Video: UNESCO's History

About the future of Americans for UNESCO (AU)

This post is intended to bring you up-to-date on the history of US-UNESCO relations since the departure of the USA from UNESCO in December 1983. So, relax and bear with me because this is a long story.

The Past

During the two decades that the United States was out of UNESCO, the organization survived the financial crisis that the withdrawals had caused, and reformed many of the bureaucratic processes that had been noted in the decision to withdraw. The State Department continued a small effort to monitor the organization. The number of U.S. citizens on the UNESCO staff was reduced. U.S. educators, scientists, and cultural leaders continued involvement in the Organization, but at a lower level than in the Organization's early years.

As is explained in a background paper on AU, the organization is an outgrowth of Americans for the Universality of UNESCO (AUU) - a not for profit powerhouse organization headed up by the late and former Deputy Director General of UNESCO (John E. Fobes). AAU was the only domestic source of information about UNESCO during the 19 years of U.S. absence from the Organization at a time when the US National Commission for UNESCO existed only on paper, having been forced into deep hibernation, and there were only a smattering of individuals at the State Department and the US Mission in Paris in charge of UNESCO affairs.

To assess the centrality of AUU's involvement in UNESCO's activities and to gain an appreciation of what it sought to accomplish, one need only go to the library of the State Department to read the bound production of AUU's numerous and voluminous newsletters. Not only did they serve to keep the executive and legislative branches of the US Government and the American public informed about UNESCO's activities, but, more importantly, they kept the spirit of UNESCO alive in the United States/


The Present Crisis

Last year the UNESCO General Conference, on the recommendation of the UNESCO Executive Board, voted to admit Palestine as a member state of the Organization. The admission was strongly opposed by the U.S. Delegation to the General Conference (as the recommendation had been in the Executive Board). Two decades before that vote, the U.S. Congress had enacted legislation requiring that the U.S. Government withhold funding from the United Nations or any of its affiliated organizations that admitted Palestine to membership, legislation that does not provide the executive branch with waiver authority. Thus the United States is withholding its contributions -- some 22 percent of the UNESCO regular budget. UNESCO as a result is dealing with a financial crisis. UNESCO programs of importance to the United States are being threatened.

The upper graph shows the frequency that UNESCO was used as a search term on Google in 2011. It suggests a tripling of searches at the time of the meeting of the General Conference. The lower graph shows the frequency of news stories indexed by Google during the same year that dealt with UNESCO. It too showed a very large spike at the time of the General Conference. While Google generally shows a long term decrease in relative interest in UNESCO, the experience in October 2011 was quite different.

There are groups in the United States that oppose the United Nations family of organizations, and UNESCO has been a favorite target of these groups. There are also many people in the United States that support UNESCO, but they are generally not vocal in that support. Nor are they organized collectively to create wider public support for UNESCO. Supporters and opponents of U.S. involvement in UNESCO have published articles expressing their views during the past year.

Governmental Effort with Respect to UNESCO

In the years since the United States rejoined UNESCO in September 2003, the Department of State appointed competent civil and foreign service staff at the Office of UNESCO Policy, the US National Commission for UNESCO, and the US Permanent Mission to UNESCO. All told, there are now 15 full time professionals.These staffs include three education officers (two Washington-based,one Paris-based) ; three science officers (two Washington-based, one Paris based); and three culture/communications officers (two Washington-based, one Paris- based). The UNESCO Policy Office has a director and a deputy director. The US National Commission has a full time Executive Director. The US Mission to UNESCO has, in addition to the aforementioned officers, a highly active Ambassador, a Deputy Chief of Mission, as well  as a secretarial staff and an experienced  local hire available for general duty.

Our unofficial estimate of the cost to the Department of State for this staff is somewhere between $ 2.5 and 3.5 million taking into account salaries, travel, office rentals, and leased telephone and internet lines. That is probably on the low side. This figure does not take into account the part-time contributions of personnel from the legal and environmental science bureaus of the State Department ,USAID, the Department of Education, NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation to name only a few. $ 4.0 milliion plus strikes us as a more accurate figure.

In addition, it should be noted that the Washington-based staff travels frequently to Paris, has instant on-line contact with members of the UNESCO Secretariat staff and U.S. Mission, and is thus well informed on UNESCO matters. Moreover, the Secretary of State for International Organizations and her deputies are favorably disposed towards UNESCO and also travel to Paris on occasion. The Secretary of State visited UNESCO in May 2011, the first such visit ever by an occupant of this position.  The Deputy Secretary of State for Management visited UNESCO in December 2011, and the Secretary of Education addressed UNESCO staff earlier in the year.

Americans for UNESCO

AU is not a membership organization but it has a mailing list of more than 2,500 people interested in UNESCO -- many of whom have contributed funds to AU. The AU Board of Directors, with a nominal 21 Directors, is currently recruiting ten new members, signifying an opportunity for a considerable rethinking of AU's purposes and activities. The new President of AU is a distinguished educator and educational administrator with long experience with UNESCO. Each of the Board's current members has decades experience with UNESCO and broad knowledge of the history of U.S.-UNESCO relationships.

One consequence of the stepped-up governmental backstopping of UNESCO is that AU's once perceived core mission -- of advising the State Department on UNESCO -- is no longer much needed. Indeed, AU can bring little, if any, information or expertise to the UNESCO policy debate that cannot be provided by the State Department's professional staff. With, on the one hand, AU having a limited budget, no staff,  and an ageing Board of Directors and, on the other hand, with the US Government supporting full time staff officers in Washington and Paris as well as the recent establishment of a Washington-based UNESCO liaison office in the quarters of AU, new members are being sought for the Board. It will be up to them to redefine the raison d'etre for AU -- what more should it do beyond continuing its useful role of safeguarding the ideal of constructive U.S. engagement with UNESCO.

The Future

Despite this changed situation, we believe that AU can play a useful role in helping intellectual communities and civil society become more involved in UNESCO's activities. It can do so in two ways by :

• building new American institutional ties with UNESCO (e.g. on-going exploration of establishing a UNESCO Chair at George Washington University to advance inter-university research, training, and program development in certain fields of UNESCO competence through the transfer of knowledge across borders) ; and 
• serving as a ready source of information (e.g. hosting a symposium to inform the American public about the status of congressional funding to UNESCO and strategies to restore them - now in progress). 

Indeed, one of the historical oddities about US-UNESCO cooperation is that over the years so much energy has gone into the formulation and planning of UNESCO programs and so little (with few exceptions) into the implementation of them in the United States, even though the U.S. Government has been the major contributor to UNESCO's regular budget.

Upon the return of the USA to UNESCO, AU has been seeking to change the focus of US-UNESCO relations from that of benefactor to beneficiary ( a change welcomed by many program officers of UNESCO) as has the U.S. National Commission under the direction of Eric Woodard (who left his post September 11 to assume his new duties as Director of the Smithsonian's Internship and Fellowship Programs) by encouraging private sector involvement in such UNESCO programs as World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Associated Schools, Creative Cities, and UNESCO Clubs. Under the present circumstances, this is the way to go and the key to success for AU in this regard is to be selective, do things that are important and that are not being done elsewhere, and stick with it until there is no longer a useful role to play.

All of which brings us back to the question about AU's central mission for the immediate future. Recent experience would seem to suggest there is a greater public appreciation among the American people for the many useful and complex tasks that UNESCO performs often under trying and dangerous conditions. AU might work in that context, as described above, to enhance the linkages between UNESCO's programs and supporters in other nations and their counterparts in the USA.

However, there is a real risk that the Congress will insist that the United States will continue to withhold funds from UNESCO; if it does so, UNESCO by its laws will no longer allow the United States to vote in UNESCO's governing bodies. If worse comes to worse, AU might well consider returning to a role more like that of AAU in the past.

Richard Nobbe (Vice President and Treasurer of Americans for UNESCO)
and John Daly (former member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO)

This article represents the opinions of the authors and does not necessarily represent that of Americans for UNESCO.

The public was interested when the USA cut UNESCO funding

	UNESCO strips Dresden of World Heritage site title Vancouver Sun - Jun 25 2009
	Bulgarian diplomat wins UNESCO race Philadelphia Inquirer - Sep 22 2009
	UNESCO adds 7 sites to World Heritage List Ynetnews - Aug 1 2010
	UNESCO to assess mining impact at S.Africa Ninemsn - Nov 16 2010
	US cuts UNESCO funding after Palestinian membership vote CNN - Oct 31 2011
	Palestinian flag raised at UNESCO The Hindu - Dec 13 2011

The upper graph gives the frequency that the term "UNESCO" was used as a search term on Google over the last several years, while the lower graph shows how often the term was used to search Google News over the same period. The graph shows a long term downward trend and seasonal phenomena such as a dip at the end of the calendar year. The decision of the General Conference to admit Palestine to membership and the decision of the United States Government to withhold funding from UNESCO as a consequence of that vote led to a very definite spike in interest in UNESCO. Bad news is news!

The UNESCO General and Regional Histories: A Contribution to the Rapprochement of Cultures

A 10 minute film to illustrate the extraordinary intellectual adventure embodied in the elaboration of the General and Regional Histories of UNESCO. Launched in 1952 by UNESCO, this endeavour has generated 51 volumes of History in 6 different Collections: The History of Humanity, the General History of Africa, the History of the Civilizations of Central Asia, the General History of Latin America, the General History of the Caribbean and the Different Aspects of the Islamic Culture. Mobilizing more than 1800 historians and experts from all regions of the world, this vast enterprise has introduced a new understanding of human history by highlighting the exchanges between peoples and cultures and their respective contributions to the general progress of humanity.

These books are rather expensive, intended for reference libraries and professional  but many are available from UNESCO publications.

To consult more documentaries on this, as well as many other subjects, visit:http://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia

UNESCO History

UNESCO was born on 16 November 1945. UNESCO works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. It is through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO'S mission and activities. Go to "Introducing UNESCO: what we are"

Online Archive of UNESCO News by Google News

Google Frequency Plot of News References to UNESCO

Google News Archives provides a historical record of news dealing with UNESCO from its files. Note that the frequency of news stories was high in its early years, decreased during the late 1950s and 1960s (the period of decolonization in which many new nations joined the Organization. There was an increase in news related to UNESCO in the late 1970s, when the New International Information Order debate was hot in the United Nations, and in the mid 1980s, about the time that the United States and the United Kingdom withdrew from the organization. The archive contains fairly large numbers of news stories in recent years.

If you go to this site, you can actually view stories from the archives, learning about UNESCO's history for yourself.

UNESCO's History

Should UNESCO play a greater role in promoting truthful histories to foster peace?

In her book Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History Margaret MacMillan discusses the "History Wars" that go on over the history curricula in schools. She cites examples of the abuses of history such as false information purporting to be factual and selective use of history to bias student understanding, but she also cites examples such as:

• joint development of textbooks for France and Germany to provide balanced views of the history of war and disputes between those countries,
• a collaboration between an Israeli and a Palestinian to develop high school history texts to be used in both countries which would present both Israeli and Palestinian history side by side,
• the revision of Japanese curricula in the 1970 to teach Japanese children about the death and devastation that had been wreaked on the Chinese by Japanese troops decades earlier,
• the revision of the South African school curricula to deal honestly with apartheid as a result of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

UNESCO of course has for decades published major historical series, giving voice to historians in Africa, the Caribbean, Islamic countries and other regions of the developing world. In general, UNESCO does not seem to categorize its educational programs by the disciplines that are to be taught, but it does cite specific examples such as:

• its Holocaust Remembrance Program
• the German-Polish Commission which promoted dialog between the two countries on history and geography teaching
• the Euro-Arab Dialog "Learning How to Live Together" focusing on history and social science teaching.

 Indeed, one of the very first UNESCO programs initiated immediately after World War II was a review of textbooks in use to assure that the historical and other distortions that had been introduced by Fascist governments before and during the war were corrected.

UNESCO is uniquely placed to provide a forum for discussion and a laboratory of ideas on how history teaching can be made more accurate, and especially how such accuracy can be a tool for reconciliation of groups within countries and better understanding between countries.

Check out the UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision in a new edition, describing how nations can work together to research and revise their textbooks.

The UNESCO General and Regional Histories: A Contribution to the Rapprochement of Cultures

“The World’s Challenge to Education”

Karl Earl Mundt (June 3, 1900 – August 16, 1974) was an American educator and a Republican member of the United States Congress, representing South Dakota in the United States House of Representatives from 1938 to 1948 and in the United States Senate from 1948 to 1973. Representative Karl Mundt was a critical supporter of UNESCO and was a primary figure in urging the United States to join UNESCO. It is possible that, without his urging and support, the United States may not have joined. Mundt gave several speeches on UNESCO and the importance of joining UNESCO. These are excerpts from Mundt’s speech at the UNESCO founding meeting:

“After all, we educators have a special responsibility in this postwar era not only because we have this vast and valuable human raw material with which to work and not only because the world is more and more turning away from wars and the weapons of wars as a means of procuring proper human behavior in international affairs. Basically, we have a special responsibility to meet the great new challenge which is now ours in helping the world learn how to control the terrible new force unloosed in its midst because, I the final analysis, the atomic bomb was conceived by scientists whom our profession had educated.”

“It is not the noble pronouncements of princes and potentates which preserve the peace – it is the attitude which men have in their hearts and express in private conversations which actually count. It is to be hoped that eventually a code of international good behavior can be conceived through the operation of UNESCO so that boys and girls throughout the world may be taught the basic concepts of tolerance, justice, order, and peace-preserving international behavior. Greater by far than the dissimilarities of race, color, creed economic, governmental, and political concepts as well as geographical differences are the similarities which exist among human beings everywhere. UNESCO will strive to harness these similarities together into a great invincible phalanx which will hold at bay the future dogs of war.”(15)

“In establishing the University of Virginia, the great Thomas Jefferson selected as a motto for the institution, ‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’ UNESCO is designed to help people throughout the world to learn the truth. In the final analysis the truth – better than any other single factor – can help free this world from war forever.”

Conference on UNESCO and the Cold War

A conference on UNESCO’s links with the Cold War, organized by the International Scientific Committee for the UNESCO History Project, will be hosted by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCAS), University of Heidelberg, (Germany) on 4-5 March 2010.

The Symposium, which is part of a cycle of conferences on the history of UNESCO, will address a number of issues, such as the influence of the Cold War on UNESCO, and the role the Organization was able to play in easing tensions between the two opposing blocs.

Read more!

Among participants in the meeting are:

• Leland Conley Barrows, Professor, Voorhees College, United States
• Christian Ostermann, Director, Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), United States
• Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Department of History, Oregon State University, United States

Go to the Conference website!

Save Our History

Save Our History is The History Channel's global campaign dedicated to historical preservation and history education. The History Channel has partnered with UNESCO's World Heritage Center to help preserve some of the world's most endangered sites. It focuses on a key set of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

A Factoid from the History of U.S. Involvement with UNESCO

Myrna Loy, the actress who won an Academy Award for her lifetime career achievement in films, became a member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO in 1948, the first Hollywood celebrity to do so.

She was married from 1950 ro 1961 to Howland H. Sargeant, the only American to serve as Chairman of the General Conference of UNESCO (6th Session, 1951).

Time magazine reported at time of the General Conference:

A Republican charge that Cinemactress Myrna Loy and her new State Department husband Howland H. Sargeant had enjoyed a Paris honeymoon at government expense is just not so, declared Georgia's Democratic Congressman Prince Preston Jr. The bridegroom did indeed travel on government funds because he was on an official mission; the honeymoon was coincidental and he paid his wife's bills. Besides, Preston added, since conferences frequently started at 8 a.m. and lasted until 2 a.m., "Paris turned out to be a mighty poor place to spend a honeymoon."

Sargeant, a Rhodes Scholar, was a career diplomat who became Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs before leaving government to run Radio Liberation, which broadcast to the Soviet Union.

Anecdote from UNESCO's History

Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk
present their Nobel Peace Prizes.

Source: "South Africa: Zapiro - 'Zapping' for Democracy," Annar Cassam, Pambazuka News via AllAfrica.com, 4 June 2009.

In 1993, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk.

The exact logic behind this type of tandem awarding is difficult to understand for such gestures place the aggressors and their victims on the same level. They also degrade the achievements and the sacrifices of the victims while glorifying their former oppressors for doing nothing more than bowing to the inevitable.

It was Roelf 'Pik' Botha, de Klerk's foreign minister, who in a BBC documentary about the end of apartheid shown in 1996, related the friendly advice given to his government by their erstwhile Western allies: 'You people stink! Get rid of that bad smell of apartheid and then we can associate with you.'

In the case of the Mandela/de Klerk prize, the joint award caused real confusion in the minds of many outside South Africa who were not privy to the intricacies of the political negotiations between the ANC and the white government which went on for four long years before the first democratic elections were held in April 1994.

Many members of the international community were led to imagine that Mandela and de Klerk had descended hand-in-hand from on high on a pink cloud which had landed in South Africa where, magically, the aged freedom-fighter was welcomed home by the big-hearted boer so that they could together live in peace, love and harmony for ever after.

In October 1993, six months before the uhuru elections of April 1994, a high-level ANC delegation, led by Nelson Mandela, came to UNESCO headquarters in Paris to address the executive board, the organisation's policy -making body. The delegation, which included Thabo Mbeki and Bantu Holomisa among others, was very warmly welcomed by the UNESCO audience - but all eyes were on Mandela. He was in excellent form, as elegant, dignified and courteous as ever, but now very much the president-to-be, bearing a palpable aura of calm authority.

In a speech of just 15 minutes, he put to rest the 'pink cloud ' theory in the first sentence and then went on to to explain the changes that were underway and in simple language described where the ANC had come from, the reasons for, and strategy behind its negotiating position and, above all, the ANC's priorities for a post-apartheid society in South Africa. This is what he said:

Editorial Comment: One of UNESCO's key functions is to provide a forum forum for discussion. Sometimes UNESCO's discussions deal with education, science, culture or communications and information, but sometimes, as in this case, UNESCO can provide an international forum for discussions focusing on the peaceful resolution of conflicts. JAD

International Conferences of the UNESCO History Project

The opening of UNESCO's first General Conference at the Sorbonne, Paris (20 November to 10 December 1946).

The International Scientific Committee for the UNESCO History Project is organizing a series of three international conferences in 2009-2010, with the common purpose of encouraging and stimulating historical research and reflections on UNESCO's programs, activities and orientations from 1945 to date. These three conferences are a follow up to the international symposium on UNESCO's history that took place in Paris on the occasion of the Organization's 60th anniversary in November 2005.

The Committee has selected the following three themes:

1. "Towards the Transnational History of International Organizations: Methodology / Epistemology". This conference will pay special attention to UNESCO as a case-study, and take a broader view of methodological issues relating to the study of the history of international organizations. The conference was hosted by the Center for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, and took place on 6 and 7 April 2009.
2. "UNESCO and the Cold War". UNESCO was an important arena for the Cold War, but it was also an actor with an agenda of its own. The purpose of the conference is to explore different historical perspectives concerning the extent of the Cold War's impact on UNESCO and vice versa. The conference is to be hosted by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg and to take place on 4 and 5 March 2010.
3. "UNESCO and Issues of Colonization and Decolonization". Among UNESCO's founding Member States were both colonial powers and former colonies. This Conference invites students and scholars utilizing a range of methodological approaches and intellectual frameworks to reflect on UNESCO's historical role, relevant orientations and actions in regard to colonialism and the era of decolonization. The conference will be hosted by the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, and take place on 1 and 2 October 2009.

There is a very brief history of the Organization on its website. The website of UNESCO's Archives has a number of featured links on various aspects of the history of the organization, Additional materials may be found using the "history tag" of the online UNESCO bibliography.

There are several historical studies specific to UNESCO's education program.

• "UNESCO 50 Years for Education," produced in 1995 for the 50th anniversary of UNESCO.
• "Towards and Open Learning World: 50 Years. UNESCO Institute of Education," 2002. The organization is now called the UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning (UIL)
• History of the International Bureau of Education (brief, online history).
  

Why is UNESCO the Way it Is?

Michael Abiola Omolewa, President of the General Conference 2003
Photo by Andrew Wheeler © UNESCO

The Problem

Students in our UNESCO seminar are increasingly aware that the Organization has some quirks. For example:

• UNESCO stresses programs in Africa but most of its staff is in Paris.
  
• Its budget is tiny compared to the huge global challenges it faces in education, science, culture and communications.
  
• While :Science" was added to the UNESCO Charter almost as an afterthought, there are now both "natural science" and "social and human science" programs; the combined science budget is larger than that for either the education or the culture programs.
  
• The social and human science includes sports and philosophy, but not disciplinary programs in economics, sociology, anthropology and the other social sciences.
  
• UNESCO is supposed to focused on promoting progress in developing nations, yet it has relatively little focus on promoting the applications of social science knowledge for that purpose, nor on promoting cultural changes that will facilitate such development.
• While two-thirds of the UNESCO budget comes from assessed contributions, the rest is from extrabudgetary resources which are always hard to predict and which tend to bias efforts away from those directed by UNESCO's governing bodies.
• The governance is vested in an unwieldy 193 nation General Conference that meets only every other year, but largely delegated to a 58 member Executive Board that also meets relatively infrequently and is also unwieldy.

Moreover, there are other governance bodies for portions of the program, and a couple of score of "Category 2" UNESCO Centers as well as hundreds of UNESCO Chairs which are not funded by UNESCO, nor effectively governed by its governing bodies.

The question comes up, how did the Organization come to be so quirky? One thing is clear. UNESCO is not the result of a rational decision as to how to allocate available resources to best achieve the Organization's mission.

The Charter

Perhaps surprisingly, there is and always has been a considerable effort to keep the Organization's programs closely linked to UNESCO's original charter which focuses the Organization on building the defenses of peace in the minds of men, promoting global efforts in education, science, culture and communications towards that end. (Students in our class have been treated to a lecture by Dick Arndt and Ray Wanner on how that charter was created, and have been provided with readings on the subject.)

The UNESCO Secretariat generally tries to do that which its member nations instruct it to do through UNESCO's governing bodies. It does so with the resources that are available for those purposes. While that is true, that statement does not respond to the fundamental questions about the decision making that resulted in the current structure of UNESCO and the composition of the portfolio of its programs.

Incrementalism and Fit

Clearly, an important factor in UNESCO's design is the niche that it fills within the web of intergovernmental organizations. That web itself has been evolving since World War II. UNESCO is clearly seen as complementary to the United Nations, and is deeply affected by U.N. products such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals. UNESCO seeks to work in ways complementary to the efforts of other decentralized agencies such as the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. So too, it seeks to complement the efforts of United Nations programs and funds such as the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF). It participates in United Nations interagency programs such as the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, and works in the context provided by other United Nations bodies such as the Human Rights Commission, the High Commission on Refugees, the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development and the U.N. Commission on Science and Technology for Development.

UNESCO today is the result of six decades of incremental decision making. Decisions were made at each step that had to take into account the then existing staffing and organization of UNESCO, its existing programs and their importance and degrees of success. Essentially there is a kind of inertia in an organization and a program as large and complex as those of UNESCO.

During this long period there were major trends in international diplomacy that had profound affects on decision making affecting UNESCO. UNESCO's programs evolved from helping to repair the intellectual systems damaged by World War II, to dealing with problems raised by the Cold War, to helping with nation building that followed decolonization, to dealing with the cultural impacts of globalization.

Governance

To understand the decisions that have influenced UNESCO one must consider its governing bodies. The delegates to these bodies can be expected to function in predictable ways, forming coalitions, trading votes, etc. UNESCO's General Conference delegations each represent a member nationl each delegation is usually composed of government officials and representatives of the national educational, scientific and cultural communities, often as members of the national commission for UNESCO. The members of a delegation do not always agree on how to promote the interests of the country that they represent; delegations vary in success according to the interests and abilities of their delegations.

Our understanding of legislative bodies, as based on the Congress of the United States perhaps, must be adapted to the special features of UNESCO. American legislators get to know each other well, meeting frequently over a period of years. While the permanent delegates to UNESCO of the member states may get to know each other, most of the delegates to the biennial meetings may not have links to members of other delegations or even know other members of their own delegation well. The U.S. Congress delegates functions to a plethora of committees and subcommittees, each with its staff, which are in continuous operation; UNESCO depends only on its Executive Board, and the Secretariat of UNESCO both supports governance decision making and implements the decisions made.

Decisions made by a government with respect to UNESCO are affected by and affect the position of that government with respect to other agencies. This year a new Director General is to be elected by the UNESCO General Conference on the basis of a recommendation from the Executive Board. Few individual decisions are likely to have more impact on the organization and programs of UNESCO. Several announced and several unannounced candidates are angling for the post. Each will wish for his/her government to use all of its diplomatic means to advance his/her candidacy. However, the governments are concerned with the entire web of intergovernmental organizations and overall foreign policy. In choosing to offer or deny support to their own national they must consider other elections in other organizations. The debts incurred in lobbying for a candidate for UNESCO will generally have to be paid in some other venue at some other time; the favors given to other nations can be redeemed in other elections.

For the outsider, understanding decision making in UNESCO's governing bodies is difficult. The culture of governance of intergovernmental organizations tends to hide processes and disagreements. Public decisions are often made by consensus to project unanimity but only after it becomes clear to the delegates which option is most popular. While insiders in the delegations and ministries of foreign affairs may be very much aware of disagreements, the outside public seldom is.

The Secretariat

If in theory legislative bodies make policy and executive agencies implement policy, in practice executive bodies lobby and use other techniques to influence legislation and extend policy in implementation. In the case of UNESCO, the original planners of the organization -- in the belief that its legislative body would be unwieldy -- designed the Organization with strong powers in the office of the Director General. The eight elected Directors General have left the imprints of many of their decisions on the organization.

Decades of development of management science has revealed that decision making in bureaucracies is decentralized to varying degrees, is often done by committees rather than individuals and is often implicit rather than explicit. Even the explicit decisions are made with limited rationality and incomplete information. The cumulative set of bureaucratic decisions has profound influence on the structure, procedures and culture of the organization, and thus on organizational performance.

In the case of UNESCO, the Secretariat is multinational, multiethnic and multilingual, located in scores of offices spread across the entire world. Educational, scientific, cultural, and communications officials also come from different professional cultures. The come to the organization with different educations, different work experiences, in different countries. Decision making in a bureaucracy so staffed can not be simple.

The Professional Communities

The Man and the Biosphere Program of UNESCO is generally considered to have grown out of the consensus created in a scientific meeting. Similarly, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission is believed to have been created as a result of lobbying by Roger Revelle and other oceanographers. Indeed, the addition of science to UNESCO's charter is attributed importantly to the efforts of Joseph Needham to raise support among an international network of scientists.

These are examples of fundamental decisions affecting UNESCO which came out of the scientific community. Similar examples could be adduced for the other UNESCO programs of initiatives arising from the intellectual community served by the program. UNESCO was specifically designed to serve and link the intellectual communities of its member nations. Indeed, UNESCO's constitution, calling for national commissions drawn from civil society as well as government, is unique and was intended to involve the larger educational, scientific, cultural and communications communities not only in UNESCO's work but also in its governance.

As scientists network internationally via meetings and journals, so too do members of the other UNESCO communities network globally within their own professional communities. Indeed, with improvements in transportation and communications, this networking has become much stronger. Not only do professionals travel more often to international meetings, but journals have proliferated as has their international distribution, and the Internet and other modern communications technologies have resulted in a quantum leap in speed and a radical reduction of costs as compared with snail-mail communication.

Social scientists are improving their understanding of such professional networks. We know something about how their structure influences their behavior. We know that there are individuals who are especially important in communications networks, and that influence and authority are not uniformly distributed within the networks. Social science research is thus helping us to understand how professional leaders, well connected and authoritative within their professional communities, can lead decision making within the educational, scientific, cultural and communications communities.

Conclusion

UNESCO's structure, procedures and programs have thus evolved over time, under the influence of major global trends, based on the decisions made in its member states, its legislative bodies, the bureaucracy of its Secretariat, and its constituent communities. So too, reforms and improvements in the organization will come from decisions made in these arenas through a complex process of negotiation and compromise.

The history of the organization shows that individuals and non-governmental organizations (as well as governments) can have profound influence on UNESCO. Efforts to improve the organization will probably not work well if naively based on simplistic models of rational decision making, but may be quite effective if they are advanced through recruitment of allies, networking, and coalition building.

The Dick and Ray Show

Last week, Dick Arndt and Ray Wanner led our UNESCO class discussing the history of the organization and the role played by Americans in its founding, and in this country's withdrawal from UNESCO.

Frank Method, co-coordinator of the course
introduces Dick Arndt

Ray Wanner, having described the central role of the United States delegations in the creation of UNESCO and the important role of people from the United States in encouraging UNESCO to create some of its key programs, such as those of the World Heritage program and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, ended saying the United States has much to be proud of about UNESCO.

Ray Wanner checking his notes

I will allow myself to wonder whether the United States also has much to be ashamed of in its role with respect to UNESCO.

• The Organization functions under a complex governance system which sometimes hampers its efficiency and effectiveness. The United States delegates to UNESCO's planning and governing bodies bear more responsibility than most countries for UNESCO's governance structures and processes.
• The United States representatives to UNESCO and our Civil Society organizations have encouraged the Organization to embark on new and often ambitious undertakings. On the other hand, the U.S. Government has sought to limit the rate of growth of UNESCO's budget. The withdrawal of the United States and the U.K. created a financial crisis for UNESCO. Now UNESCO fails to play the ambitious role that its constitution and the majority of its members demand because its resources fail to meet its responsibilities.

I could go on, but perhaps the proper position is not to assign blame or credit, but to consider the role that UNESCO could play internationally, and helping it to achieve the excellence we require in assuming that role. There are remarkable successes within the UNESCO program such as the creation of CERN (which in turn hosted the creation of the World Wide Web) and the World Heritage network of protected cultural and natural sites. The creation of the SESAME project which is showing the way towards international cooperation in the Mid East or the work to create a global tsunami warning system may be equally valuable in the future. How do we make sure that UNESCO remains capable of such important initiatives?


John Daly
(The opinions expressed in this posting do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

Publication of final volume of UNESCO’s General History of Latin America

The final volume of UNESCO's General History of Latin America (La Historia General de América Latina) has been published: Los proyectos nacionales latinoamericanos: sus instrumentos y articulación 1870-1930 .

The General History is divided into nine parts, one in two volumes. It charts the development of Central and South American societies from the Pre-Columbian era to the 20th century. More than 240 historians from diverse schools of thought contributed to the work under the supervision of a scientific committee headed by Venezuelan historian Germán Carrera Damas.

Published in Spanish, the History presents the main cultural, social, economic and political currents that have influenced the region and contributed to its specific, albeit diverse and evolving, identity.

Mining the Past to Best Inform the Future

On such a historic week in the United States, it is easy to become enraptured with future hopes. Indeed, these hopes are what sustain and inspire us--they are what cause us to seek better for ourselves and for future generations. Yesterday's inauguration and the masses that came to share in the day celebrated how hopes can empower. They can propel all with optimism and excitement in stepping into the future.

Yet yesterday also highlighted another important element: the increasing diversity of not just the United States but of all nations. The words spoken by Obama and by so many others reflected not only hope but the need for awareness of those around us. It is with this increased understanding that compassionate, positive change can occur.

In this vein, UNESCO offers a wealth of information for those seeking to increase their knowledge of the heritage of their neighbors both near and far. UNESCO has spent over 40 years compiling 51 volumes, and it now offers its trove of information in General and Regional Histories:

General and Regional Histories

Over 1,600 global scholars have informed these six volumes, and its collections incisively delve into cultural and scientific heritages of different regions of the world. Considering the content of these works may well intertwine with our hopes to wisen all future steps we take.

Interview with Ali Moussa Iye

Ali Moussa Iye is the Chief of the Inter-cultural Dialog Section of UNESCO where he coordinates the slave routes projects and UNESCO's History of Africa. He was recently interviewed by McPhilips Nwachukwu for Vanguard Online (Nigeria).

African leaders in the 1960's were concerned that the available historical record of Africa had been written by Europeans and reflected the views of the colonial powers rather than of the Africans themselves. As a result, UNESCO was asked to take on the job or coordinating the production of a major survey of African history written by African historians. Over a period of 25 years that history was published in eight volumes. In his interview Iye states:

Now at UNESCO, we are launching the second phase of the Journal History of Africa. We are launching a project to try to elaborate three contents to be included at the primary and secondary levels for all the African Union member States. So, we are working with African Union.

Iye also discusses UNESCO's Slave Route Project, which was started in 1993. That project initially focused on the Atlantic slave route, but Iye (who is from Djibouti on the Horn of Africa) is seeking to move now to include the trade of slaves from Africa into the Islamic lands.

Read the full interview.