As members of UNESCO's governing executive board consider their votes for the organisation's next director-general this week, Nigel Richardson looks back on an unusually bitter campaign Following a campaign in which Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian minister of culture, saw his candidature for the post of director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) both supported and criticised in the international press, members of the UN organisation's ruling body are this week meeting in Paris to determine who will lead UNESCO over the next four years. Hosni, who announced his candidature well before the official deadline for nominations at the end of May, is officially sponsored by Egypt, Kuwait, Sudan and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and he has the support of the Arab League, the African Union and various Asian and Latin American countries. However, his candidature for the post caused controversy earlier this year when he was attacked in the international press, an article in the French newspaper Le Monde inviting the international community "to save itself from the shame that would come upon it through the appointment of Farouk Hosni as director-general of UNESCO." The article, signed by French intellectuals Bernard-Henri Levy and Claude Lanzman, together with the US activist Elie Wiesel, drew attention to comments Hosni had made in 2008 to the effect that any Israeli books found in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina would be "burned". Though Hosni later retracted the remarks, and Israel gave an undertaking to president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year not to oppose Hosni's candidature, there have been rumours since of persistent US opposition to his candidature, with the US ambassador to UNESCO allegedly organising a campaign against him. Under UNESCO's procedural rules, Hosni, along with the other nine candidates for the post, will have made a 20-minute presentation to the organisation's 58- member executive board at a closed meeting in Paris on Tuesday, after which a further 30 minutes will have been set aside for a maximum of six questions. Following these presentations, members of the UNESCO board are meeting in the French capital today for the first in a possible series of closed meetings designed to elect the organisation's next director-general, which will take place by secret ballot and a simple majority of votes. Once a winner has emerged, the board will inform the organisation's general conference, a biannual meeting of all 193 member states, of its recommendation and invite the conference to endorse the vote when it meets in October. According to a list made public on 1 June, other candidates for the post of UNESCO director-general include those sponsored by the Russian Federation (Alexander Yakovenko), Austria (Benita Ferrero- Waldner), and Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (Ina Marciulionyte), among others. The second term in office of the organisation's present director- general, Koïchiro Matsuura, a Japanese diplomat, ends in November 2009, following his election in 1999 and re-election in 2005. The director-general is UNESCO's chief administrative officer and is responsible to member states for the implementation of the organisation's programme and budget. He or she may be appointed for a maximum of two four-year terms. UNESCO is the only UN organisation having a specific mandate in the fields of culture and science, sharing its activities to promote education with funding agencies such as UNICEF or UNDP. Among UNESCO's best-known activities are the "world heritage" programme, which lists and attempts to safeguard expressions of the world's architectural heritage, and the Education for All programme, which has taken the lead in trying to improve global education to meet aims set out in the UN Millennium Goals. Founded immediately after the Second World War and among the oldest of the UN agencies, UNESCO's early history was marked by the idealism of the UN's founders, the organisation pledging to build "the defences of peace... in the minds of men." Early enthusiasm was sustained by the appointment of the British scientist Sir Julian Huxley as UNESCO's first director-general and the involvement of leading international figures in the design of the organisation's programmes. Should Hosny be elected director- general of UNESCO following this week's vote, he will be the first candidate from the Arab states to have held what is considered to be one of the most prestigious positions among the heads of UN agencies. Previous director-generals of the organisation have included the former Senegalese minister of education Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, during whose two terms in office the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore all withdrew from the organisation, citing mismanagement and anti-Western bias. An attempt by Ismail Serageldin, currently head of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, to be elected the organisation's director-general in 1999 following the two terms in office of the Spanish academic Federico Mayor, was defeated in the face of a concerted campaign by the Japanese candidate Koichiro Matsuura. Aside from the controversy over Hosni's candidature, should he be elected UNESCO's new director- general this month he will also inherit an uncertain situation from the previous incumbent. While Matsuura has presided over some striking successes, not least the decisions by the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore to rejoin the organisation, thus restoring its claim fully to represent the international community, he has also been widely criticised. According to a swinging assessment of Matsuura's tenure as head of UNESCO that appears in this month's edition of the respected international monthly Le Monde diplomatique entitled "A Silent Revolt to save UNESCO," during his years in office Matsuura has made the organisation one in which "waste, fraud, abuse of trust and power, as well as harassment [of personnel], have been constantly increasing." "The state of decay in which UNESCO finds itself at the end of Matsuura's tenure is comparable to that of the United States at the end of George Bush's presidency in the eyes of many delegations and of almost all staff members," the article claims. Whatever the truth of the matter might be, it seems that in the eyes of some staff members at least, should Hosny be elected UNESCO's next director-general at meetings of the organisation's executive board this week, and then confirmed at the organisation's general conference in October, he will more than have his work cut out for him. ( see p.3)
