The World Education Report 2000’s focus on education as a basic human right is a fitting choice for the International Year for the Culture of Peace. Education is one of the principal means to build the ‘defences of peace’ in the minds of men and women everywhere – the mission assumed by UNESCO when the Organization was created more than half a century ago. The twentieth century saw human rights accepted worldwide as a guiding principle. Our ambition for the new century must be to see human rights fully implemented in practice.