extremism and obscurantism – all The emirate also boasts of the Sharjah support of publishing in the UAE and common denominators of the events that Publishing City (SPC), which it describes throughout the Arab world, by providing begin in Sharjah on 23 April 2019, World as the world’s first free zone dedicated access to books for everyone, especially Book and Copyright Day, and continue for exclusively to serving the global publishing children and teenagers; introducing twelve months, as part of its nomination and printing industry. Spread over 19,000 promising authors; increasing the as World Book Capital 2019. square metres, the facility offers state-of- readership of printed and digital books, the-art services and infrastructure for the and encouraging their translation. All Sharjah is the first city in the Persian Gulf entire chain of book-publishing – from genres of books are represented – poetry, and the third city in the Arab world to writing and designing, to printing and fiction, non-fiction, social and scientific receive this designation. distributing books – for a range of budgets. publications, and even comic books. It was in Sharjah that the first school and For its part, the Emirates Publishers At the end of the event, Sharjah will pass the first library were opened in the UAE. Association helps to promote books and on the baton to the city of Kuala Lumpur, And it is in this city that, since 1982, the reading among all sections of society and Malaysia, which has already been annual Sharjah International Book Fair, different generations of readers. This has designated by UNESCO as the World Book has exhorted the public with “Read – earned the non-profit organization the Capital, 2020. you’re in Sharjah!”, its catchy slogan. Now recognition of its peers – its president, the third-largest book fair in the world, Sheikha Bodour Bint Sultan Al Qasimi, was it welcomed 2.7 million visitors in 2018, elected vice-president of the International and 1,874 exhibitors from seventy-seven Publishers Association in 2018. countries. It offered over 1.6 million titles “The book is the means by which every A writer and literary critic, Ghalia Khoja and a programme of 1,800 events. society can progress, surpass itself and (Syria) is the author of twenty-five books, The emirate of Sharjah has given books engage in dialogue. It is a bridge between including collections of poetry, novels a special place in its cultural policy, with all the countries of the world,” Sheikha and essays. A journalist for the Al-Ittihad projects such as “A library in every home”, Bodour said, taking up her post as head of Arabic daily, she has been living in the mobile libraries, national, regional and the Sharjah World Book Capital 2019 office. United Arab Emirates since 2004.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 55 Artificial intelligence, at Africa’s door

Tshilidzi Marwala, interviewed by Edwin Naidu, South African journalist

African leaders must embrace technology and use the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to drive the continent out of poverty and into a better future, argues leading South African scientist and artificial intelligence (AI) expert Tshilidzi Marwala. One of the big problems with 4IR is that This interview is published on the occasion of World Africa Day, the winner takes all. In South Africa, we celebrated at UNESCO on 25 May. had a local search engine, called Anansi, which aggressively gathered local data, but it was no match for Google – it has since folded, in 2011. Few people can In the late 1980s, the Chinese government Those with adequate capital to buy name the world’s number two search invested in the economy, and has since industrial robots will produce more with engine – the answer is Microsoft’s Bing, lifted 800 million people out of poverty. fewer resources and will become very but even they’re struggling. There is no Do you see the South African government wealthy, while the rest will be relegated room for a number two – the fact that being able to achieve similar results, to the margins of society. Google is not available in China is a huge albeit with a smaller population, through South Africa, and the African Continent, advantage for Chinese companies. investment in 4IR*? have no choice but to embrace 4IR and However, the web giants, like most It is thought that China may be the last use it to find solutions to the plethora of corporations, don’t spend a lot of time country to manage to make money out of problems facing us. dealing with local issues. For instance, cheap labour to lift people out of poverty. Are all African governments investing Google Maps does not pronounce If robots are used in the manufacturing in 4IR ? the names on our local routes well. process, it will probably be even cheaper If we produced our own domestic than it has traditionally been in the past. I don’t think that is the case, even though maps with the right pronunciations, Therefore, I am afraid 4IR may mark the there are some pockets of excellence to we would have an edge over Google. cost of labour as a deterrent to employers, be found in Mozambique, Congo, Kenya, The key to competition is to address with the complete automation of the Rwanda, and South Africa, to some challenges locally. production process. extent. Mobilizing on an issue like 4IR in a continent with fifty-four countries is How far are African countries from Undoubtedly, 4IR will change the world of a lot more complicated than handling becoming producers of 4IR technology? work with artificially intelligent machines one country, even if it is as big as China. performing tasks that were traditionally I think we produce a lot of technology, to Considering that the countries are at performed by humans. As a result, be honest. I hear a lot about Elon Musk, different stages of development makes the world of work is already shrinking, and his Tesla car, but South Africa had the the situation even more complex. with factories employing fewer people Joule [an electric five-seater passenger than before. There will be a marked I believe that 4IR is going to be about car], which was shelved because it would increase in inequality. data – whether it is the data of people, have had to sell a million units to be genetic data, or the data that drives 4IR viable. We register a lot of patents, but itself. The question we must ask is, are our markets are just not big enough, so African countries obtaining data? The our products are dying in laboratories. answer, I am afraid, is no. The biggest The economics dictate that you need to * The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – being data capturers in Africa are United States sell huge amounts to survive. It’s not just built on the widespread availability of digital technologies brought to us by the Third Industrial multinationals. When it comes to data creating the technology that matters. (or digital) Revolution – is driven by emerging collection or management, Africa would We need to create new markets and build technologies, based on a combination of digital, score three, on a scale of one to ten. This an effective export strategy. biological and physical innovations. These latest technologies, that are changing the way we live and figure is alarming. work, include artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, quantum computing, 3D printing, blockchain, additive manufacturing, neurotechnologies, geoengineering, and genome editing.

56 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Should corporations be playing a bigger Currently, we do not have similar policies role through public-private partnerships for companies participating in 4IR; we (PPPs) with governments on 4IR? need to do that as we move forward. Creating special economic zones with 4IR Absolutely, corporations must play a in mind is a good idea, with governments big role. What I have observed, and this providing companies with tax incentives is a controversial view, is that there is a RTIFICIAL that would promote production, job culture that does not consider Africa as creation and help grow the economy. a place to produce. For example, there is In Kenya, the number of 4IR startups and no plant in Africa making Apple products. These incentives should not just be for the launching of digital currency makes Companies that have production in foreign companies, but local businesses it clear that President Uhuru Kenyatta nations they operate in, are much easier should be able to benefit from them too. understands technology. to partner with than those merely This means that political leaders need bringing their products manufactured INTELLInI SouthG Africa,E PresidentN Cyril CE to play an essential role in the process of elsewhere into the country. Ramaphosa is the first leader who introducing new technologies. has placed 4IR at the forefront of his What are some of the mechanisms that One of the first things Africa needs to do strategy, and he is a big advocate for we need to put in place for multinationals is to start having leaders who understand science and technology. In his State of to investT ino productionwa on ther continent?ds a Humanistic Approach technology. In Rwanda, the high-speed the Nation address in February 2018, In South Africa, the motor industry is a internet makes it obvious that President he talked about the digital industrial good example, where it is government Paul Kagame understands technology. revolution, and has committed to the policy to subsidize automobile launch of a commission of experts on companies who produce here. 4IR to drive strategy. We need a national strategy, like India’s National Strategy for AI or the Made in China 2025 strategic manufacturing plan to transform itself into an innovative hi-tech powerhouse. Hopefully the commission driven by President Ramaphosa will create a strategy, mobilizing political, economic and social forces to put the economy on a good trajectory. The African continent now has 1.3 billion people and is still growing – it is the fastest-growing continent in terms of population. You are not going to be able to deal with the issues of population explosion, food security or urbanization without 4IR technology. Our leaders must understand technology – they must be developmental in their © UNESCO / Olivier Marie outlook. And this necessarily means that moving forward, we must start identifying new leaders with these qualities.

One of South Africa’s leading experts on artificial intelligence, Tshilidzi Marwala is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg. His extensive research on AI has been published in journals across the world, and he has won many awards both nationally and internationally.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 57 The Rwandan

Alphonse Nkusi miracle

A quarter of a century after the terrible genocide of 1994, Rwanda is turning a new page Tradition to the rescue The priorities in its history. Following a long Priority was given to unity and With an average growth rate of more period of national unification reconciliation. To this end, the gacaca, than seven per cent per year since 2000, the traditional system of justice, was Rwanda is now one of the leading African and reconciliation, it is investing revived, allowing the community to try countries in economic growth. According in economic growth and the perpetrators and accept their request to official figures, its investments in focusing on new technologies, for forgiveness. Through these traditional agriculture, energy, infrastructure, mining with the hope of becoming an courts, survivors were able to learn more and tourism have lifted more than one about the deaths of their relatives, but million people out of poverty. ICT hub in Africa. also about the criminals who confessed This development is accompanied by their actions and admitted their guilt. the country’s increased integration With this article, the Courier participates Different sentences were handed down, into regional economic structures, in the International Day of Reflection depending on the seriousness of the but also by its greater participation on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi crimes committed. Some were sentenced in the international community. With in Rwanda, on 7 April. to community service, others to prison 6,550 personnel, Rwanda is now the terms. In ten years, the gacaca courts fourth-largest contributor to United judged 1.9 million cases, before they were Nations peacekeeping operations. officially closed in May 2012. But the country wants to invest first and At the same time, public judicial foremost in people to achieve all-inclusive institutions were rehabilitated in development. That is why it places Twenty-five years ago, the bloodiest order to judge the most serious cases. women at the forefront of public life. chapter in the contemporary history Internationally, the International Criminal They paid a high price during the black of Africa was written in Rwanda. In a Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), established spring in Rwanda: between 100,000 and hundred days, a million people lost their on 8 November 1994, recognized that 250,000 women were victims of rape and lives, leaving behind a million orphans, “genocide, crimes against humanity and sexual assault, these appalling weapons not counting the widows and widowers. war crimes were perpetrated on a horrific of war, recognized by the ICTR as acts scale”, reaching “a rate of killing four times I was in Uganda when this drama was of genocide. Since then, many of them greater than at the height of the Nazi being played out in my country. The have died of AIDS contracted during Holocaust”. To date, the ICTR has indicted neighbour to the north had welcomed the attacks. ninety-three individuals, considered me as a refugee in 1962, when I was to be planners and perpetrators of the In order to ensure women’s protection, a a young man of 17. I studied there, at genocide. Eighty of them have been tried, Law on the Prevention and Punishment Makerere University, started my family out of which twenty-three have served of Gender-based Violence was adopted and lived there until 2008. But since 1994, their sentences. in 2008. Other laws ensure their full I have divided my time between Uganda participation in political and social life: and Rwanda, to take care of my family’s In the aftermath of the genocide, another at least thirty per cent of positions are orphans and also to contribute to the traditional method was used to enable reserved for women in all state bodies reconstruction of my homeland. citizens to participate in public affairs. at all levels. This strategy has bridged It consists of a commitment to planned Everything had to be redone in this the gap between men and women at activities in a management system that wounded country. The first concern a faster rate. Today, sixty-two per cent provides for contracts called imihigo. In of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, RPF- of parliamentarians, fifty per cent of the past they were oral and endorsed by Inkotanyi, the political party led at the ministers and forty-four per cent of a ceremony, today they are written and time by the current Rwandan President officials in the judiciary are women. signed, but their function remains the Paul Kagame, was to stop the genocide same: they engage the individual to carry Education and health are two other and restore peace and security. “We have out a number of tasks during a year, at priority sectors, which have absorbed learned lessons that should inform us the end of which their performance is thirty per cent of the annual national how to build our future,” he recently told a evaluated by the community. budget for several years. The rate of gathering of business leaders in Charlotte, school attendance in the twelve years North Carolina, in the United States. This method has contributed significantly of compulsory education is ninety per to the improvement of public services To build the future, we began by cent and health insurance coverage is in present-day Rwanda, which has relearning to conjugate the verb “to be” in eighty‑seven per cent. opted for consensual democracy and the plural and to tell ourselves that we are power‑sharing. all Banyarwanda. Forget who is Tutsi, who is Hutu, who is Twa. Overcome hatred.

58 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Health services have improved considerably in remote areas since the arrival of Zipline drones, which, according to the chief executive officer of the American startup, made more than 4,000 deliveries of blood and medicine between October 2016 and April 2018. Education, too, is slowly but surely changing as a result of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), particularly since the launch of the “One laptop per child” initiative in June 2008. Over 600,000 laptops have been distributed and pupils have adopted to share their usage on a daily basis. The project, however, has faced challenges, notably lack of electricity coverage in rural areas for charging the laptops and a lack of resources to distribute them to over 2.3 million schoolchildren. Nevertheless, ICTs are developing at full speed: 4,000 kilometres of fibre-optic

cables have already been rolled out in © Marie Moroni the country, which has a surface area Celestial Eye, a brooch from the Ibaba just exceeding 26,000 square kilometres. series by French designer Céleste Mogador, This year it is expected that wireless created in the Ibaba Rwanda embroidery internet and fibre-optic will cover workshop in rural Rwanda, where women ninety‑five per cent of the country. have finally returned to work after The vast majority of the population an interruption of nineteen years. already has access to mobile phones and (AI) officially entered the university out of roughly 13 million inhabitants, curriculum, thanks to a master’s degree more than 4 million can now shop and launched by the Senegalese expert Among the latter, SafeMotos, nicknamed pay their bills, taxes, and even police Moustapha Cissé, head of Google’s AI “the Uber of motorcycle taxis” was born fines, using mobile applications. The same research centre in Ghana, and by the at kLab, a technology innovation hub applies to administrative procedures. African Institute of Mathematical Sciences considered to be the most dynamic Simply go to the portal Irembo (the word (AIMS) in Kigali. in the country. Since 2012, it has means access in Kinyarwanda) to find trained thousands of young people A quarter of a century after the genocide most government services online. free of charge, helping to launch against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the divided, sixty companies, four of which have devastated, dilapidated nation, in need Looking to the future become leaders in their field of activity of reconstruction and rehabilitation, is and two of which have expanded today resolutely looking to the future and Rwanda is focusing on technology internationally. It is one of a number of preparing the ground for what may one development to ensure a better future. innovation centres that have developed, day be called the Rwandan miracle. Banking transactions are facilitated particularly in Kigali, the capital, with a through mobile services. Business leaders view to offering young Rwandans new have access to e-commerce through professional opportunities. the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWRP), launched in October 2018 by The City of Innovation to be built as China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba. part of Africa50, the infrastructure Alphonse Nkusi (Rwanda) has held Urban transport is facilitated by car development platform of the African posts including senior media analyst at and motorcycle services controlled via Development Bank (AfDB), also promises the Rwanda Governance Council, editor mobile applications. a bright technological future for Rwanda, of New Vision, one of Uganda’s two which is now well positioned to become leading daily newspapers, and lecturer a regional ICT platform. Especially since in social communication at Makerere in September 2018, artificial intelligence University, Uganda.

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 59 Gran Pajatén, “our geographical fortress”

Roldán Rojas Paredes, interviewed by William Navarrete

It was a region devastated by intensive rubber production in the nineteenth century, and occupied by drug cartels and guerrillas – who made it a lawless zone overrun by coca plants, where the trafficking of cocaine was routine – in the 1980s. But today thousands of people live off mixed agroforestry here, planting cacao and other crops. In this area of the Central Cordillera of Peru, UNESCO designated the Gran Pajatén Biosphere Reserve in 2016. Roldán Rojas Paredes was at the heart of the project.

With this interview, the Courier participates in the celebration of Fish farming in the village of the International Day for Biological Santa Rosa, Peru. Diversity, 22 May. © PUR Projet / Christian Lamontagne

How would you describe the Gran Pajatén I see this reserve as our geographical we have developed mixed agroforestry, Biosphere Reserve to someone who has fortress, offering us ideal conditions for a which is particularly well adapted to the never heard of it? better quality of life and providing great production of cocoa, because cacao trees opportunities for future generations. flourish in the shade of other trees. It is an extraordinary place, characterized by a great natural and cultural diversity, Personally, I have always been attached The inscription of our region in UNESCO’s because it brings together two totally to working on the land, to our primary World Network of Biosphere Reserves different habitats – the Andes and forests, to their impressive greenery and (WNBR) in 2016 gave us a tremendous the Amazon. Spread over some 2.5 the direct energy you receive from them boost. We saw it as a sign of recognition million hectares, the reserve is home to when you live here. My life has always of the efforts we have put into becoming 5,000 plant species and more than 900 been intimately linked to the cultural the leading organic cocoa-producing animal species, about thirty of which richness, legends, imagination, music and region in Peru. are endemic. It also encompasses the gastronomy of this place. This is why I left This international recognition has Río Abiseo National Park, inscribed to study in Lima, the capital, with every opened up new opportunities for the on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in intention of returning to devote myself Amazonia Viva Foundation (FUNDAVI), 1990, which has an abundance of to promoting this exceptional heritage. which works to conserve the Gran Pajatén archaeological remains. Since the mid- Which is what I have done. ecosystem. Now, companies that were 1980s, thirty-six pre-Columbian sites What does the designation of Gran Pajatén once sceptical and snubbed us are taking have been discovered here, at altitudes as a UNESCO biosphere reserve mean for an interest in us. Poderosa, the precious ranging from 2,500 to 4,000 metres. the region’s 170,000 inhabitants? metal mining company, for example, For those of us who were born here, all is investing in archaeological research The local population has suffered greatly this constitutes a unique legacy, for which (it has just published an excellent in the past, plagued by rubber and we feel responsible and which obliges us handbook), agricultural research (it has drug cartels, and even guerrillas. But to think in the long term. launched a study on potatoes) and has in the early 2000s, the revival of cacao provided us with teaching materials for farming enabled thousands of people to primary schools. escape poverty and exclusion. Over time,

60 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 We are also receiving offers from new We are not interested in competition. We want foreign investors, such as Chanel, the We want to combine strategies, to French fashion house, which has signed present and improve our activities, and a collaboration agreement with our to become a source of inspiration for all to become Biocorridor Martín Sagrado REDD + project, – in terms of the excellence of our work for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. and teaching. a source Could you tell us more about that project? We are also keen to involve more universities, companies, civil society, the It provides for the conservation and of inspiration State and to strive for more international development of 300,000 hectares of primary cooperation, to take advantage of this forests managed by local communities in fabulous “brand” of biosphere reserve – to for all, the Alto Huayabamba, which is adjacent ensure that the farmer, who toils on his to the Abiseo National Park. Launched in plot of land day after day, feels connected 2010 for a period of eighty years, it is funded to the whole world. in terms of by PUR Projet, the French social business enterprise, and the Jubilación Segura (secure retirement) project. The latter is the excellence a forty-year project which implements agroforestry models designed to create a of our work new sustainable rural economy, through Born in Tarapoto, 136 kilometres a reforestation and carbon sequestration from Juanjuí, the capital of Mariscal plan that helps revalue the land, to break Cáceres province in north-west Peru, and teaching the cycle of poverty for farmers who do not Roldán Rojas Paredes was the driving have a retirement pension. force behind the creation of the Gran Pajatén Biosphere Reserve. He What are the next steps planned by is currently Executive Director of the FUNDAVI? Amazonia Viva Foundation (FUNDAVI), We are beginning to share experiences which works to conserve the reserve’s between the different members within our ecosystem, and was a member of the biosphere reserve, such as the creation of first management committee of the Río botanical gardens or beekeeping farms. Abiseo National Park in 2001. Joel Diaz plants a tree as part of We also intend to forge alliances with the PUR Projet reforestation project other biosphere reserves in Peru and in the Gran Pajatén biosphere elsewhere in the world. reserve in Peru. © PUR Projet / Christian Lamontagne

The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 | 61 UNESCO Publishing

United Nations Educational, Scientific and www.unesco.org/publishing Cultural Organization [email protected]

World Heritage No.90 Addressing Anti-Semitism Legacies of Slavery Success Stories through Education A Resource Book for Managers of ISSN 1020-4202 Guidelines for Policymakers Sites and Itineraries of Memory 88 pages, 220 x 280 mm, paperback, € 7.50 ISBN 978-92-3-100274-8 ISBN 978-92-3-100277-9 UNESCO Publishing/Publishing for 88 pp., 170 x 240 mm, PDF 219 pp., 200 x 260 mm, PDF Development Ltd. UNESCO Publishing/OSCE UNESCO Publishing Available on http://unesdoc.unesco.org Available on http://unesdoc.unesco.org

The goal of the World Heritage This publication takes up the challenge This resource book is designed for Convention is the conservation of places of educating learners to resist managers of sites and itineraries of of Outstanding Universal Value. Since contemporary anti-Semitism at a time memory related to the slave trade and 1978, the World Heritage List has grown when the issue is becoming ever more slavery. It provides a comparative analysis enormously, with new sites added every crucial around the world. of experiences in the preservation and year, and the implementation of the promotion of such sites across the world, It suggests concrete ways to address 1972 World Heritage Convention has and proposes practical guidance for their anti-Semitism, counter prejudice and greatly evolved. management and development. promote tolerance through education, This issue focuses on cases illustrating by designing programmes based on It is the first resource book on this specific how appropriate action leads to a human rights framework, global issue to be published by a United Nations improvements – and sometimes, citizenship education, inclusiveness agency, and provides guidelines on how powerful transformation – both for the and gender equality. best to preserve, promote and manage site and the people living on or near it. sites of memory, taking into account the sensitivity of these painful memories.

62 | The UNESCO Courier • April-June 2019 Many voices, one world

The UNESCO Courier is published in the six official languages of the Organization, and also in Portuguese, Esperanto, Sicilian and Korean. Read it and share it widely across the globe.

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Prometheus Bringing Fire to Mankind, by Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), Mexico. Signed and dated “Tamayo 9-58” (500 x 450 cm), this fresco has been part of the UNESCO art collection since 1958.