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Home > Australian Permanent Delegation to UNESCO >

Interventions by Australia > 172nd session

UNESCO EXECUTIVE BOARD
Reports by the Director-General on:

The execution of the programme adopted by the General Conference
The follow-up of decisions adopted by the Executive Board and the General Conference at their previous sessions and
The consideration of the Draft Programme and Budget for 2006-2007 (33 C/5) and recommendations of the Executive Board
Items 3, 4, and 21

Intervention by Professor Kenneth Wiltshire AO, Australia
19 September 2005

UNESCO is celebrating its 60th Birthday.

The context in which this takes place includes considerable turbulence in this world and the United Nations itself being under the scrutiny in an atmosphere of reform, the appointment of the Director-General, and the consideration of our Medium-Term Strategy and Programme and Budget.

When a person turns 60, it is time for them to reflect upon their values, goals, priorities and the effectiveness of their life. The same should be true for organizations. My two tests for organizations are:

If it were abolished, would anyone miss it?
If it were privatized, would anybody buy shares in it?
For UNESCO, the answer to the first question is "yes", but the answer to the second question is "no". This is because our programme glass is half full, but our management glass is half empty.

This provides a challenge and Australia would like to rise to that challenge. Australia is leaving the Executive Board at this session as we believe in the rotation principle. You may miss Australia. Therefore, as a parting gift, we would like to leave you with Australia's vision of an ideal UNECSO for the future.

Within the UN system, UNESCO's role should be clarified, its comparative advantage made plain, its profile must be higher. Its response to crises - natural and human-made - must be faster and more preventative. In combating terrorism UNESCO has a clear role in developing educational curricula which promote interfaith and intercultural understanding. When UNESCO is entrusted with the lead role in major UN initiatives such as Decades, it must design and lead the decade to be a journey, a learning experience which achieves results and makes a lasting impact.

UNESCO's mandate needs to be continually made more relevant, being applied to fast breaking science and technology, and quirks of human behaviour, especially through the application of its ethical mandate. This is because such developments occur faster than the capacity of legislators and policy makers to address them. UNESCO's work in bioethics, the ethics of science, and the work of COMEST are examples of the development of sound guiding preventative frameworks, making the mandate relevant to this third millennium.

In an ideal modern UNESCO there would be a substantial reshaping of the programmes. Australia believes that the approach to the Medium-Term Strategy should be turned on its head, addressing a few global themes by a few focused intersectoral programmes. The sectoral "silos" need to be pulled down and the vast majority of UNESCO's work would be intersectoral and interdisciplinary, for most of the great challenges in this world cannot be packed into sectoral boxes. Also there should be no more talk-fests - any great summits or symposiums should lead directly to capacity-building which should become UNESCO's main modality.

It is high time to pause and reflect on the recent proliferation of international instruments. We must not weaken the currency of this role by rushing into this domain. Instruments should be seen not as regulations, but as standard-setting mechanisms of empowerment. The strongest case must exist before we begin to design them and that design must have clear objectives and involve comprehensive consultation with experts and governments.

In this early 21st Century era, sound governance is of extreme importance to nations and institutions and good corporate governance is a prime goal. Good governance is of fundamental importance to UNESCO; both the relationship between the three organs, and the proper functioning of each of them, are crucial to the achievement of good governance. This is not merely an end in itself – it should aim at achieving an organization that is effective, efficient, transparent, and accountable in order to fulfil UNESCO's mandate and enhance the visibility of its universal goals and the credibility of its role within the UN system.

The most urgent need is to restore the General Conference to its true constitutional role as the parliament of UNESCO, the policy making/priority determining body. It needs to be less intimidating, more user-friendly, especially to smaller Member States like our 14 Pacific countries which have no Permanent Delegations, which are isolated in the largest cluster of UNESCO at the furthest distance from Paris. The Executive Board needs to become more "Executive" and more like a "Board" focusing on action, not replicating the General Conference but soundly implementing its decisions.

In an ideal UNESCO, the management regime would look quite different from what it does today. Like all modern organizations, there are essential features of management necessary for UNESCO's own sustainability. They include:

strong visionary leadership from the Director-General;
a coherent senior management team of Assistant Directors-General, probably less in number than present, acting as a true collegiate body – a college of ADGs, not a collage of ADGs, working harmoniously together under the leadership of the Director-General to inspire the Secretariat and achieve the intersectorality so necessary to realise the mandate through effective programme implementation;
perhaps the most important ingredient is the attainment of high morale amongst the staff. Leadership from the top is a start but other vital elements include:
recruitment processes which are transparent, fair, and visibly based solely on merit
placing square pegs in square holes i.e. no generic or poorly trained people placed in specialised positions
professional staff development programmes relevant to the needs and programmes of the secretariat
true career planning, especially for Young Professionals, recognizing and enhancing the skills of staff, and placing them in positions suited to their talents and expertise
in policy making, all staff must be free to give frank and fearless advice to the leaders of the Organization
a performance management system which is effective, fair, and rewards excellence - this means a results-based management approach, based on sound performance indicators which engender a culture of evaluation and where evaluation is not seen as a threat but as an essential tool for effective management (we have made a start in this domain but even Mr Matsuura has acknowledged that there is still a long way to go)
a decentralization programme which offers incentives and rewards for good performance in the field, with fewer field offices but each one being fully functional across all programmes areas.
So the motivation of UNESCO staff should be based on two pillars:

good old fashioned values of public service in the public interest, making a lasting contribution in the spirit of a truly professional international civil service,
combined with:

modern approaches to management, namely recognition of performance, counselling and discipline for non-performers, celebrating staff achievements and teamwork with organizational learning and development fostering a shared vision and building up strong corporate culture to achieve highlighting service delivery.
In the areas of both governance and management, UNESCO needs consistent reform to keep its mandate strong and relevant.

Partnerships offer an important challenge and it has become clear that UNESCO cannot accomplish its mandate alone. Apart from the UN system, partnerships with the private sector and non-profit sector offer considerable promise. The L'Oreal and Microsoft experiences show what can be achieved in public/private partnerships for the common good of human kind. UNESCO needs to initiate many more of these but the current partnership process is too complex and time consuming and needs to be made more streamlined and partner-friendly.

But of course the greatest partnership potential lies within the Organization itself. UNESCO is a family and it is important for any family to have shared values, goals and visions. For the family to play a strong and constructive role in the community, it is vital that there be harmony and a productive partnership between all members of the family. For UNESCO this includes:

Institutes, which need an arms-length relationship to empower them while they pursue UNESCO goals and ideals;
Centres, Chairs, networks, clubs, parliamentarians, civil society and NGOs – they need to know that they are valued family members and that their contributions are recognized.
But the UNESCO of the future must give more encouragement to its family member with the greatest potential of all - National Commissions. They are the great comparative advantage of UNESCO, unique grass roots mobilisers of UNESCO's mandate and ideals. They are the capacity-builders.
But to achieve these goals for the UNESCO family, National Commissions need greater recognition of their constitutional statutes, more training, more knowledge, and greater inclusion in the Organization's programming. Since the Participation Programme is the lifeblood of the National Commissions, it must be larger, stronger, and more inclusive than at present. A dynamic National Commission with a strong Participation Programme is a devastating combination to accomplish the mission of UNESCO, multiply its impact, and raise its visibility.

A final great challenge. In 11 days time young people from more than 100 countries will come to the UNESCO Youth Forum to give us inspiration, hope, and revitalisation as they debate and discuss better practice Dialogue Among Civilizations.

Australia is proud to have initiated the Youth Forum, which could provide leadership throughout the world and a gene-pool of future National Commission members, Ambassadors, and community leaders.

We are handing on to our young people a turbulent world with many challenges and insecurities. Their life will not be easy but it will be rewarding if we keep our youth programmes strong, and engage young people as equal partners, seeing them not as the problem but as part of the solution. For in the heart and mind of every young person is a desire to make a difference, to contribute to and be part of a vision. We must provide that vision.

Since peace begins in the minds of youth, it is in the minds of youth that the foundations of peace must be constructed.

Herein lies our greatest challenge for the next 60 years, to create peace in the minds of youth.










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