UNESCO has approved a proposal by Vietnam to commemorate the 650th anniversary of the death of renowned teacher Chu Van An next year.

Vietnam’s application, along with 48 of 71 other dossiers submitted by 41 countries, was approved at UNESCO’s Executive Board Meeting in Paris, France, on Wednesday.

Le Hoai Trung, chairman of the UNESCO National Committee of Vietnam, was leading a Vietnamese delegation to attend the 206th session of the Executive Board Meeting from April 3 to 17.

UNESCO has since 1954 annually published a list to honor great personalities and events of all member nations in fields of education, culture and science. Chu Van An and 48 other personalities from 41 countries are selected for this year’s list.

Chu Van An (1292 – 1370) is a genius teacher who devoted all his life to the education career and had a great influence on Vietnamese people throughout generations for his humane philosophy.

His thoughts not only affected many generations of Vietnamese but also contributed to the development of humanistic values in the region, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

His educational perspective has progressive values, close to the modern values that UNESCO summarized as “learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learn to be humans”.

UNESCO will honor and commemorate the 650th death anniversary of Chu Van An in 2020.

The 14th-century teacher is the fourth Vietnamese personality to be honored by the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural arm. UNESCO previously commemorated the birthday of politician Nguyen Trai in 1980, President Ho Chi Minh in 1990 and poet Nguyen Du in 2015.

UNESCO's adoption of the 650th anniversary of the death of Chu Van An shows that Vietnam’s cultural and educational values make a mark among the international community, while promoting the goal of education equality for all people and lifelong learning that the organization is promoting.

Under UNESCO’s regulations, the upcoming 40th UNESCO General Assembly Meeting in November will officially adopt a resolution on celebrating the outstanding events and characters of the world.

The organization has 193 member states, as of January 2019.

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