Thursday, July 23, 2020

First published in 1948, the UNESCO Courier is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization magazine. It has the largest and widest-ranging readership of all the journals published by the United Nations and its specialized institutions. 

Professor Ayelet Shachar's essay, "Shifting borders: Invisible, but very real", appeared in the UNESCO Courier issue, "A Whole New World, Reimagined by Women".

Professor Shacher writes in her essay: 

"In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, many predicted that sealed gates would soon become relics of a bygone era. Today, we find a different reality. Instead of disappearing, borders are metamorphosing. The border itself has evolved to become a moving barrier, an unmoored legal construct. It has broken free of the map; it may extend beyond the edge of territories or into their interiors. The unmooring of state power from any fixed geographical marker has created a new paradigm: the shifting border.

The shifting border is not fixed in time and place; it consists of legal portals rather than physical barriers. Responses to the global pandemic have accelerated this trend."

Read the full essay at UNESCO Courier