Let’s reflect on education as we look to 2050: What should we continue doing? What should we abandon? What needs to be creatively invented afresh? UNESCO is proposing answers to these three essential questions in its new global report on the Futures of Education entitled Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. The foundational principles of this new social contract are: assuring the right to quality education throughout life and strengthening education as a public common good.

UNESCO’s Futures of Education initiative, launched in 2019, aims to rethink education and shape the future in the face of accelerated climate change, persistent inequalities and social fragmentation. While advances in digital communication, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology have great potential, they require investment in digital literacy and infrastructure. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said of the COVID-19 crisis: “We have a generational opportunity to reimagine education.” Find out more in the Futures of Education report launched on 10 November.

Meet Aya, Lucas, Alex and Sophia. Like all young people, they want to be healthy and happy, to understand their bodies, have good relationships and avoid unintended pregnancy, violence and sexually transmitted infections including HIV. To make this a reality, they need good quality Comprehensive #SexualityEducation (CSE). Learn more about UNESCO’s efforts in CSE.

A UNESCO scientific assessment has found that forests in World Heritage sites play a vital role in mitigating climate change by absorbing 190 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

New UNESCO data from 100 countries shows that only 53% of the world’s national education curricula make any reference to climate change and when the subject is mentioned, it is almost always given very low priority. Furthermore, fewer than 40% of teachers surveyed by UNESCO and Education International were confident in teaching about the severity of climate change and only about one-third felt able to explain the effects of climate change on their region or locality. Over a quarter of those surveyed felt some approaches to teaching climate education were not suited to online teaching.

Ending impunity for crimes against journalists is vitally important to guarantee freedom of expression and access to information for all citizens. The level of impunity for crimes against journalists remains extremely high globally, with nearly nine out of ten crimes going unpunished. This year’s campaign for the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists highlights the psychological trauma experienced by journalists, who are victims of threats, and raises awareness of the importance to investigate and prosecute these threats.

Netflix & UNESCO have launched a groundbreaking competition in Sub-Saharan Africa to find Africa’s next generation of filmmakers.

UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) Programme launched a free, online course for teachers and educators on how to integrate important historical items from all over the world in their teaching.

Hate speech is on the rise. Hatred, conspiracy theories and prejudice infiltrate our societies and affect all of us. We are flooded by information - and disinformation - more than ever before both on- and offline. UNESCO and the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG) are convening the Global Multi-stakeholder Forum on addressing hate speech through education.

UNESCO and the L'Oréal Foundation unveil the winners of this year’s International Prize for Women in Science, which honours five eminent women scientists with exceptional careers from the five regions of the world.

UNESCO is joining Minecraft on the ‘Global Build Challenge 2021: Making Peace with Nature’, as part of its programme to engage students worldwide to address the urgent environmental crisis.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right, indispensable in democratic societies. However, this right is not an absolute right, and may be lawfully restricted according to certain principles and conditions. Under international human rights law, and specifically, article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the three-part test determines whether a restriction on freedom of expression is legitimate.

UNESCO celebrates a significant victory in the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural objects as one of the oldest literary works in history is formally handed back to Iraq by the United States of America. In addition to this exceptional piece, the US Government facilitated the voluntary repatriation of 17,000 artefacts to Iraq which were discovered to have been looted in recent decades. The “Gilgamesh Tablet”, also known as the “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet”, is believed to have been looted from a museum in Iraq following the conflict in that country in 1991.

Since 2001 Afghanistan has made advances, according to a UNESCO report. The report found that the total number of enrolled students increased from around 1 million to 10 million learners. The number of girls in primary school increased from almost zero in 2001 to 2.5 million in 2018. In 2021, 4 out of 10 students in primary education are girls. Yet these critical gains for the country’s development are at risk and the right to education for all learners, especially girls, must be upheld in the face of a looming humanitarian crisis. 

Over 11 million girls may not go back to school after the COVID-19 crisis. Join UNESCO and members of the Global Education Coalition in the #LearningNeverStops campaign.