The UNESCO Courier - Volume 2023, Issue 2, 2023

According to some studies, coffee is the most widely consumed drink in the world, after water. No fewer than 150 million sacks of it, from South America, Africa and Vietnam, circulate around the world every year. It is estimated that nearly 100 million people make their living from this beverage, including coffee shop owners, their subcontractors and their employees. The global coffee market alone could be worth US$17 billion.

It’s eleven o’clock in the morning on Sunday 18 December 2022. There is still an hour to go before the end of the World Cup final between Argentina and France. The El Banderín bar is buzzing. Customers sporting sunhats and jerseys in the colours of the national team continue to flock in to watch the match – regulars and outsiders alike. Waiters of both sexes make their way between the tables, juggling their trays laden with beers, snacks... and siphons of sparkling seltzer water that no one has ordered. They’re on the house.

Sun streaming through tall windows, steam rising from fat china mugs, the fragrance of roasted beans and fresh yeasty rolls, and the steady background sound of conversations, laughter, and cups clinking. This is where friends meet, where neighbours share news, where business is done, where strangers start talking. This is a third place.

Large crowds pass by the colourful stalls in Eminonu as sellers’ voices fill the air in this old neighbourhood on the south bank of the Golden Horn. It’s easy to locate the Turkish coffee shop Kuru Kahveci Mehmet Efendi because of the long line that forms outside. Or you can simply follow the strong aroma that fills the air after you leave Istanbul’s iconic Grand Bazaar.

The everyday reality of Ottoman Thessaloniki (1430-1912) has left few concrete traces. A rare glimpse into daily life as it was at the time can be found at the Tsinari café located in the upper part of the city, at the corner of Klious and Alexandras Papadopoulou streets.

In Ethiopia, coffee is a central part of everyday life. Inexpensive and served everywhere, on any occasion, it is a powerful factor promoting conviviality and social relations. In the capital, Addis Ababa, and every other city in the country, you can drink coffee in the street, on the pavement, sitting on a little stool and catching up on neighbourhood news. You can also find it in luxury international hotels and airports, where the preparation ritual is performed on a little stage.

For someone who claims not to be “much of a coffee person”, 32-year-old Hyunjae Lee, an office worker, spends a fair share of her time and weekly budget in Seoul’s multiple coffee shops. Despite the rising cost of living, her weekly consumption of fancy espresso drinks amounts to at least US$30.

Near the corner of a quiet street, a short way from the bustling avenues of the Lafayette quarter in Tunis’s city centre – that’s where you’ll find the Liber’Thé café, signalled by a few simple tables at the bottom of a drab, modern apartment building. Opened eleven years ago by Ghassen and Lassaad Labidi, this narrow, book-lined place is a lot more than just a café. In just a few years it has become a mainstay of the capital’s alternative culture scene.

A wedge of apple, a dewdrop, a river with silvery reflections snaking through a valley: in M/E, Rinko Kawauchi, a major figure of the Japanese photography scene, presents a new series of images in her usual delicate style. Starting in the icy immensity of the Icelandic mountains, the series also explores the gentle tranquility of a world withdrawn into seclusion because of the pandemic.

Dominance has never been achieved solely through the recognition and display of superior technological or military might. Knowledge is power, and it exercises its influence, as Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci put it, in the field of cultural hegemony, establishing the boundaries of what knowledge is and is not. Information, education and cultural and scientific production form the deep level of geopolitical interaction.

In 1914 during the outbreak of the First World War, the French philosopher Henri Bergson gave an inaugural speech titled “Meaning of the War” as the newly elected president of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Bergson, who later became the president of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (the ancestor of UNESCO), accused Germany of “machinism” and “mechanism” – these terms appear many times in his short speech. It was machinism and mechanism which led Germany from being a country of music, poetry and metaphysics, to a “scientific barbary” and “systematic barbary”.

While countries around the world recognize that school health and nutrition is a good investment for children and adolescents, in practice the reality on the ground is far from adequate, according to a new report Ready to learn and thrive: School health and nutrition around the world by UNESCO, UNICEF and WFP, published on 8 February 2023. As the world is facing a global food crisis, more must be done to ensure that national investments in school health and nutrition are delivered and meet the needs of all learners – starting with those most at risk of being left behind.