Tracking the Election of the UNESCO Director General

Global Memo has begun to track information on the election of the Director General of UNESCO which is to take place this Fall. Click here to access the archive of its posts.

From 2010: The UNESCO Senior Staff

Senior management team appointed by Irina Bokova. From left to right:

• Jānis Kārkliņš, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information;
• Lalla Aïcha Ben Barka, Assistant Director-General, Africa Department;
• Gretchen Kalonji, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences;
• Qian Tang, Assistant Director-General for Education;
• Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General;
• Irina Bokova, Director-General;
• Hans d’Orville, Assistant Director-General for Strategic Planning;
• Francesco Bandarin, Assistant Director-General for Culture;
• María del Pilar Álvarez-Laso, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences;
• Khadija Ribes Zammouri, Assistant Director-General for Administration;
• Eric Falt, Assistant Director-General for External Relations and Public Information.
• Absent from photo: Wendy Watson-Wright,Assistant Director-General and Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)

Read Director-General Bokova's introduction of the senior staff.

A Report from the Executive Board Meeting

American UNESCO veteran and international education expert Leslie Limage recently attended various sessions of UNESCO's 189th Executive Board, which adjourned in Paris last month.

 

She shares her perspective about UNESCO staff morale, the Obiang Prize, and importance of U.S. engagement here.

UNESCO Director General Travels Across the USA

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (left)
with UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova (right)
 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thurs 3/15/12

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova has continued her 10-day trip across the U.S.A this week with stops Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.


Two weeks ago in Washington she spoke about the importance of Women and Girls Literacy before a lunch hosted by the UN Foundation and the Women's Foreign Policy Group.


On Thursday 3/15 the Director General was in Philadelphia where she attended an event that highlighted the importance that World Heritage sites can play in promoting tourism and economic development. Later in the day she attended the inauguration of the UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy at the University of Pennsylvania.


Over the weekend she was in Chicago where she spoke before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, met with Senator Richard Durbin, talked to the McCormick Foundation, and held an editorial board meeting with the Chicago Tribune. During her stay she also met with representatives from the IDP Foundation, the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. 


On Monday of last week the Director General visited Miamiwhere she visited theEverglades and participated in a public-private sector roundtable about World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism.

From there she traveled to San Francisco on Tuesday where she spoke to students at the University of California at Berkeley about freedom of information in the digital age and also met with city officials. On Wednesday she spoke about science education for girls at an event hosted by the Friends of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women.

Mon 3/19 Roundtable on Sustainable Tourism in Miami

UNESCO's 189th Executive Board Adjourns

UNESCO's 189th Executive Board adjourned last week. During the course of the meeting the U.S. spoke out about several issues the we view as serious challenges for the agency.

During the meeting members of the Executive Board considered several resolutions that affirmed Palestinian membership in UNESCO as a state. The U.S. voted against these; you can see our Ambassador's statement about these votes here.

The Executive Board also considered the legitimacy of Syria's position as a seatholder on the UNESCO Committee that deals with human rights. We supported the removal of Syria from this committee, you can our Ambassador's statement about that vote here.

Lastly, the Executive Board attempted to resolve a long-standing impasse relating to the funding of a proposed prize for research in the life sciences, named after Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who leads Equatorial Guinea. You can see our Ambassador's statement regarding that vote  here.

Obama Administration Seeks UNESCO Waiver Legislation

In the UNESCO General Conference last year, Palestine was elected as a member state over the opposition of the United States. According to a provision of law a couple of decades old, the United States was then required to withhold its contributions to the Organization. Doing so has created a major problem for UNESCO in that the United States pays a portion of the UNESCO regular budget roughly proportional to the U.S. portion of the global GDP, in this case 22 percent. Funds began to be withheld with the final payment of dues for 2011, and are being withheld now.

The Obama administration plans to seek legislation to permit the President to waive the provision requiring withholding of those contributions. It is normal to allow the President to waive such provisions when it is appropriate to the foreign policy of the United States to do so. This is in keeping with the foreign policy responsibilities assigned to the president in the Constitution, and allows for more timely changes than would be possible through the Congressional process of revision of the legislation.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), the senior Democrat on the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia., have announced that they will oppose that legislation. Both apparently feel that it is more important to show support for Israel in its negotiations with the Palestinians than to support the educational, scientific and cultural activities of UNESCO.

Secretary of State Clinton meeting with
UNESCO Director General Bokova

UNESCO not only implements a broad program promoting international cooperation in these fields, but it also is carrying out a number of U.S. funded projects, many of which are important to U.S. security interests and all of which have been undertaken at the initiative of the United States government. (See About the U.S. and UNESCO and U.S. Contributions to UNESCO.)

Interestingly, both Rep. Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Ackerman face redistricting, threatening their previously secure seats in the House of Representatives. The legislatures in each state will be revising Congressional districts in keeping with the changes in population revealed in the 2010 census.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Miami), will be based in a new District 27, centered around her Miami hometown and no longer including the Keys which were the core of the district which she represents currently. In Florida a Representative need not live in the district which he/she represents, but most do.

Representative Ackerman too is facing shifts in the borders of the district that he represents. It is reported that it's possibile that Ackerman will see his district extend into a district now represented by his congressional neighbor and fellow Democrat Carolyn McCarthy of Long Island.

More selected press coverage / U.S. Withholding funds

I previously posted links to several articles and opinion pieces (here and here) on the vote to admit UNESCO to membership in UNESCO and the consequent legal requirement to withhold U.S. contributions to the Organization. Here are some more:

• "Don’t punish UNESCO," Irina Bokova (Director General of UNESCO), The Washington Post, October 23, 2011
• "For the U.S., a forced withdrawal from UNESCO," Timothy Wirth (President of the United Nations Foundation), The Washington Post, October 24, 2011
• "Fact sheet on the PLO's bid for UNESCO membership," Institute for Middle East Understanding, October 31, 2011
• "Unesco Accepts Palestinians as Full Members," Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare, The New York Times, October 31, 2011

More on the United States Withholding of funds from UNESCO

The General Conference of UNESCO has voted to accept Palestine as a Member State of the Organization. U.S. law requires that if a specialized agency of the United Nations accepts as a member an entity that does not meet the international standards to be considered a nation, then then the United States must withhold its contributions to that agency. It seems clear that the law was specifically intended to deny Palestinian membership in these agencies. Shortly after the vote, the United States government announced that in compliance with that law, the United States would withhold the final contribution for 2011 (some $60 million).


Here are some added materials on that situation:

• The speech by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova on the budgetary measures to be taken in response to the shortfall of funding (Video; the first part is in French without subtitles, the second in English).
• "State Still Making the Case for UNESCO Funding", Josh Rogin, The Cable (Foreign Policy blog)
• "UNESCO Approves Palestinian Membership Bid – A Case for US Countermeasures Against the Organization?", Christiane Ahlborn, European Journal of International Law
• "INTERVIEW: UNESCO-chief: We'll pull through - just - without US funds", Ralf E. Krueger, M&C News
• "US Funding Freeze Threatens UNESCO Science", Yojana Sharma, SciDev.Net
• "Sen. Gillibrand wrong on UNESCO", Laura Myerson and Cortlandt Manor, Lohud.com
• "Cutting Off Unesco, U.S. May Endanger Programs in Iraq and Afghanistan", Steven Erlanger, The New York Times

UNESCO Water Specialist Casey Walther working on a project in Iraq

Ray Wanner at the IIEP Executive Board

Ray Wanner, the Chairman of the Governing Board of the International Institute for Educational Policy made this speech to the Education Commission of the UNESCO General  Conference earlier this month. Ray is also the senior Vice President of Americans for UNESCO.

31 new members elected UNESCO’s Executive Board

UNESCO’s Member States attending the 36th session of the General Conference, the Organization’s highest governing body, have elected 31 new members to the 58-member Executive Board, the Organization’s other governing body.

Below is a list of elected countries, by electoral group:

Group I: Austria, France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, United States of America.

Group II: Russian Federation, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Group III: Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico.

Group IV: Republic of Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea.

Group V (a): Nigeria, Namibia, Ethiopia, Mali, Gabon, Malawi, Angola, Gambia.

Group V (b): United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia.

Flash: U.S. Reelected to UNESCO Executive Board

Video: Vote in UNESCO General Conference on Palestine Membership

Unesco Approves Full Membership for Palestinians

According to the New York Times:

Unesco defied a legally mandated cutoff of American funding and approved a Palestinian bid for full membership by a vote on Monday of 107 to 14, with 52 abstentions.

Legislation dating back more than 15 years stipulates a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts the Palestinians as a full member. Unesco — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — depends on the United States for 22 percent of its budget, about $70 million a year. More.....

According to the UNESCO press release:

The vote was carried by 107 votes in favor of admission and 14 votes against, with 52 abstentions.

"Will Congress’s defunding of the U.N. over Palestine hurt U.S. goals around the world?"

Colum Lynch has an article by that title dated October 25, 2011 in Foreign Policy magazine. It discusses the repercussions if the Palestinian Authority bid to join UNESCO succeeds and the United States withholds funding from the organization as the law requires. The problem is exacerbated because it might start a chain reaction in which Palestine is automatically admitted to other decentralized agencies of the UN system which would apparently mean that the United States would automatically withhold funding also from those agencies.

The Palestinians are expected to follow by seeking membership in three other U.N. organizations -- the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) -- that have reciprocation agreements that would allow UNESCO members in as full members. Consequently, the United States will be required to also cut funding to these agencies, jeopardizing funding to programs that protect international intellectual copy rights and promote trade in the developing world. 

A congressional cut off of aid at UNESCO and other U.N. specialized agencies, however, would have no effect on many of the U.N.'s most high-profile operations, including billions of dollars spent on U.N. peacekeeping and humanitarian relief work -- since any bid by the Palestinians to secure membership in the U.N. General Assembly would face a U.S. veto. 

But the Palestinians have made it clear that they intend to seek membership in other international agencies affiliated with the United Nations, including the International Criminal Court, which receives no funding from the United States, and the World Health Organization, which has played a lead role in preventing the spread of deadly and debilitating diseases like polio, malaria, small pox and avian flu and HIV/AIDS.

The Palestinians would also have a good shot at gaining entrance into several other U.N. specialized agencies, including the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which require simple majorities or two-thirds majorities votes by the agencies' member states for membership. Ironically, the $238 million annual U.S. funding for the largest U.N. program in support of Palestinians, the U.N. Relief Works Agency, will not be directly affected by the UNESCO bid since it's not a U.N. member-based organization.

The Executive Board of UNESCO recommended that Palestine be admitted to UNESCO membership earlier this month, and the General Conference is expected to vote on the membership on Monday afternoon. It has been reported that there are very active discussions taking place in diplomatic circles and between the State Department and the Congress.

The article goes on to provide opinions from a number of knowledgeable source. Read more.....

The Opening Messages

"Don’t punish UNESCO"

There is a letter to the editor in today's Washington Post from UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova. I quote from the letter:

UNESCO supports many causes in line with U.S. security interests. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we are helping governments and communities prepare for life after the withdrawal of U.S. military forces. We are bolstering the literacy of the Afghan National Police and are leading the country’s largest education program, reaching some 600,000 learners in 18 provinces. We work with the United States to advance democratic freedoms. Mandated to promote freedom of expression, UNESCO stands up for every journalist attacked or killed across the world. In Tunisia and Egypt, we are leading education reform and training journalists. We target the causes of violent extremism by training teachers in human rights and Holocaust remembrance. 

Major U.S. private-sector companies are key partners. We work with Procter and Gamble on girls’ education in Senegal and with the Packard Foundation to reduce girls’ dropout rates in Tanzania and Ethiopia. 

The issue of Palestinian membership should not be allowed to derail these initiatives, which go far beyond the politics of the Middle East......

36th UNESCO General Conference Begins

Next Tuesday 10/25 UNESCO will convene its 36th meeting of the General Conference. Several Commissioners have generously volunteered to help represent the U.S. delegation and will attend several different pieces of the upcoming meeting.

 

U.S. Under Secretary of Education and Commission Member Martha Kanter will deliver the U.S. Delegation official statement to the General Conference.

 

The question of Palestinian membership still looms large on this upcoming meeting in terms of U.S. membership in UNESCO. 

 

You can read some recent coverage here. 

 

Americans for UNESCO recently circulated a letter about this issue, which you can read here.

The United States may withhold funding for UNESCO

The Palestinian Authority's request for full membership in the United Nations has received wide public attention, but meanwhile a more silent but equally grave political situation is playing out at UNESCO.

UNESCO’s Executive Board ended its 187th session on 6 October marked by the request for membership to UNESCO by Palestine. The Board voted on the request for Palestinian membership on October 5. Forty members voted in favor of admission, four against and there were 14 abstentions. The Board’s recommendation for admission will now be submitted to UNESCO’s General Conference (26 October to 10 November), where it requires a two-thirds majority vote to become effective.

The United States Ambassador to UNESCO released a statement explaining the U.S. opposition to the membership at this time. 

We take the floor to express our strong opposition to this resolution. Granting the Palestinians full membership now in a specialized agency such as UNESCO is premature. Given that the UN Security Council is reviewing the Palestinian application, we believe it is inappropriate for a UN specialized agency to also take up the same matter.

The New York Times reported:

The State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said that lawyers were busily reviewing how and when the Palestinian membership would affect the American financing. She said the administration would try to block a vote of the full Unesco membership even as it encourages a resumption of talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. 

The issue is a hot one in Congress. In a statement on Tuesday, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, urged the Obama administration to “make clear that any decision to upgrade the Palestinian mission’s status by Unesco or any other U.N. entity will lead to a cutoff of U.S. funds to that entity.”

U.S. Code Title 22, Section 287e includes the following:

“No funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or any other Act shall be available for the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.” This was adopted by a Democratic Congress in 1989 as Public Law 101-246. 

“The United States shall not make any voluntary or assessed contribution: (1) to any affiliated organization of the United Nations which grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood, or (2) to the United Nations, if the United Nations grants full membership as a state in the United Nations to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood, during any period in which such membership is effective.” This was adopted by a Democratic Congress in 1994 as Public Law 103-236.

The first of these provisions was enacted into law in 1989. In that year Palestine applied for UNESCO membership and the Israeli government submitted a statement as to why it believed Palestine did not qualify for UNESCO membership:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0008/000827/082712eo.pdf

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0008/000827/082713EO.pdf

The Huffington Post reports:

Ismail Tilawi, the representative of UNESCO in the Palestinian territories, says that since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s, a request for Palestinian membership has been on the agenda of every UNESCO General Conference, which convenes every two years.

The motion to admit Palestine fully to membership in UNESCO apparently enjoys wide support among the 193 Member States, certainly enough to receive the two-thirds majority of "States present and voting" required for admission as a full Member. However, there is hope that a compromise along the lines of some sort of Palestinian membership short of "full" might be reached.

Senior budget officers at UNESCO, analyzing the consequences of failure to receive the U.S. funding, foresee immediate slashes in program activity, layoffs in personnel beginning in January, and other credible threats, including to UNESCO's pension system. However, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries hint they might be willing to fill the funding gap, a gesture the implications of which remain to be examined.

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova will spend Thursday and Friday of this week in Washington attempting to explain the impossible position in which UNESCO has been placed. State’s Mid-East negotiator David Hale in Paris will attempt to find a solution, perhaps trying to convince Palestinians to accept something less than full membership.

Executive Board Concludes Meeting

 Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, and
Eleonora Mitrofanova, Chairperson of UNESCO’s Executive Board© UNESCO/Patrick Lagès

UNESCO’s Executive Board ended its 187th session on 6 October marked by the request for membership to UNESCO by Palestine, an endorsement of the Director-General’s “reform to perform” programme, and the Organization’s reinforced focus on Africa.

The Board voted on the request for Palestinian membership on October 5. Forty members voted in favour of admission, four against and there were 14 abstentions. The Board’s recommendation for admission will now be submitted to UNESCO’s General Conference (26 October to 10 November), where it requires a two-thirds majority vote to become effective.

The 58 Board Members also approved proposals to reform and reinforce UNESCO’s action in Africa through a strengthened network of field offices, which the Director-General  stressed on several occasions as an absolute priority for the Organization.

"UNESCO is moving ahead very strongly with African priorities," Irina Bokova said. "I am determined to focus on the Priority Africa programme so that it becomes an effective instrument for developing education, for giving young people the tools with which to find jobs, and for giving recognition to African culture."

The Board also considered the issue of the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences. After extensive debate it decided by consensus to establish a working group to undertake further consultations with a view to achieving a conclusion on the issue by the Board’s meeting in the spring of 2012.

Read more....

Controversy over UNESCO possible recognition of Palestine state

Map Source: InternationalRelations.com

The Executive Board of UNESCO voted today on a recommendation to admit Palestine to the Organization. From the 58 member-states on the Board, the recommendation was passed by a vote of 40 in favor to four against, with 14 abstentions. Palestine's request for membership will now be considered at the next session of the General Conference (October 26-November 10) where a two-thirds majority vote is required for membership to be granted. Decisions for admission are taken by the General Conference and the Executive Board which are UNESCO's governing bodies.

According to The New York Times:

Fourteen delegations abstained, including those from Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, while the American delegation joined Germany, Latvia and Romania in opposing the measure. (Israel does not presently sit on the executive board, where membership rotates.) Russia joined African and Arab states, among others, in support.

The United States government has opposed according Palestine full national status in UN agencies at this time on the basis that there should first be a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, and that premature recognition of Palestine would make getting the peace process under way more difficult. In general, the United States government has supported a two state solution.

The vote is especially important as the United Nations is also considering accepting Palestine as a member nation, and were a specialized agency such as UNESCO to recognize the Palestinians as a member state it might set a precedent for the vote in the UN. 

The New York Times reports that "Palestinians Win a Vote On Bid to Join Unesco". It reports further:

(F)ull membership in Unesco could mean a legally mandated cutoff of all contributions from the United States, both dues and voluntary. 

Existing United States legislation appears to mandate the cutoff of money to the United Nations or any of its agencies if they grant “full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood,” and more legislation along the same lines has been introduced. The United States contributes 22 percent of Unesco’s budget...... 

The State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said that lawyers were busily reviewing how and when the Palestinian membership would affect the American financing. She said the administration would try to block a vote of the full Unesco membership even as it encourages a resumption of talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The fiscal year for the U.S. Government started October 1, 2011 so presumably U.S. funding from the last fiscal year (that ended September 30th) has already been transferred to UNESCO. Were the action of the General Conference to trigger a withholding of U.S. contributions to UNESCO, that would presumably occur in 2012 or thereafter. Member states have a responsibility to pay their assessed contributions to the Organization, but there have been many occasions in which a country is in arrears on those contributions, so the United States might withhold payment to UNESCO for a period of time and then pay the amount in arrears. Indeed, the Congress has in the past withheld contributions to the United Nations as means of pressuring the UN to change management or policy, later paying the arrears.

When the decision was made by the United States Government in the Reagan administration to withdraw from UNESCO, the Government provided the required one year notice of withdrawal, paying its assessed contributions for the period the United States remained a member state. The withdrawal, combined with that of the United Kingdom and Singapore, created a major financial crisis for UNESCO.

The return of the United States to UNESCO in 2004 did not result in a massive immediate increase in its budget, but rather a reduction in the assessed contributions of the other member states. Still, withholding 22 percent of the budget would cause serious financial problems for the organization. Were the United States again to withdraw from UNESCO the crisis would be greater and longer lasting. Were other major donors to also withhold contributions and/or withdraw, the result might be fatal to the Organization.

As in other United Nations system forums, the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab controversy has come up regularly at UNESCO Executive Board and General Conference meetings. Often those debates have led to useful conclusions, and to the best of my knowledge, none led to crises in UNESCO governance.