A World of science Vol 9 n°4

A World of science Vol 9 n°4

The Opening Messages

"Don’t punish UNESCO"

There is a letter to the editor in today's Washington Post from UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova. I quote from the letter:

UNESCO supports many causes in line with U.S. security interests. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we are helping governments and communities prepare for life after the withdrawal of U.S. military forces. We are bolstering the literacy of the Afghan National Police and are leading the country’s largest education program, reaching some 600,000 learners in 18 provinces. We work with the United States to advance democratic freedoms. Mandated to promote freedom of expression, UNESCO stands up for every journalist attacked or killed across the world. In Tunisia and Egypt, we are leading education reform and training journalists. We target the causes of violent extremism by training teachers in human rights and Holocaust remembrance. 

Major U.S. private-sector companies are key partners. We work with Procter and Gamble on girls’ education in Senegal and with the Packard Foundation to reduce girls’ dropout rates in Tanzania and Ethiopia. 

The issue of Palestinian membership should not be allowed to derail these initiatives, which go far beyond the politics of the Middle East......

Engineering Can Help Developing Nations Solve Critical Problems

Engineering can help developing nations solve critical problems, but a worldwide shortage of engineers is hampering the effort, according to former UNESCO official Dr. Tony Marjoram.

To that end, he said, engineering education must become more exciting and better convey the key role engineers can play in improving people's lives. Marjoram will address these issues during the inaugural IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, 30 October -- 1 November 2011, in Seattle.

Marjoram, former head of engineering, Division of Basic and Engineering Sciences, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, will deliver the opening keynote address on Monday morning 31 October. He gave a preview of his talk on "The Promise of Tomorrow" radio show with Colonel Mason earlier this month.

"Engineering is extremely important in promoting humanitarian development," Marjoram said. "When young people can see that engineering is vitally important in this area ... [they] are more attracted towards a career in engineering."

You can listen to the interview at http://www.promiseoftomorrow.biz/bizradio/100311/100311.htm . (Go to the second half hour.)

Read more.....

U.S. National Commission Meets on Monday 11/28/11

The U.S. National Commission for UNESCO is set to convene a full meeting on Monday 11/28 at 10:00 am EDT, That is the Monday after Thanksgiving.

The meeting will convene on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, DC. The meeting will run from 10 am 2 pm. More details will be forthcoming.

This meeting will include some updates about UNESCO, but will mostly be designed for action - with plenty of caucusing, action teams, and whiteboards. 

If you wish to attend, please inform the secretariat now right here!!!

36th UNESCO General Conference Begins

Next Tuesday 10/25 UNESCO will convene its 36th meeting of the General Conference. Several Commissioners have generously volunteered to help represent the U.S. delegation and will attend several different pieces of the upcoming meeting.

 

U.S. Under Secretary of Education and Commission Member Martha Kanter will deliver the U.S. Delegation official statement to the General Conference.

 

The question of Palestinian membership still looms large on this upcoming meeting in terms of U.S. membership in UNESCO. 

 

You can read some recent coverage here. 

 

Americans for UNESCO recently circulated a letter about this issue, which you can read here.

FYI -- The Repercussions if UNESCO Admits Palestine

I quote extensively from an article in UN Dispatch by Mark Leon Goldberg:

UNESCO member states are poised to admit Palestine as the newest member of the UN body. This is an achievement for the Palestinian leadership, which is seeking admission to various UN agencies, but potentially catastrophic news for UNESCO and American leadership at the UN. And through no fault of her own, even Beyonce may suffer. 

At issue here are two strict laws passed by the United States congress in 1994 which stipulate that “the United States shall not make any voluntary or assessed contribution to any affiliated organization of the United Nations which grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.”  And if that were not clear enough, a second clause clearly states that the United States may not “provide funds [to] the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.”  The law authorizes no “waiver authority” by the executive branch, meaning that there is no way for President Obama to end run around this prohibition. 

In other words, if UNESCO admits Palestine as a member, the United States will be forced to effectively withdraw from the organization. That would be a huge financial blow to UNESCO, which receives 22% of its budget ($80 million) in dues payments from the United States. With that money, UNESCO promotes world press freedom, is the lead UN agency for the implementation of  the Millennium Development Goal number 2 (universal primary eduction) and administers the World Heritage site program, among other things. 

But the effect would be felt far beyond UNESCO. Several smaller UN agencies — including World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the UN Conference on Trade and Development — tie their own membership to other UN agencies. This means that when one UN agency accepts a new member, these three UN agencies automatically accept the new member as well. Once UNESCO admits Palestine, these other UN agencies will automatically admit Palestine as well…and the United States will be forced to automatically pull out.

The United States may withhold funding for UNESCO

The Palestinian Authority's request for full membership in the United Nations has received wide public attention, but meanwhile a more silent but equally grave political situation is playing out at UNESCO.
UNESCO’s Executive Board ended its 187th session on 6 October marked by the request for membership to UNESCO by Palestine. The Board voted on the request for Palestinian membership on October 5. Forty members voted in favor of admission, four against and there were 14 abstentions. The Board’s recommendation for admission will now be submitted to UNESCO’s General Conference (26 October to 10 November), where it requires a two-thirds majority vote to become effective.

The United States Ambassador to UNESCO released a statement explaining the U.S. opposition to the membership at this time.

We take the floor to express our strong opposition to this resolution. Granting the Palestinians full membership now in a specialized agency such as UNESCO is premature. Given that the UN Security Council is reviewing the Palestinian application, we believe it is inappropriate for a UN specialized agency to also take up the same matter.

The New York Times reported:

The State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said that lawyers were busily reviewing how and when the Palestinian membership would affect the American financing. She said the administration would try to block a vote of the full Unesco membership even as it encourages a resumption of talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. 

The issue is a hot one in Congress. In a statement on Tuesday, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, urged the Obama administration to “make clear that any decision to upgrade the Palestinian mission’s status by Unesco or any other U.N. entity will lead to a cutoff of U.S. funds to that entity.”

U.S. Code Title 22, Section 287e includes the following:

“No funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or any other Act shall be available for the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.” This was adopted by a Democratic Congress in 1989 as Public Law 101-246. 

“The United States shall not make any voluntary or assessed contribution: (1) to any affiliated organization of the United Nations which grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood, or (2) to the United Nations, if the United Nations grants full membership as a state in the United Nations to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood, during any period in which such membership is effective.” This was adopted by a Democratic Congress in 1994 as Public Law 103-236.

The first of these provisions was enacted into law in 1989. In that year Palestine applied for UNESCO membership and the Israeli government submitted a statement as to why it believed Palestine did not qualify for UNESCO membership:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0008/000827/082712eo.pdf

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0008/000827/082713EO.pdf

The Huffington Post reports:

Ismail Tilawi, the representative of UNESCO in the Palestinian territories, says that since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s, a request for Palestinian membership has been on the agenda of every UNESCO General Conference, which convenes every two years.

The motion to admit Palestine fully to membership in UNESCO apparently enjoys wide support among the 193 Member States, certainly enough to receive the two-thirds majority of "States present and voting" required for admission as a full Member. However, there is hope that a compromise along the lines of some sort of Palestinian membership short of "full" might be reached.

Senior budget officers at UNESCO, analyzing the consequences of failure to receive the U.S. funding, foresee immediate slashes in program activity, layoffs in personnel beginning in January, and other credible threats, including to UNESCO's pension system. However, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries hint they might be willing to fill the funding gap, a gesture the implications of which remain to be examined.

UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova will spend Thursday and Friday of this week in Washington attempting to explain the impossible position in which UNESCO has been placed. State’s Mid-East negotiator David Hale in Paris will attempt to find a solution, perhaps trying to convince Palestinians to accept something less than full membership.

UNESCO DG on the Evolving U.S.-UNESCO Relationship

 UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova on the evolution of the United States' relationship with UNESCO

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize

 On 8 March 2006, the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirlea, opened an International conference entitled Women in Politics organized by UNESCO within the framework of the celebration of International Women's Day.

UNESCO Venice - Interview with Prof Pier Luigi Nimis, University of Trieste

When asked:

How does biodiversity and internet interact? Prof. Nimis affirms that "in the past the main problem was finding information on organisms, animals and plants was difficult. One had to go to a library and get books; they were difficult to find and read. Today, it is much easier. If you know the name of an organism, a plant, or an animal search on Google and an enormous amount of related information will be found."

U.S. Members of the UNESCO Executive Board

Title	Name	Years	Sessions
Member	Mr Archibald MacLeish	1946-1947	1-2
Member	Mr Milton Eisenhower	1947	3-4
Member	Mr George D. Stoddard	1947-1949	5-17
Member	Mr Luther H. Evans	1949-1953	18-34
Member	Mr John A. Perkins	1953-1954	35-39
Member	Mr Athelstan F. Spilhaus	1954-1958	40-50
Member	Mr George N. Shuster	1958-1963	51-65
Member	Mr William Benton	1963-1968	65-80
Member	Ms Katie S. Louchheim	1968-1969	81-83
Member	Ms Louise Gore	1969-1973	83-93
Member	Mr Edward O. Sullivan	1973-1974	93-95
Member	Mr Gordon H. Scherer	1974-1976	96-99
Member	Mr Robert B. Kamm	1976-1977	99-103
Member	Mr Henry E. Kerry	1977-1978	103-105
Member	Mr Esteban Edward Torres	1978-1980	106-109
Member	Ms Barbara W. Newell	1980-1982	109-114
Member	Ms Jean Broward Shevlin Gerard	1982-1984	114-120

The United States held membership on the Executive Board of UNESCO from the beginning of the Organization until the United States withdrew from the organization in 1984. Since the United States rejoined the Organization in 2003, the United States has been represented on the Executive Board by the Permanent Representatives to UNESCO, Louise Oliver and Daniel Killion.

I am impressed by the large number of distinguished people who served as the United States' members of UNESCO's Executive Board. Especially in the early years of UNESCO the members were distinguished public intellectuals such as Archibald MacLeish and Luther Evans (both of whom served as Librarians of Congress), President Eisenhower's brother Milton, Athelstan Spilhaus (scientist educator) and William Benton (Publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica). A number ran universities (Eisenhower, Perkins, Shuster, Kamm, Newell).

Happy Anniversary to UNESCO Natural Science Programs

UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

The United States was instrumental in the creation of both of these programs of UNESCO's Natural Science Sector.

Q&A: Gretchen Kalonji on UNESCO's plans for science

SciDev.Net's Yojana Sharma interviewed UNESCO's Gretchen Kalonji about how a new panel of experts is breathing fresh life into the organisation's science plans.

The first ever UNESCO High Panel on Science for Development, tasked with strengthening the efforts of UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) in science, technology and innovation (STI), held its inaugural meeting in France earlier this month (15–16 September). The panel of eminent personalities — including former Pakistan science minister, Atta-ur-Rahman, and Jacob Palis, president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences — will meet twice a year. Its first report, based on September's meeting, will be released in a few weeks.

SciDev.Net spoke to Gretchen Kalonji, UNESCO assistant director-general for natural sciences, after the meeting to discuss the formation of the panel, how it will put its recommendations into practice, and its plans for shaping science and innovation in the developing world, particularly Africa.

Read the interview...

Executive Board Concludes Meeting

 Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, and
Eleonora Mitrofanova, Chairperson of UNESCO’s Executive Board© UNESCO/Patrick Lagès

UNESCO’s Executive Board ended its 187th session on 6 October marked by the request for membership to UNESCO by Palestine, an endorsement of the Director-General’s “reform to perform” programme, and the Organization’s reinforced focus on Africa.

The Board voted on the request for Palestinian membership on October 5. Forty members voted in favour of admission, four against and there were 14 abstentions. The Board’s recommendation for admission will now be submitted to UNESCO’s General Conference (26 October to 10 November), where it requires a two-thirds majority vote to become effective.

The 58 Board Members also approved proposals to reform and reinforce UNESCO’s action in Africa through a strengthened network of field offices, which the Director-General  stressed on several occasions as an absolute priority for the Organization.

"UNESCO is moving ahead very strongly with African priorities," Irina Bokova said. "I am determined to focus on the Priority Africa programme so that it becomes an effective instrument for developing education, for giving young people the tools with which to find jobs, and for giving recognition to African culture."

The Board also considered the issue of the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences. After extensive debate it decided by consensus to establish a working group to undertake further consultations with a view to achieving a conclusion on the issue by the Board’s meeting in the spring of 2012.

Read more....

Controversy over UNESCO possible recognition of Palestine state

Map Source: InternationalRelations.com

The Executive Board of UNESCO voted today on a recommendation to admit Palestine to the Organization. From the 58 member-states on the Board, the recommendation was passed by a vote of 40 in favor to four against, with 14 abstentions. Palestine's request for membership will now be considered at the next session of the General Conference (October 26-November 10) where a two-thirds majority vote is required for membership to be granted. Decisions for admission are taken by the General Conference and the Executive Board which are UNESCO's governing bodies.

According to The New York Times:

Fourteen delegations abstained, including those from Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, while the American delegation joined Germany, Latvia and Romania in opposing the measure. (Israel does not presently sit on the executive board, where membership rotates.) Russia joined African and Arab states, among others, in support.

The United States government has opposed according Palestine full national status in UN agencies at this time on the basis that there should first be a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, and that premature recognition of Palestine would make getting the peace process under way more difficult. In general, the United States government has supported a two state solution.

The vote is especially important as the United Nations is also considering accepting Palestine as a member nation, and were a specialized agency such as UNESCO to recognize the Palestinians as a member state it might set a precedent for the vote in the UN. 

The New York Times reports that "Palestinians Win a Vote On Bid to Join Unesco". It reports further:

(F)ull membership in Unesco could mean a legally mandated cutoff of all contributions from the United States, both dues and voluntary. 

Existing United States legislation appears to mandate the cutoff of money to the United Nations or any of its agencies if they grant “full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood,” and more legislation along the same lines has been introduced. The United States contributes 22 percent of Unesco’s budget...... 

The State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said that lawyers were busily reviewing how and when the Palestinian membership would affect the American financing. She said the administration would try to block a vote of the full Unesco membership even as it encourages a resumption of talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The fiscal year for the U.S. Government started October 1, 2011 so presumably U.S. funding from the last fiscal year (that ended September 30th) has already been transferred to UNESCO. Were the action of the General Conference to trigger a withholding of U.S. contributions to UNESCO, that would presumably occur in 2012 or thereafter. Member states have a responsibility to pay their assessed contributions to the Organization, but there have been many occasions in which a country is in arrears on those contributions, so the United States might withhold payment to UNESCO for a period of time and then pay the amount in arrears. Indeed, the Congress has in the past withheld contributions to the United Nations as means of pressuring the UN to change management or policy, later paying the arrears.

When the decision was made by the United States Government in the Reagan administration to withdraw from UNESCO, the Government provided the required one year notice of withdrawal, paying its assessed contributions for the period the United States remained a member state. The withdrawal, combined with that of the United Kingdom and Singapore, created a major financial crisis for UNESCO.

The return of the United States to UNESCO in 2004 did not result in a massive immediate increase in its budget, but rather a reduction in the assessed contributions of the other member states. Still, withholding 22 percent of the budget would cause serious financial problems for the organization. Were the United States again to withdraw from UNESCO the crisis would be greater and longer lasting. Were other major donors to also withhold contributions and/or withdraw, the result might be fatal to the Organization.

As in other United Nations system forums, the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab controversy has come up regularly at UNESCO Executive Board and General Conference meetings. Often those debates have led to useful conclusions, and to the best of my knowledge, none led to crises in UNESCO governance.

U.NATIONAL COMMISSION MEETS ON MONDAY 11/28

The U.S. National Commission for UNESCO is set to convene a full meeting on Monday 11/28 around 10:00 am EDT It is to convene on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, DC. The meeting will run from 10 am into the afternoon (maybe 2 pmish?). More details will be forthcoming. This meeting will include some updates about UNESCO, but will mostly be designed for action - with plenty of caucusing, action teams, and whiteboards. We will be doing a lot of brainstorming re: programming for 2012. If you plan to attend the annual meeting now inform the secretariat right here!!!

Unesco Director Asks Dictator to Withdraw Science Prize

The director of Unesco called Friday for a West African dictator to withdraw the controversial prize he has endowed for the organization. The prize in the life sciences, financed by and named for President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, would damage the “prestige” and “credibility” of Unesco, its director general, Irina Bokova, said at a meeting of the group’s executive board in Paris. 


Read more about the situation from"

• The AAAS ScienceInsider
• The New York Times

UNESCO to resume cooperation with Libya

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has welcomed the U.N. General Assembly’s recognition of Libya’s National Transitional Council as the country’s legitimate government and announced that UNESCO is looking forward to placing its expertise at the disposal of the new authorities.

"I welcome the return of Libya to the international community,” the Director-General said. “We stand ready to help the Libyan people in advancing human dignity and rights as part of a new era. May the raising of the new flag of Libya alongside those of UNESCO’s other Member States, herald the dawn of an age of reconciliation and recovery for the country.

"Our Organization is looking forward to assisting Libya in the fields of education, culture, science and media development to sustain their aspirations and efforts promoting human rights, freedom of expression, justice and women’s empowerment," concluded Irina Bokova.  

Read more.....

UNESCO Panel Takes High-Level Look at Helping Development

ScienceInsider reports on the first meeting of the UNESCO High Level Science Panel: 

Science and sustainable development were the buzz words at the first meeting of a new advisory panel to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the end of last week. The charge to the High Panel on Science for Development is to identify trends in science and technology and to help UNESCO sharpen the focus of its work in promoting sustainable development, according to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, who addressed the meeting. The brief is broad, as the panel has been asked to include in its discussions all the organization's work in the natural sciences, humanities, and engineering, as well as find links between science and culture, education, and communications and look for new partners in the private sector, civil society, and academia.

Among the challenges on the table are to pinpoint the best ways of harnessing science and technology for local economic development, incorporating indigenous knowledge systems into the global scientific base, wiping out disparities in access to resources, and preventing brain drain from developing countries. The panel is also to define UNESCO's role in promoting international cooperation in areas such as climate change and the climatic impact of the oceans, Bokova said at the meeting. Sustainable development "requires holistic approaches that cross disciplinary and policy domains and make the most of synergies between them," she said. "Better understanding is the first step to anticipating developments and designing better public policy."

The panel, which will meet here twice a year, is made up of 24 scientists and academics drawn from a multitude of scientific disciplines and from all regions of the world. Members include Susan Avery, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; José Sarukhán Kermez, national coordinator of Mexico's National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity; Ahmadou Lamine N'Diaye, president of the African Academy of Science; Gong Ke, president of Nankai University; and Rolf Heuer, director general of CERN. But group deliberately has no chairperson, at least for the moment. "This is the way U.N. high panels usually work, Gretchen Kalonji, UNESCO assistant director-general for science told ScienceInsider. "But we may well change our methods of working as time goes by."

Read more....