UNESCO marks 60 years of Literacy Day in San Juan Chamula

International Literacy Day turns 60 on 8 September. UNESCO proclaimed the day in 1966 at the 14th General Conference and has marked 8 September since 1967. This year's theme is Literacy for people, the planet and prosperity. The global meeting is in Chiapas, not Paris.

Director-General Khaled El-Enany opens the conference at 1 p.m. Central Time on 8 September in San Juan Chamula, an indigenous municipality, and hands out the 2026 UNESCO International Literacy Prizes. Mexico's education secretary, Mario Delgado, is listed with him. On 9 September the programme moves to Casa Mazariegos in San Cristóbal de las Casas for the Global Alliance for Literacy and a 60th-anniversary session. The feed runs in English, French and Spanish.

UNESCO's brief for the anniversary says at least 739 million people still lack basic literacy. That number is the reason a prize ceremony in a highland town is more than a calendar event. The six 2026 laureates are to be named at the opening. Their programmes, once posted, are the part of the day that can be checked against classrooms rather than slogans.

Sixty years of Literacy Day have not closed the gap the organisation itself publishes. What the Chiapas meeting can do is put ministers, teachers and students in the same room as the prize-winners and stream it. El-Enany's first official visit to Mexico is the diplomatic wrapping. The useful document afterwards will be the list of laureates and whatever monitoring language the Alliance adopts on 9 September.