Looking at Unesco [antikvár]

The living ideal Unesco is an ideal as well as an organization. As its members' understanding of the ideal developed, so Unesco's structure and programme have been modified. Adapting itself like a living organism to the needs of a changing world, Unesco has undertaken such wide-ranging activities that it can hardly be compared with other United Nations Specialized Agencies; the fields of its speciafization run into dozens. Its name does not cover all it does. It is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. But the word culture includes activities in social and human sciences and the title does not mention communication, an area in which Unesco has been active since its beginnings, nor the work of promoting international conventions—such as the Geneva convention on copyright—which is one of its most important activities. Unesco is an Agency of the United Nations and all United Nations Member States have the right to belong to it. But membership does not always correspond. South Africa, which continued its membership of the United Nations, left Unesco at the end of 1956 over the Organization's stand on race; Portugal withdrew at the end of 1972; Switzerland is an active Member State although not belonging to the United Nations. As its membership has grown (from the twenty signatory States which brought it into existence in 1946 to 131) so has Unesco's staff. But although in early 1973 there were 1,889 professional staff, less than half of these were in the Paris headquarters, where the hundreds of windows reflect the Eiffel Tower and works by Henry Moore and Picasso grace the surroundings; 1,104 were in the field on Unesco projects around the world. Membership of Unesco in 1946 included only one country in southern Africa and only three in Asia. This composition changed as former colonies became independent—in 1960 alone, seventeen African countries became Member States. With the new members came new impetus for Unesco's growing involvement in development. By the beginning of 1973 Unesco had been engaged on projects involving $207 million from the United Nations Development Programme.