Thoughts about the DfID evaluation of UNESCO

The Department for International Development (DfID) of the United Kingdom recently did an evaluation of the multilateral organizations that it was funding. Included was an evaluation of UNESCO. Three criteria were used in the evaluation:

• Contribution to UK development objectives
• Organisational strengths
• Capacity for positive change

In the United States the review of United Nations agencies is done by the Department of State, not USAID which would be the corresponding agency to DfID. In the case of UNESCO, State obtains inputs from the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities as well as USAID and civil society and the intellectual leadership of the nation. Thus the review is in terms of contribution to the full spectrum of U.S. interests and not just our development objectives.

Incidentally, the DfID strategic objectives are a hodgepodge of statements. It is no wonder  that the review was also a hodgepodge.

The purposes of UNESCO, as given in its constitution are:

The purpose of the Organization is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.

To realize this purpose the Organization will:

1. Collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image;
2. Give fresh impulse to popular education and to the spread of culture;
By collaborating with Members, at their request, in the development of educational activities;
By instituting collaboration among the nations to advance the ideal of equality of educational opportunity without regard to race, sex or any distinctions, economic or social;
By suggesting educational methods best suited to prepare the children of the world for the responsibilities of freedom;
3. Maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge;
By assuring the conservation and protection of the world's inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science, and recommending to the nations concerned the necessary international conventions;
By encouraging co-operation among the nations in all branches of intellectual activity, including the international exchange of persons active in the fields of education, science and culture and the exchange of publications, objects of artistic and scientific interest and other materials of information;
By initiating methods of international co-operation calculated to give the people of all countries access to the printed and published materials produced by any of them.

Thus DfID was trying to evaluate UNESCO against objectives that were not those of UNESCO itself. At the least that is poor sportsmanship, in the sense of a child who takes his cricket ball and bat home if his friends won't play the game in exactly the way he wants it played.

Thus the DfID evaluation was deficient in key ways. I would note further that it was not clear from the report exactly what methods were used by the evaluation team, much less how well and accurately it made its judgments. Who evaluates the evaluators?