The Jury for the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes meets once every year to assess nominations and make recommendations on the annual prizewinners. It consists of five independent members of different nationalities and both genders, appointed by UNESCO’s Director-General for a period of three years.
 
The Jury sends an assessment of nominations and accompanying recommendations to UNESCO’s Director-General no later than seven days after the completion of its deliberations.
 
The working language is English.
 
The current Jury members are:

UN-SHIL CHOI (Republic of Korea). Dr Choi is the dean of Graduate School of Education at Ajou University in Republic of Korea. Dr Choi is president of the Korean Society of Lifelong Education, as well as president of the Committee for Policy Evaluation at the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development. She is a member of the Presidential Commission for Educational Innovation and of the Public & Private Forum for WTO/DDA/GATS negotiation and a chair of special committee for the education sector. She has been a national coordinator at ASPBAE (Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education) since 1995. Dr Choi received her doctorate from the Ewha Woman’s University in 1986.

ZHOU NANZHAO (China). Zhou Nanzhao holds a PhD in éducation from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Currently he is the President of the UNESCO-Asia-Pacific Network for International Education and Value Education (APNIEVE), Beijing and Director of the UNESCO International Rural Education Research & Training Center (INRULED). Dr Nanzhao is also the Director of the International Center of Teacher Education, East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai and Research Professor at the China National Institute of Educational Research (NIER), Ministry of Education, Chin. He holds the UNESCO Chair on University-Industry Partnership for National Development.
In the past he has worked as Senior Programme Specialist in the UNESCO Asia and Pacific Bureau for Education. 

NORBERT NIKIEMA (Burkina Faso) is Professor of linguistics at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where he got a B.A. in English before getting a M.A. and a Ph. D. in linguistics from Ohio University, Athens, and Indiana University, Bloomington, respectively. Besides descriptive linguistics (focusing on Moore among the Gur languages), he has been actively involved in workshops, seminars, consultancy and publication on language-in-education issues (the use of African languages in non formal and formal education, mother tongue and multilingual education), the empowerment of languages for new functions (writing dictionaries and practical grammars, the development of orthographies, the creation of neologisms) and the creation of synergy between adult literacy, non formal and formal education. The focus of his research and applications has been on Burkina Faso among the so-called francophone countries and includes a long list of academic publications and articles. He is a co-author of the History of Adult Education in Africa, to appear in the African Perspectives on Adult Learning  book series of UNESCO and DVV international.
 
SYLVIA SCHMELKES (Mexico). Sociologist, she is the Director of the Research Institute for the Development of Education (Iberoamerican University of Mexico City), since 2007. Ms Schmelkes has over thirty years experience in educational research, and particularly in quality of basic education, rural education, intercultural education, and adult education. She has worked as the General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education, at the Ministry of Education in Mexico, she also chaired the Governing Board of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of OECD 2002 to 2004 and worked for a number of international agencies. In 2008 her work was rewarded with the Comenius Medal from UNESCO and de Education Ministry of the Czeck Republic.
 
ABDELWAHID A. YOUSIF (Sudan). Dr Yousif has a PhD in Education from the University of Toronto (Canada). From 1978-2000, he worked as an education specialist at UNESCO serving in Paris, Cairo, Amman, and Bangkok. At UNESCO, Dr Yousif notably established the Regional Programme for the Universalization and Renewal of Primary Education and the Eradication of Illiteracy in the Arab States (ARABUPEAL). Prior to joining UNESCO, he worked at the University of Zambia, the University of Khartoum and the Sudan National Broadcasting Service. Since 2000, Dr Yousif has been an Educational Advisor to the Minister of Education in Bahrain.