Pin your NVZs - Non Violent Zones of Trinidad and Tobago

I've been plotting the violent crimes in Trinidad and Tobago in red to see what complexion our country will take on if we were to pin the violent crimes and murders and crimes against children, and women. The resulting image is too depressing so I am asking citizens to instead join me and pin your spaces as Zones of Non Violence on this NVZ map  to declare your spaces Non Violent Zones. welcome the Peace initiative of the Inter-Religious Organisation and Ms Ela Gandhi, holder of an international peace award, grandaughter of founder of the Satya Graha movement, Mohandas Gandhi  to Trinidad and Tobago.

I share the Prayer for All of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO for use and adoption by any individual or agency who wishes to do so, an organisation devoted to "Building Peace in the Minds of Men and Women and urge you to create centres of peace in your communities.

Creating  Centres for a Culture of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago

Statement, Chair, National Commission for UNESCO and

Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the UNESCO National Commission on creating a Culture of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Kris Rampersad

May 5, 2014

I invite the national community to reflect on actions that will help promote and advance the cultivation of a culture of peace and non violence in Trinidad and Tobago as it works to help the society strengthen its peace-driven defence mechanisms to counteract what seems to be an escalating culture of violence among  men, women and children in our society.

As the country tries to come to grips with the most recent of brutal actions on our citizens with the murder of Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal, we draw attention to the UNESCO programme of action for Culture of Peace and Non-Violence, and invite individuals, groups and agencies to work with us to devise positive actions to cultivate values and practices of peace and non violence in various spheres of daily national life.  The action plan recognises that legal provisions are necessary to creating the right conditions and environment for the harmonious development of women, men and children towards building a culture of peace.

We believe more than ever in the relevance of the principles of a new humanism and soft diplomacy towards creating a culture of peace and non violence begins with, and in, our daily lives, as espoused by this action plan.

It states that: “that peace is more than the absence of war, but living together with our differences – of sex, race, language, religion or culture – while furthering universal respect for justice and human rights on which such coexistence depends.”

As such, we also draw attention to the UNESCO Constitution and Charter to which Trinidad and Tobago is a signatory, and the commitment made to advance universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms contained in Article 1,  based on which the National Commission is developing its own Charter for Peace.

We see these as mechanisms that can be used to sustain hope for the new humanism that focuses not just on prevention, mediation, reconciliation and law, but also more proactive promote  preventative actions to cultivating values and culture of peace and non violence in our everyday lives.

The United Nations has mandated UNESCO as its line agency to promote a culture of peace. It defines such a culture of peace as comprising values, attitudes and behaviours that promote “freedom, justice and democracy, all human rights, tolerance and solidarity, that reject violence and endeavours to prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes.”

As the line agency of the United Nations charged with building a culture of peace, UNESCO acts on the declaration that “since wars begin in the minds of men and women it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”.

We look forward to the strengthening of national “culture of peace” programmes and creation of spaces for peace within communities, home, schools and other social institutions.

Meanwhile, on behalf of the President, Minister of Education, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Commissioners and the Secretariat of the National Commission for UNESCO, I extend condolences to the family and friends and the Trinidad and Tobago national community so deeply affected by the violence in our society in general, and the loss of Ms Seetahal in particular. The principles of law and justice to which Ms Seetahal devoted her life’s work are reflected in

We note that Ms Seetahal has added, not only in actions but also in words, considerably to the intellectual stock of knowledge and efforts at transforming agencies of the judiciary and the society in generalin the Commonwealth, among them in her work for promoting prison reform which speak to the environment of a new humanism that UNESCO driven by its Director General of UNESCO, Ms Irina Bokova has been promoting. Ms Seetahal’s publication of Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean has become one of the standard legal texts in international legal practice.

Dr Kris Rampersad

Chair, Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO and Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the UNESCO Executive Board

Related Links: LiTTscapes at Greeenpeace: http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2014/05/littscapes-at-greenpeace.html

Murder She Wrote: Death Written in Stone in Dana Seetahal Assassination

Creating UNESCO Centres of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago

The Price of Independence:#DanaSeetahalAssassination

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Use Memory of the World resource to transform education curriculum

Remarks, Dr Kris Rampersad,

Chair, Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO at the Opening of UNESCO Pan-Caribbean Consultative Workshop on Memory of the World

Port of Spain, Trinidad, 25-27 September 2013

https://sites.google.com/site/krisrampersadglobal/home/about-me/blogs-news/usememoryoftheworldresourcetotransformeducationcurriculum

On behalf of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO welcome to this Pan Caribbean consultative workshop on UNESCO Memory of the World initiative. While we are a national commission with essentially a national mandate, we also take very seriously our role as a member of the Caribbean community and the wider UNESCO region of Latin America and the Caribbean.

As we mark this year the 21^st anniversary of the Memory of the World programme and 13^th anniversary of the Memory of the World Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, it is perhaps timely for us to reflect on where we have reached with the programme.

In the short 13 years since, eight countries from the Commonwealth Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, St Kitts, Jamaica, Guyana, Dominica, Barbados, and the Bahamas) have inscribed 21 collections of documentary heritage on the International Memory of the World Register and twenty five collections on the Regional Register.

We tend to think of the University of the West Indies and Cricket as two main elements I am sure you will agree that this has offered us an opportunity to collaborate as a region in the 13 joint nominations submitted among several of our countries – and these by four national committees in Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and certainly I want to particularly recognise the work of the Trinidad and Tobago National Memory of the World Committee under the stewardship of Mrs Joan Osborne.

But much work still to be done in public engagement and to draw out private collectors and archivists to present their work for consideration so we can have broad representation of the diversity of cultures, languages and heritage.

Last year’s meeting underscored the need for greater involvement by countries in the Caribbean, and to support each other. Through the work of the Trinidad and Tobago national memory of the world committee we have enlisted:

—  The Derek Walcott Collection

—  The Eric Williams Collection

—  The C.L.R. James Collection

—  Registry of Slaves of the British Caribbean

—  Records of Indian Indentured Labourers of Trinidad and Tobago

—  The Constantine Collection

—  The Donald ‘Jackie’ Hinkson Collection

—  The Carlisle Chang Collection

—  The Digital Pan Archive

—  Records of Indian Indentured Labourers of Trinidad and Tobago 1845-1917

—  The Samuel Selvon Collection

At the MOWLAC meeting in Port of Spain 2012 the concern was raised of the involvement of countries in the region in the programme and how to encourage the creation of national committees and the number of nominations coming from the region. It was found that there was greater need for collaboration since in some countries the MOW programme was not visible and professionals and owners of collections did not know how to complete the nomination forms.

We should also recognise that much of the critical documentary heritage reside not only within the region but also in internationally-based institutions.

We hope this workshop will meet with similar success of preceding workshops in which nine inscriptions followed the 2009 workshop in Barbados, for example.

We note among the objectives of this is to strengthen the memory of the world programme through greater awareness, to increase nominations at the national, regional and international levels; and to develop an action agenda and a CARICOM MOW action plan for 2013- 2015.

I suggest that among the latter you also take a look at the current draft CARICOM-UNESCO memorandum of agreement and suggest any alternations you may need to make to the text relevant to accommodate the region’s outlook for the memory of the world programme within that MOU to be signed between Caricom and UNESCO at the General Assembly in November.

We know there are many, many areas in which we need to focus the heritage and I’d like to also stir attention away from the printed heritage which we all know limits us to the last few hundred years to other elements of record also recognised by the memory of the world register – to also consider other forms of documentation - items on stone, craft, recordings, visuals.

As we know, UNESCO established the Memory of the World Programme in 1992 from a growing awareness of the poor state of preservation of, and access to, documentary heritage in various parts of the world - looting and dispersal, illegal trading, destruction, inadequate housing and funding have all played a part. Much has vanished forever; much is endangered. So a core element is to raise public awareness and mobilise communities to capture and preserve and promote respect and understanding.

In the region, we need to move quickly to secure our endangered archives – and I draw attention to the invaluable collections of the military history museum in Chaguaramas that contains information on the connections between our islands and South America, unrecorded elsewhere, and which can further expand  the recent inscriptions by Cuba of the  Life and Works of Ernesto Che Guevara, and Columbia’s of Francisco De Miranda and Simon Bolivar and it may be useful to supplement that with the archives of Mr Gaylord Kelshall of the Military History Museum who has researched and written extensively about this period which though recent, has still not been injected into teachings on our history and as the Minister of Education is here with us I’d like to recommend that we look at this immense UNESCO resource and work to revising the materials in the school curriculum – in history, social studies, civics, visual and performing arts, among others. This presents us with an opportunity to revise our textbooks using new research and information s there is need to establish critical synergies between archiving and education soWebiste is not just fossilised – and consider utilising this model of engagement between ministry of education, archive and library and the school system.

I’d also like to suggest that you consider how we may establish a facility to resource and fund acquisition and maintenance of public and private collections: like those of the Chaguaramas Military History Museum, and dozens of others in private collections and establish linkages with these.

And we also need to place some emphasis on capture yet undocumented heritage and utilise digitisation and engage the enthusiasm of our young people to collate data from disappearing knowledge holders.

World Heritage in the Caribbean

World Heritage in the Caribbean: updating the Action Plan 2012-2013 Kingston © UNESCO Kingston / Official opening of the course in St. Mary's, Antigua and Barbuda, March 24, 2013 April 8, 2013 / Kingston UNESCO World Heritage Center of UNESCO, in Paris, the UNESCO Offices in Kingston and Havana, in collaboration with the National Commission for UNESCO in Antigua and Barbuda, organized the training course for the Caribbean in the preparation of nomination dossiers for World Heritage , developed in St. Mary's, Antigua and Barbuda, from 24 to 28 March 2013. This training exercise was designed within the framework of cooperation of Japan's trust funds for the project "Capacity building to support World Heritage conservation and enhancement of the sustainable development of local communities in small island states (SIDS ) ". The official opening took place on March 24, 2013 at the Jolly Beach Hotel in Antigua, in the presence of Dr. Hon Winston Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Hon Winston Williams, Acting Minister for Education Sports, Youth and Gender Affairs of Antigua and Barbuda; Yoshimasa Tezuka His Excellency, Ambassador of Japan in Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Alissandra Cummins, President of the Executive Board of UNESCO and the UNESCO National Commission in Barbados, so as representatives of the World Heritage Centre of UNESCO and the Organization offices in Kingston and Havana. Course, trace output to developed in June 2012 in Kingston, Jamaica, brought together about 20 participants from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Granada, Guyana, British Virgin Islands, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Bahamas. During the training the participants exchanged their candidature files and information, while receiving advice and guidance of facilitators and Caribbean experts as well as representatives of ICOMOS, IUCN and the World Heritage Centre of UNESCO. 's Workshop 5 days concluded with an action plan aimed at strengthening the professional capacities in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) for preparing dossiers to increase the number and quality of nominations of cultural heritage sites and natural, focusing on the Sites of Memory in the Caribbean. Participants also committed to continue its efforts to implement the World Heritage Convention, including through the completion of the application pack and awareness and public education on World Heritage issues and UNESCO Conventions in the field of Culture. Kingston Action Plan (updated) (available only in English) More information Note: Spanish translation provided by UNESCO Havana