The UNESCO Courier - Volume 2019, Issue 2, 2019

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.

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.

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.

The crisis in Detroit, America’s Motor City, was splashed all over the international press when the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, in July 2013. The stories about the fall and then, the renaissance of this once-great city, which had staked everything on the automobile industry, abounded. But we don’t hear as much about the monogoroda, Russia’s long-forgotten industrial towns, that share a similar fate. There are 319 of these singlefactory towns, where a single industry or factory accounts for most of the local economy. How are they faring?

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.

When you speak of Havana, you speak of Eusebio Leal Spengler. Which other city has its own personal historian? On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Cuban capital, the City Historian of Havana – who has been in charge of the restoration of its historic city centre for over thirty years – takes us on a journey through its streets and monuments, showing us its strength, its beauty ... and its ailments.

Long considered marginal, street art today represents a major trend that democratizes access to art and infuses urban spaces with a new social and economic dynamic. In the heart of the island of Djerba, Tunisia, some 100 artists have illuminated the small town of Erriadh – now known as Djerbahood – with about 250 murals. Mehdi Ben Cheikh, a French-Tunisian gallery owner who initiated this promising project, tells us how the idea continues to grow.

The French writer Thomas B. Reverdy has almost always chosen urban spaces as the setting for his novels. Obsessed by the “unbearable presence of absence” in our dehumanized cities, he imagines the emergence of tiny resistances.

In February 2018, UNESCO launched the “Revive the Spirit of Mosul” initiative at the International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq in Kuwait. It brought the international community together under its aegis, to participate in the reconstruction of this city, which has been decimated by war, looting and destruction. This reconstruction must be part of Mosul’s history – a plural history, at the crossroads of the cultures and religions of the Middle East.

“Do I even have a right to be here?” On more than one occasion, Rubén Salgado Escudero asked himself this question as he travelled through rural Myanmar with his expensive photographic equipment. The Spanish photographer, who visited this country in 2014 on behalf of a humanitarian organization, was amazed by the glaring lack of access to electricity. “Most of the villages I went to, didn’t have electricity,” he explains.

The debate on what we call a “migration crisis” has a racial component. It is a pattern which consistently repeats itself in laws, narratives and practices, like it has done over centuries, according to Uruguayan-American writer Jorge Majfud. Taking us on an instructive detour through history, he points out the total absence – in this same heated debate – of any mention of half a million European immigrants who live illegally in the United States and another million Americans living illegally in Mexico.

A recent survey – covering over a hundred mayors in the United States – illustrates that a lot depends on whether these officials are willing to demand equal rights for their newest entrants, and to affect change in the face of a more stringent federal immigration policy.

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.

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.

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.

A quarter of a century after the terrible genocide of 1994, Rwanda is turning a new page in its history. Following a long period of national unification and reconciliation, it is investing in economic growth and focusing on new technologies, with the hope of becoming an ICT hub in Africa.

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.