Libraries play a vital role in promoting education, advancing science, and

preserving and celebrating culture. IFLA, as a global network, is built on the

basis that our institutions, and our activities, gain from discussion, and
cooperation, across borders. We advance faster and in a more sustainable way
towards these objectives – as institutions and as societies – when we do it
together.

IFLA, as the global voice of libraries, therefore affirms the value of UNESCO as
a global intergovernmental organisation in the field of education, science and
culture, working with libraries to achieve our common goals. We encourage all
governments to join us in this.

IFLA advocates for libraries to be recognised as essential partners for

inclusive, sustainable development, through their work to provide
meaningful access to information for all.

Economically, socially and environmentally sustainable development depends

on access to information. Without it, everyone – from the individual to the
global level – is deprived of the ability to make the right decisions, to innovate,
to participate, and to benefit from the right to science and culture.

In turn, libraries are essential for meaningful and equitable access to

information, focused on giving everyone the possibility and skills to make the
most of information.
IFLA works hard to provide tools, support and guidance to help library
associations, libraries and librarians work to advocate, build partnerships, and
be recognised and supported in national policy planning.

In parallel, IFLA leads engagement with international organisations such as the

United Nations in order to build global understanding globally of the power of
libraries as partners for development.

“The IFLA-UNESCO partnership 1947-2012”, later published in a revised

version in IFLA Journal. In it I traced the evolution of the relationship between
IFLA and UNESCO during that period. Initially the relationship was very close.
UNESCO played a major role in, as it were, reinventing IFLA after the Second
World War, and making it a modern, effective international NGO. Libraries
were important enough to UNESCO for there to be a separate, very active,
Libraries Division, which played a major role in most areas of library
development worldwide. But UNESCO gradually shifted its attention away from
libraries to documentation and later information society and “knowledge
societies” issues.
One of the main motivators for UNESCO’s initial interest in libraries was the
potential role of libraries in promoting peace – through literacy, education, and
provision of information, people would be better informed, and this would lead
to greater understanding, tolerance, and hence peace. While pursuing some
research on the role of libraries in building peace, today I visited a number of
UNESCO web pages to see whether the role of libraries in building peace still
features there. I discovered that this is not the case, and that, in fact, libraries
hardly feature in UNESCO’s programmes and activities at all. Here is an
account of what I found.

UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector

Searching the web pages of the UNESCO’s Communication and Information
sector, I found that the topic “Libraries” is not immediately visible without
some scouting around. One has to look under the theme “Access to
knowledge”. Here I found a number of news items, the most recent one dating
from July 2013, the others from 2011 and earlier. There are also links to three
topics:  the Biblioteca Alexandrina, UNAL, and UNESCO/IFLA manifestos. I
looked at each of these.
Biblioteca Alexandrina