UNESCO Courier

UNESCO Courier is the main magazine published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It has the largest and widest-ranging readership of all the journals published by the United Nations and its specialized institutions.^[1]

UNESCO Courier

1972 edition of the International Book Year
Editor	Agnès Bardon
Format	Broadsheet
Publisher	UNESCO
Founded	1948
Based in	Paris
Language	Spanish, English, French, Arabic, Tamil, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Esperanto, Sicilian
Website	UNESCO Portal'–in English
ISSN	2220-2269

History and profile

UNESCO Courier was started in 1948 by Sandy Koffler (1916–2020). There was a gap in publication from 2013 until 2017.^[2] The magazine has changed a great deal over the years, both in content and in form. But it pursues its original mission: promote UNESCO's ideals, maintain a platform for the dialogue between cultures and provide a forum for international debate.

The printed UNESCO Courier covers issues of literacy, human rights, environment, culture, science and arts.

Available online for free as a PDF since March 2006,^[3] The UNESCO Courier serves readers around the world: Most issues are available in English, French, and Spanish. Since 2010, versions in Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Russian have been published, and additional languages, including Esperanto, Sardinian,^[4] Sicilian,^[5] Korean, and Catalan, have been introduced since 2017. A limited number of printed issues are also produced.^[2]

The texts of current issues are available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license. In 2023 a machine-readable digital corpus of Courier’s articles was published on Zenodo, making the archive of Courier’s English-language edition usable for text mining.^[6]

Editors-in-chief

Current Director is Matthieu Guével and Editor-in-Chief is Agnès Bardon.

Previous directors:

• Jasmina Sopova: since April 2007
• Enzo Fazzino: 2006
• Vincent Defourny: 2005
• Michel Barton: 2002–2004
• J. Burnet: 2000–2001
• John Kohut: 1999–2000
• Sophie Bessis: 1998
• Bahgat El Nadi et Adel Rifaat: 1988–1998
• Édouard Glissant: 1982–1988
• Jean Gaudin: 1979–1982
• René Calloz: 1977–1978
• Sandy Koffler: 1951–1977
• Peter du Berg: 1950
• Sandy Koffler: 1948–1950