Abstracts of Papers

Nadine Helm:
The UNESCO - Supporting Regional Identities Within a Global Setting

When the United Nations Organization was founded, the superpowers agreed upon the fact that it would be indispensable to co-operate with various independent international organizations. This would intensify the worldwide work on economic, social, environmental, and cultural issues. Meanwhile, 20 such organizations are related to the UN. Some of them had already been established long before the League of Nations or the UN.

The paper will concentrate on one of the specialized agencies, the UNESCO, which acts on the widest range of tasks. It is my point to show that the UNESCO basically suffers from the same problems as the UN does on a larger scale. A historical introduction of the organization and its mission will be followed by a closer examination of one of its 5 themes: culture. In that field, the World Heritage List is one of the most popular means of promoting cultural diversity and identity and I will focus on that special topic. Inspecting what the UNESCO has done so far, where it currently stands, and what are its future perspectives, I would like to explorte the present situation in Afghanistan, mainly focusing on two cultural sites, the Minaret of Jam and the Bamiyan Valley.

(Session IV)