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Disarming
youth violence
The
death in 1997 of Galdino Jesus dos Santos, burned alive by
a group of middle-class youth in one of the main streets of
Brasilia, shocked the entire country. It was to spark off
a series of studies by UNESCO Brasilia on the different dimensions
of violence.
"Until
the dos Santos affair everyone thought that violence was triggered
by poverty," says Jorge Wertein, Director of UNESCO Brasilia.
"How could middle-class young people commit such an atrocity?"
The
following year, in 1998, UNESCO Brasilia, brought out the
first of a series of studies on violence in schools and among
young people. The most recent study on youth and violence,
Cultivating Life, Disarming Violence: Experiments in Education,
Culture, Leisure, Sports and Citizenship among Youth in Situations
of Poverty, is based on a survey carried out in the capitals
of ten Brazilian states.
From
over 4,000 interviews with youths, parents, art educators
and community members emerges a precise picture of the social
fabric that leads to violence. Some thirty innovative youth
projects are also described in detail in the book. The intention
is to replicate the experiences in other cities and countries.
A databank, developed from the survey with information on
over 200 innovative projects, is available on: www.unesco.org.br/pesquisa.
What
comes across powerfully is the correlation between violence
and the lack of possibilities for leisure, the survey found.
Cultural and sport activities, the youths said, act as alternatives
to violence and, in the face of joblessness, drug trafficking
is a concrete option for survival, income and status. The
youths said that discrimination based on race, gender and
social class triggered conflicts as did the fact that their
neighbourhoods were stigmatized as "violent".
But
all is not gloom. The survey also found that intervention
pays. Young people were capable of finding jobs in the sectors
for which they received training. The Mother City Foundation
in Salvador in the State of Bahia has had sixteen years of
success providing jobs in the computer industry and technical
fields, and reclaiming young people from drugs and violence.
A scheme providing scholarships to members of a ballet company
in Fortaleza, Ceara, improved the income of seventy children
and adolescents, who live in disadvantaged areas and risk
getting tied up in drug abuse, violence and prostitution 
Contact: A. L. Dias Guimaraes,
UNESCO Brasilia.
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A new university for the Arab world
Arab
countries have been demonstrating an increasing demand for
higher education. A 1998 study showed that the region suffers
from a shortage of 600,000 university places. The need for
further education is particularly great among teachers and
people in employment who need to upgrade their skills.
On
5 October, the Arab Gulf Development Programme (AGFUND) and
UNESCO signed an agreement to launch the Arab Open University
which will start operating in October 2002.
AGFUND will fund
the university to the tune of $1.5 million with an initial
allotment to UNESCO of $200,000 to develop the university’s
strategy for distance higher education, setting up a distance
learning centre, multimedia production, satellite network,
a virtual library, recruitment of experts and manpower training.
Designed to improve women’s access to the tertiary level and
to make education accessible to Arab citizens regardless of
their place of residence, the university will focus initially
on courses in business administration, computer science and
technology, English and teacher training.
It will be headquartered
in Kuwait with branches in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon
Contact: A. Bubtana, UNESCO Doha.
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