1949 An Advisory Committee on the Unification of Braille set up by UNESCO 1950 International Conference on the Unification of Braille, Paris 1951 UNESCO Regional Conferences on the unification of Braille (Beirut, Montevideo) 1952 The World Braille Council created under the auspices of UNESCO 1965 Beginnings of UNESCO’s special education programme 1966 Establishment of an inter-agency co-ordination mechanism within the United Nations System

FROM SEGREGATION TO INTEGRATION Although considerable progress has been made, there is still a wide gap at the world level between recorded needs and the services available to offer the disabled equal access to education. UNESCO supports the efforts made by countries to provide, within a national education-for-all strategy, educational services in ordinary structures for all children with learning difficulties, of a physical, psychological, social, emotional, or any other nature. GROWING INTEREST From its earliest days, in the aftermath of a World War which had left deep scars on young people everywhere, UNESCO was confronted with the dramatic needs of children with learning difficulties, or those with physical or psychological problems, or, most often, the two of them together. To begin with, UNESCO joined and supported a great many initiatives addressed to young people with special educational needs undertaken in emergency situations by other international agencies (e.g. UNICEF, Red Cross) or by associations and NGOs. In 1949, UNESCO was requested by the Government of India to facilitate access to Braille writing (1) for all the children of the world. The World Braille Usage (2) was published a few years later. In a 1960 Recommendation of the International Conference on Public Education of the International Bureau of Education, special education was considered to be a parallel education system of schools that were often specialized according to the nature of the disability. (3) The first special education programme for handicapped children and youth was launched by UNESCO in 1965 after its principles and priorities had been defined by an advisory meeting, and it was to be financed primarily by voluntary contributions. Activities focused on information and documentation, the organization of training courses for specialists (4) and the dispatch of experts to assist countries in developing special education structures. (5) Within the United Nations System, a co-ordination mechanism was set up in which the main agencies and non- governmental organizations concerned with the rehabilitation of the disabled participated. (6) The progress of educational techniques and the development of special education in Member States, especially during the 1970s, were to open up new prospects in this field. And so, in 1981, International Year of Disabled Persons, the World Conference on Actions and Strategies for Education, Prevention and Integration (7) adopted the Sundberg Declaration. (8) This Declaration underscored the importance of preventing handicaps, from early infancy in particular, and called on the public authorities, community organizations and families to make a concerted effort to make it possible for disabled persons to live full lives, integrated in the community and actively involved in social life. This implied receiving appropriate education and training.

1949-1952 UNESCO AND THE UNIFICATION OF BRAILLE Variations existed in Braille used in Spain and Portugal and the different Latin American countries. Because of the added factor of varied scripts and the absence of any recognized symbols for letter-sounds not used in the Latin alphabet, Asian and African language Braille systems have been even more erratic in those parts of the world. Throughout the later 1940s, movements towards the establishment of single Braille systems gained momentum. Unification of Braille: a typical problem for UNESCO These were the circumstances which in April 1949 led Dr Humayun Kabir, Joint Secretary for Education of the Government of India, to write to the Director-General of UNESCO to ask whether it would be possible for UNESCO to take up the question of a single universal script for the blind. ‘In India’, Dr Kabir wrote, with its ten or eleven major languages, the problem of different Braille scripts has been one of the main obstacles to the provision of larger facilities for the education of the blind.’ Soon after receiving Dr Kabir’s letter, UNESCO’s Executive Board accepted the task, recognizing that this was a world problem which came within the scope of UNESCO. UNESCO made a survey, and chose Sir Clutha Mackenzie as its consultant to ‘study the world Braille situation as it stands, and to advise UNESCO on Braille systems.’ At UNESCO’s General Conference in 1949, the Director-General was instructed ‘to organize an international conference with a view to agreeing on certain international principles which would allow the greatest degree of uniformity in Braille and would improve its rationalization and develop its extension.’ Leading experts from a number of countries, including eminent blind leaders and teachers of the blind, met in Paris in December 1949 as an advisory committee. The discussion led to unanimous agreement on a fundamental objective: a single Braille system should be worked out. This paved the way for the International Braille conference in March 1950. The delegates decided that it would both desirable and practicable to create a broadly uniform Braille system for all languages and scripts. This would be known as World Braille. Practical steps to apply the plan UNESCO’s General Conference at Florence in 1950 took further practical steps toward Braille rationalization. It decided to compile a World Braille chart; to foster the publication of a reference book on uniformity; and to help establish a World Braille Council. In February 1951, a regional conference took place in Beirut, Lebanon, devoted to the problems of Braille uniformity in the languages of the Middle East, India and South-East Asia. In November, a second regional meeting was held, in Montevideo, on reducing the differences among the various Braille methods in use in the Spanish and Portuguese languages. Thus, most of the ground work was done. Finally, UNESCO convened a meeting last December in Paris of representatives of the various linguistic areas, and of the different Braille committees and publishers, to form a consultative committee for the creation of the World Braille Council. It will be a world agency, centralizing and helping through experts advice in the work of rationalizing all varieties of Braille into a single universal script for the blind. The UNESCO Courier, March 1952. ‘The blind are achieving a fuller role in everyday life’ by Pierre Henri, Professor at the Institute for the Young Blind, Paris.

Jaime Torres Bodet (Mexico) Director-General of UNESCO from 1948 to 1952 But through suffering men have at least - and at last - learned the unity of human destiny. We have learned, by tragic experience, to believe what the philosophers had vainly attempted to teach us: that no man can save himself alone; that no class, no state, no race, no nation, can save itself alone. As Dostoievsky wrote: ‘We stand responsible for all things, before all men.’ The bullet which strikes down any man, even though he be our ‘enemy’, strikes us too. When he is lost, a part of ourselves is lost likewise. And the family he leaves behind him has lasting claims upon us. New Year Message from the Director-General of UNESCO, 1950 Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow (Senegal) Director-General of UNESCO from 1974 to 1987 It is therefore essential, if the handicapped are to have a real chance of successful integration into their social, family and working environment, that they should be recognized as individual and legal entities in the full sense [...] in order to assert their rights and play their part at all stages of community life. Address to the World Conference on Actions and Strategies for Education, Prevention and Integration, Torremolinos, Malaga, Spain, November 1981 Her Majesty the Queen of Spain The problem of the handicapped is also, and above all, a problem of society. Legal provisions should go hand-in-hand with human brotherhood in solving these problems in a just and humane way. Address to the World Conference on Actions and Strategies for Education, Prevention and Integration, Torremolinos, Malaga, Spain, November 1981

                               

FOOTNOTES:

(2) Since 1980, The UNESCO Courier has distributed a quarterly issue in Braille.

(3) Recommendation No. 51 concerning special education for mentally handicapped children provides for the opening of special classes in ordinary schools when it is not possible, as in big towns, to open special schools.

(4) From 1966, preparation of a directory of special education institutes, a study on national legislation, a selective bibliography; training courses at Elsinore, Denmark, for English-speaking countries of Africa in 1968, and for the Arab countries in 1969.

(5) In particular, for the establishment of training institutes in South and Central America.

(6) United Nations, WHO, ILO, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, World Council for the Welfare of the Blind, World Federation of the Deaf, etc.

(7) Organized in Torremolinos, Malaga by the Spanish Government with UNESCO’s assistance.

(8) In memory of Nils-Ivar Sundberg, in charge of UNESCO’s Special Education Programme from 1968 to 1981, who contributed to the preparation of this Conference.