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Interventions by Australia > 169th session

UNESCO EXECUTIVE BOARD
169th session

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 at its previous sessions
and
The reform process
Items 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3

Intervention by Kenneth Wiltshire AO (Australia)

19 April 2004

Let me begin Mr Director-General by thanking you for your recent visit to the Pacific and the fillip you have given in particular to Education and Statistics - Statistics which will put the Pacific on the map at last. We also express our gratitude to the Japanese Government for the extrabudgetary funds which have made all this possible. I am also glad that you saw your favourite dance in Tonga, although our spies tell us that you did not join in the performance of the dance.

Since this is also the first substantive Board meeting since the General Conference, Australia would like to thank you for the organization of a successful conference. Our thanks go also to the President of the General Conference, His Majesty Michael Omolewa. I call him that because his performance was majestic.

However, I would also like to convey some feedback from smaller Member States many of whom found the Conference a very daunting experience, heavy with procedural logistics and overwhelming. They are intimidated by various elements of the Conference like Credentials, payment of dues, Draft Resolutions and their admissibility rules, and the whole technical nature of the Legal Committee. I would ask you Mr Omolewa to conduct a review of Conference procedures to see whether they can be made more user friendly so that the parliament of UNESCO can truly be accessible to all. We need a new approach.

Indeed this takes me to the theme of this intervention, which is the need for new approaches in UNESCO. As we look at all the documentation in items 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, although the Organization has certainly been busy, the activities give the appearance of just ticking over, routine, stale, moribund, even of a body that is in a rut.

This is the spring session of the Board and I take my inspiration from the flowers of Paris in the spring. It is a time of new life, when we should be blossoming with new ideas and new ways. There will be time enough in the fall for us to be feeling reflective and deciduous. Australia believes that we should approach planning for the last biennium of the Medium Term-Strategy as a biennium of innovation, new approaches, new thinking, and new paradigms.

Let me illustrate some areas where we believe there should be new thinking:

The most fundamental example is the 33C/5. The questionnaires are about to go out and the famous regional Consultations with BSP are about to begin (Jules Verne wrote a book about the BSP - Around the World in 80 Days). We wish BSP bon voyage, but at this Executive Board meeting we should already be discussing the next C/5. Indeed, we should have created the Drafting Group on the 33C/5 at this very meeting to formulate guidance and views to BSP. The Executive Board should be proactive, not reactive, in relation to the Organization's budget and programme priorities. The working group on the relationship between the three organs should also have this matter on its agenda since it is fundamental to UNESCO's governance.

In terms of the programme, the most urgent need is for new approaches to Education For All (EFA). On the basis of the documents before us at this meeting, we are not going to meet the Dakar goals. This is extremely serious since they are also Millennium Development Goals. The whole success of UNESCO will be judged on the EFA results; there is a lot at stake and Australia is very concerned in this regard, including at the slow pace of filling the ADG Education position following the resignation of John Daniel. We thank you Mr Daniel for your contribution - you will miss us in Vancouver - but we must fill this vacancy urgently as this position is so vital to our flagship programme, EFA. I cannot believe that some six weeks have gone by without the post being advertised.

Then there is the way we in which we address the Recommendation on the Status of Teachers, which is again on our agenda for this meeting. There is no more important group for the achievement of UNESCO's mandate than teachers, but our approach to this matter is extremely disappointing. It is very poorly conceived and does nothing to raise teachers’ recognition and standing. This approach should be scrapped immediately, the partnership with ILO should be reviewed, and new, more productive modalities be found as a matter of urgency.

I now turn to the matter of Decades, Years, and Summits. Here we need new approaches too. I contrast the very successful International Year of Freshwater and the achievements of the World Summit on the Information Society, with the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development, which seems to show signs of being under-resourced. Also, it seems wrong that the United Nations can declare a UN Decade but not provide any specific funding to the organization it designates as the lead agency. I also contrast the very promising planning for the Barbados+10 Conference in Mauritius with that for the Seoul+5 event to be held in Bonn, which is going off track and should be focused as a true monitoring of progress in Technical and Vocational Education and Training. While we are on this subject, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) seems to have slipped dangerously in prominence and must be restored to high priority if we are to achieve Lifelong Learning and linking the world of education to the world of work.

At this Board meeting, as in all recent years, the agenda is very much dominated by UNESCO's role in conflict and post conflict situations, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. These are very important matters and UNESCO has had considerable success in addressing them. We wonder whether the time has come to create an Executive High Level Unit (drawing together expertise from within the Secretariat) to handle what the Director-General called "navigating through turbulence". The sectors say that they are staying the course in the reform process and programme delivery, but they will not finish the course if their energy is absorbed or distracted by handling these special crisis and post-crisis situations.

I have been concerned for some time about the situation within the UNESCO family - which includes Headquarters, Field Offices, Sectors, Institutes, Centres, National Commissions, NGOs, and Civil Society. The foundations of a family should be mutual help, support, and celebrating each other's achievements. However, in UNESCO there seems instead to be too much mistrust, control, and suspicion.

Take the case, for instance, of the Institutes, such as the very successful IBE, IIEP, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and the new Delft Institute for Water Education. The paradigm for relationships with Institutes appears to be one of control, when it should be one of empowerment, and recognition of the results and goodwill they bring to UNESCO. We have yet another paper before us at this Board meeting which starts from this bad paradigm of control and this needs to be stamped out. Every government has independent corporate entities, every University has Centres and Institutes, and they all give them some independence, precisely to encourage enterprise and innovation and to build close productive relationships with clients. Why UNESCO cannot learn this lesson and work together with a shared vision is hard to understand. A radical paradigm shift is needed.

Then there is the age old problem of the lack of true inter-sectoral co-operation. The silos in UNESCO are still higher than any on the prairies of North America or the plains of Central Europe. The next C/5 must break this down, whether through joint Main Lines of Action, the so-called two-way love affairs, or through designated staff sharing in joint position descriptions, and definitely through performance agreements. New innovative approaches are definitely needed in this area.

Similar things can be said about the attitude to National Commissions. They are jewels in the crown of UNESCO, especially their Secretaries-General. I have said before that there will be a place in heaven for the Secretaries-General of National Commissions (their Chairpersons may be going to a different place). But what is the mode of communication with National Commissions? It is always demanding, requesting, surveying, hectoring, and all with a barrage of letters written in a control tone. We have an example at this Board meeting in a paper with a very interesting proposal for UNESCO "Houses". However after the first few pages we find the old familiar language again, with a list of rules that will have to be followed and no indication as to how the National Commission is to receive support from UNESCO. As a final example, I quote the upcoming Consultation of Asia-Pacific National Commissions, the dates for which were unilaterally changed by the Secretariat with no attempt to ask National Commissions whether this would be convenient. The result is that the meeting has been brought forward into this budget year, catching many National Commissions without funding to attend. Please let us have a new approach to National Commissions which recognises that they are the lifeblood of UNESCO at the grass roots level.

The litany continues through to UNESCO's networks. Take for example the highly successful ASPnet, or the MAB programme, or MOST, or UNEVOC. These all represent examples of a tremendous comparative advantage for UNESCO, but they are allowed to run down from time to time for lack of proper recognition and resourcing. A regular programme of renewal needs to be applied to them.

A family can only function if it has shared values and a shared vision based on pride in the successes of all its members, thereby empowering and inspiring them all to achieve their full potential. The UNESCO family is in dire need of returning to this ancient truth through renewed positive relationships.

Of course the prime candidate for renewal is the reform process. The last biennium of this Medium Term-Strategy must not suffer from reform fatigue. But the reform process is flagging. The excellent work of the IOS and the External Auditor is not changing the culture of the Organization towards results based management. They are treated as the tail of the dog and this tail is not wagging this dog. Results-based management and the culture of evaluation have to be internalised; they must become second nature, they must be instinctive and intuitive. This is not yet the case.

A similar story occurs in the approach to planning programming and budgeting. For example we want to know that the costs of key projects/activities associated with programme delivery are being taken into account in planning the regular budget for the next C/5 and beyond. Having agreed to take on a very large loan for the renovation of HQ, we need to know that this is being built into future projections of the regular budget. Similarly, ongoing maintenance costs, security costs, and the important but still unfunded human resources component of FABS require proper forward planning and funding from the regular budget.

In the past there has been a tendency to consider such things as add-ons, separate to our regular activities, and to come cap in hand to donors for extrabudgetary funding. These costs are, however, central to the way in which UNESCO carries

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