Rise and fall of unesco

Unesco is nothing if not controversial. Its problems began even before it was born and have stayed with it ever since. The last three years have been notable for the storms raging round it, leading to the withdrawal of the United States and Britain.

A central figure in the controversies surrounding Unesco is the Senegalese former director general, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, who lost out in a determined last-ditch battle to obtain a third term after holding the job for 13 years. M'Bow has often been painted in the Western world as the cause of Unesco's troubles.

In this first-hand study of Unesco, Nihal Singh relates the present problems to the early years of the organization and how circumstances and Western, particularly U.S., disillusionment with the United Nations system and M'Bow have combined to bring a once-proud organiz ation to its present sorry state.

Unesco's birth was associated with Britain's desire to carve out a leadership role in education in the post-war world. In fact, the first stirrings of Unesco began in meetings of the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) in London before the United States asserted its newfound supremacy in the closing years of the war. But the cold war stymied the organization even during its second general conference. And successive directors general then, as now, have been battling with an idealistic, if not naive, constitution which proved impossible to translate into practice.