UNESCO and United Nations Awards: Prizes and Dates

Besides the Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish and Norwegian committees, a second family of international honours comes from the United Nations and its agencies. These prizes reward work that the world body itself cares about: press freedom, literacy, tolerance, the popularisation of science, population policy and the protection of the environment. Examiners set them because each prize has a fixed subject, a fixed day and often an Indian connection. This chapter covers UNESCO and its prizes, the awards given by United Nations bodies, and the honours in which India has a direct share.

UNESCO, the agency behind most of these prizes

UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Its Constitution was signed in London in November 1945 and came into force in November 1946, and its headquarters are at Paris in France. Its founding idea is stated in the opening line of the Constitution: since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. India was among its founding members. Apart from awarding prizes, UNESCO designates World Heritage Sites under the convention adopted in 1972, keeps the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage under the convention of 2003, runs the Man and the Biosphere programme of biosphere reserves, maintains the Memory of the World register of documents and names the cities of the Creative Cities Network.

The prizes awarded by UNESCO

The Kalinga Prize is the one an Indian paper asks most often, because the money for it came from Biju Patnaik, later Chief Minister of Odisha, and because the name recalls the ancient kingdom of Kalinga where the Mauryan emperor Ashoka fought his last war. The prize honours writers, editors and broadcasters who make science understandable to ordinary readers, and the French physicist Louis de Broglie received the first award. The Madanjeet Singh Prize is the other prize with an Indian name: Madanjeet Singh was an artist, writer and diplomat, and the prize was created in the year that marked both the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations and the hundred and twenty fifth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

Awards given by other United Nations bodies

The Human Rights Prize is the oldest of these. It was instituted in 1966 and first given in 1968, the International Year for Human Rights, which was also the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because it is awarded only once in five years, the number five is the fact most often tested.

India's share in these honours

• Indira Gandhi was among the first laureates of the United Nations Population Award in 1983, and the industrialist J R D Tata received it in 1992.
• The Kalinga Prize was endowed by an Indian, and Indian science writers have been among its recipients.
• The Madanjeet Singh Prize carries the name of an Indian diplomat and was created in the year of the hundred and twenty fifth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
• India has many sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list, inscribed under the convention of 1972, and several entries on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

How to tell these prizes apart

Each prize has a single subject, so attach the subject to the name rather than trying to remember the laureates, whose lists change every year. Kalinga goes with popular science, Guillermo Cano with journalism, Madanjeet Singh with tolerance, King Sejong and Confucius with literacy, Champions of the Earth with the environment and Nansen with refugees. Then attach the day: 3 May for press freedom, 8 September for literacy, 16 November for tolerance and 10 December for human rights. With subject and date fixed, almost every question in this chapter answers itself.