Bernard Combes is the information/documentation specialist of the Education for Sustainable Development section at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), within the Division for the Promotion of Quality Education; and is part of the team that will manage the coordination role that the UN has given to UNESCO for the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development DESD (2005-2014). He is in charge of information, documentation, publication, communication, internet activities and learning materials development, and among other things, designing and managing the DESD website (www.unesco.org/education/desd).

Until recently, he was with UNESCO’s Early Childhood and Family Education section, where he dealt with issues related to early childhood information/documentation, partnership, networking and advocacy throughout the world, and acted as the Focal Point for Information and Communication Technologies of UNESCO’s Basic Education Division. During his 13 years of work with early childhood, he coordinated the UNESCO Early Childhood Partnerships Programme and supervised the development and creation of an UNESCO Early Childhood and Family Portal. He was also involved with international initiatives on young children and values education, young children and HIV/AIDS, young children and ICTs; with projects seeking to establish and support networks of early childhood professionals; with the development of multimedia materials to enhance early childhood and child rights awareness, advocacy and training; as well as two initiatives seeking the empowerment of women through early childhood programmes: one related to the development of toylibraries in poor neighborhoods in Latin America; and the other seeking to mobilize and train women to create innovative early education structures in rural West Africa.

He is also active in information sharing, development of joint approaches/statements, and contribution to discussions/meetings on children’s rights and related to the articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child concerning child participation, young children and families (in particular Articles 5, 6, 12, 13, 17, 18, 28/29 & 31).

He participates in a number of advisory committees for initiatives involving the use of Information Technologies to improve information exchange and sharing on children's issues and child rights, such as the Children's House in Cyberspace initiative, the Francophone advisory group for the World Bank IMPACT (Information Management Project for Action, Communications, and Training) project, or the ECD Gateway advisory panel (part of the World Bank Global Development Gateway). He is a member of the advisory boards of several professional magazines related to children's issues. He is also a member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and the Society for International Development (SID), and has contributed articles to the journals of these associations.

Following graduation from the School for International Training (Brattleboro, Vermont) and prior to working with UNESCO's early childhood programme, he was involved with research, publications and databases on development and humanitarian NGOs and networks both at UNESCO in the Social and Human Sciences Sector and at the OECD Development Center. He also worked as a bilingual technical writer, designing and writing service documentation for Bull computer company support staff in Europe (manuals for the installation, use and maintenance of products and applications).

A French citizen, he has lived over 23 years overseas (Morocco, India, Singapore, South Vietnam, South Korea, United States) and has traveled in Asia, Southern Africa, the Caribbean and Europe. He has undertaken various missions (advisory, training, project negotiations and development) in Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Senegal, Europe and North America.

He was a featured speaker in WAECE'S International Conference on Values Education in Santiago de Compostela, 2001.