Criteria for the Election of the UNESCO Director General

A meeting of the UNESCO Executive Board

Candidate Irina Bokova

I have been posting elsewhere on the current election of the Director General of UNESCO. I have refrained from supporting one of the three candidates -- in large part because I am not really able to judge which would do the best job. But I will comment here on how that judgement might best be made.

Some seem to feel that the job is managing the UNESCO bureaucracy -- motivating staff to carry out UNESCO's mission, assuring that the systems for financial and personnel management function effectively, leading in the definition of a program and budget. All that is important, but I wonder if it is the most important aspect of the job.

Candidate Rachad Farah

Where has UNESCO contributed most to the world?

• Over the decades of UNESCO's existence there has been a huge and unprecedented expansion of educational opportunities. That has been accomplished by the nations of the world. UNESCO has played a role helping to direct public attention to educational rights not being observed, convening groups of educators and political leaders to examine the problems of extending school access, defining and collecting educational statistics, and monitoring progress toward Education for All.
• UNESCO helped the European nations come together to create CERN, the leading global center for "big physics". It helped create the International Center for Theoretical Physics, which has become a center for strengthening science in developing nations. It has convened networks of scientists working globally on bioreserves and biodiversity, water resource assessments, tsunami warnings and other scientific critical issues.
• It convened the nations of the world to create the World Heritage Convention, under which nations have come forth to guarantee the preservation of 981 sites of cultural and/or natural importance. Its other cultural conventions have served to protect museums and prevent the looting of national heritage treasures.
• It has encouraged a large number of partners to promote education, science, culture and communications, including many civil society organizations, governments, private enterprises, associated schools, UNESCO university chairs, UNESCO national commissions and thousands of UNESCO Clubs.

Candidate Joseph Maila

What kind of UNESCO Director General could best protect and extend these accomplishments? It seems to me that it would be someone with a good understanding of how positive trends in global education, science, culture and communications are best fostered, how negative trends are best deterred, and how to distinguish the positive from the negative. It should be someone who commands respect on the international stage because of personal qualities and accomplishments, not just as the spokesperson for UNESCO. It would be someone who recognized UNESCO not as a bureaucracy centered in Paris, but as a global network of institutions and people devoted to sets of mutually reinforcing goals, only a few of which get financing from UNESCO or directly involve UNESCO staff. And of course, it would be someone who could communicate this understanding to UNESCO's member states and to the bureaucracy and enlist their wholehearted support for that vision.