Difference between revisions of "UNESCO" - New World Encyclopedia
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Revision as of 15:32, 26 March 2007
Template:Infobox UN UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. Its stated purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN Charter.[1]
UNESCO has 192 Member States and 6 Associate Members. The organization is based in Paris, with over 50 field offices and several institutes and offices throughout the world. Most of the field offices are "cluster" offices covering three or more countries; there are also national and regional offices. UNESCO pursues its action through five major programmes: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programmes; international science programmes; the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press; regional and cultural history projects, the promotion of cultural diversity; international cooperation agreements to secure the world cultural and natural heritage and to preserve human rights; and attempts to bridge the world-wide digital divide.
Structure
Three bodies are responsible for policy-making, governance, and day-to-day administration at UNESCO:
- The General Conference
- The Executive Board
- The Secretariat
The General Conference is a gathering of the organization's member states and associate members, at which each state has one vote. Meeting every two years, it sets general policies and defines programme lines for the organization.
The Executive Board's 58 members are elected by the General Conference for staggered four-year terms. The Executive Board prepares the sessions of the General Conference and ensures that its instructions are carried out. It also discharges other specific mandates assigned to it by the General Conference.
The Secretariat consists of the Director-General and his staff and is responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization. The Director-General, who serves as the public face of UNESCO, is elected for a (renewable) four-year term by the General Conference. The staff currently numbers some 2100, of whom some two-thirds are based in Paris, with the remaining third spread around the world in UNESCO's 58 field offices. The Secretariat is divided into various administrative offices and five programme sectors that reflect the organization's major areas of focus.
Controversy and reform
UNESCO has been at the centre of controversy, particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. During the 1970s and 1980s, UNESCO's support for a "New World Information and Communication Order" and its MacBride report calling for democratization of the media and a more egalitarian access to information was condemned in these countries as attempts to destroy the freedom of the press. UNESCO was perceived by some as a platform for communist and Third World countries to attack the West. In 1984, the United States withheld its contributions and withdrew from the organization in protest, followed by the United Kingdom in 1985 and Singapore in 1986. Following the change in government in 1997, the UK rejoined; the United States rejoined in 2003. (As of 2007, Singapore has still not rejoined.) During this period, considerable reforms had been implemented in the organization.
These included the following measures: the number of divisions in UNESCO was cut in half, allowing a corresponding halving of the number of Directors — from 200 to under 100, out of a total staff of approximately 2,000 worldwide. At the same time, the number of field units was cut from a peak of 79 in 1999 to 52 today. Parallel management structures, including 35 Cabinet-level special advisor positions, were abolished. Between 1999 and 2003, 209 negotiated staff departures and buy-outs took place, causing the inherited $10 million staff cost deficit to disappear. The staff pyramid, which was the most top-heavy in the UN system, was cut back as the number of high-level posts was halved and the “inflation” of posts was reversed through the down-grading of many positions. Open competitive recruitment, results-based appraisal of staff, training of all managers and field rotation were instituted, as well as SISTER and SAP systems for transparency in results-based programming and budgeting. In addition, the Internal Oversight Service (IOS) was established in 2001 to improve organizational performance by including the lessons learned from program evaluations into the overall reform process. In reality though, IOS's main tasks involve auditing rather than programme oversight; it regularly carries out audits of UNESCO offices that essentially look into administrative and procedural compliance, but do not assess the relevance and usefulness of the activities and projects that are carried out.
Programming coherence and relevance remains a challenge at UNESCO. One of the main reasons for this is that activities and projects can be identified and supervised by various services within the organization (divisions and sections based at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, UNESCO regional and cluster field offices and international insitutes) with insufficient coordination between them.
Activities
UNESCO deploys its action in the fields of Education, Natural Sciences, Social and Human Sciences, Culture, Communication and Information.
- Education: UNESCO is providing international leadership for creating learning societies with educational opportunities for all populations; it supports research in Comparative education; and provides expertise and fosters partnerships to strengthen national educational leadership and the capacity of countries to offer quality education for all. Such as
- International Institute for Educational Planning, IIEP: A centre for training and research to strengthen the capacity of countries to plan and manage their education systems
- They are also educating people through the use of 'statements':
- Seville Statement on Violence: A statement adopted by UNESCO in 1989 to refute the notion that humans are somehow biologically predisposed to organised violence.
- Designating projects and places of cultural and scientific significance, such as:
- Biosphere reserves, through the Programme on Man and the Biosphere (MAB), since 1971
- City of Literature; in 2007 the first city to be given this title will be Edinburgh
- Endangered languages and linguistic diversity projects
- Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
- Memory of the World International Register, since 1997
- Water Resource Management, through the International Hydrological Programme (IHP), since 1965
- World Heritage Sites
- Encouraging the "free flow of ideas by images and words" by:
- Promoting freedom of expression, press freedom and access to information, through the International Programme for the Development of Communication and the Communication and Information Programme
- Promoting universal access to ICTs, through the Information for All Programme (IFAP)
- Promoting pluralism and cultural diversity in the media
- Promoting events, such as:
- International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World: 2001–2010, proclaimed by the UN in 1998
- World Press Freedom Day, 3 May each year, to promote freedom of expression and freedom of the press as a basic human right and as crucial components of any healthy, democratic and free society.
- Founding and funding projects, such as:
- Migration Museums Intitiative: Promoting a the establishement of museums for cultural dialogue with migrant populations.[2]
- UNESCO-CEPES, the European Centre for Higher Education: established in 1972 in Bucharest, Romania, as a de-centralized office to promote international co-operation in higher education in Europe as well as Canada, USA and Israel. Higher Education in Europe is its official journal.
- Free Software Directory: since 1998 UNESCO and the Free Software Foundation have jointly funded this project cataloguing free software.
- FRESH Focussing Resources on Effective School Health [3].
- OANA, the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies
- International Council of Science
- UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadors
Prizes, awards and medals
UNESCO awards several prizes in science, culture and peace, such as:
- Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology
- Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize
- Great Man-Made River International Prize for Water Resources in Arid and Semi-Arid Areas
- International José Martí Prize
- International Simón Bolívar Prize
- Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientist
- Jikji Memory of the World Prize for individuals or institutions that have made significant contributions to the preservation and accessibility of documentary heritage.
- Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science
- L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science
- Sergei Eisenstein Medals for merit in cinematographic art.
- Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation
- UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize
- UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICT in Education
- UNESCO Mozart Medal for contribution to world peace through music and the arts.
- UNESCO Prize for Peace Education
- UNESCO Science Prize
- UNESCO/Institut Pasteur Medal
- UNESCO Artist for Peace
- Creative Cities Network
Directors General
- Julian Huxley,
United Kingdom (1946–1948) - Jaime Torres Bodet,
Mexico (1948–1952) - John Wilkinson Taylor,
United States (acting 1952–1953) - Luther Evans, United States (1953–1958)
- Vittorino Veronese,
Italy (1958–1961) - René Maheu,
France (1961–1974; acting 1962) - Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow,
Senegal (1974–1987) - Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Template:SPA (1987–1999)
- Koïchiro Matsuura,
Japan (1999–present)
Locations
UNESCO has offices all over the world; its headquarters are located in Paris, France.
- Satellite image from WikiMapia or Google Maps
- Mapping from Multimap or GlobalGuide
External links
- Official UNESCO website
- UNESCO's reforms at a glance
- Director-Generals of UNESCO
- UNESCO offices worldwide
- UNESCO Culture
- UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages (Main site)
- UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages: Europe
- World Heritage Convention
- Asia Pacific Heritage
- UNESCO - Communication & Information Programme
- UNESCO - Information for All Programme
- World Press Freedom Day
- UNESCO Science Prizes
- UNESCO - International Institute for Educational Planning
- UNESCO - Institute for Statistics
- Americans for UNESCO
- UNESCO in the Spotlight: Education and Culture blog
- UNESCO in the Spotlight: Science and Communications blog
- UNESCO - IOC Project Office for IODE, Ostend (Belgium)
- UNESCO Nairobi Education Programme
- City of Literature
- UNESCO Water, sustainable development and conservation of freshwater resources in the world
- Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Vision and Action
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