DEVELOPMENT: UNESCO Race Wide Open

By A. D. McKenzie Reprint | | Print |

PARIS, Jun 11 2009 (IPS) - The contest for a new UNESCO director-general is now wide open with the addition of last-minute nominees for the post, following the controversy around leading contender Farouk Hosny.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) made public the full list of nine candidates early this week.

Hosny, the Egyptian minister for culture, had been widely seen as certain to succeed current chief Koïchiro Matsuura of Japan. But comments he made in 2008 about “burning” Israeli books resurfaced over recent weeks, leading to calls for his selection to be blocked.

Hosny issued a public apology last month, just before the May 31 deadline for final nominees. But meanwhile the field has grown to include candidates who might be more acceptable to a wider range of the agency’s 193 member states.

With the addition of former Austrian foreign minister Benita Ferraro-Waldner, who is also the European Union commissioner for external affairs, the list now includes four women. UNESCO has never had a female director-general.

Ferraro-Waldner’s women competitors are Ina Mariulionyté, Lithuania’s ambassador to UNESCO, whose candidature was proposed by Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia; Irina Bokova, Bulgaria’s ambassador to France, proposed by her home country; and Ivonne A-Baki, an Ecuadorian artist and former diplomat of Lebanese descent, proposed by Ecuador.

Tanzanian scientist Sospeter Mwijarubi Muhongo has been nominated by his home country, as has Benin’s Nouréini Tidjani-Serpos, the UNESCO assistant director-general for Africa. Meanwhile, Algeria’s Mohammed Bedjaoui, an 81- year-old former foreign minister, was proposed by Cambodia.

Completing the nominee list is Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Yakovenko, proposed by the Russian Federation. He, like Ferraro-Waldner and Tidjani-Serpos, were last-minute candidates following the commotion around Hosny, who declared his candidature in 2007.

In 2008, responding to a question in the Egyptian Parliament about the possible presence of Israeli books in a new library in Alexandria, Hosny said he would “burn” such books himself if he found any.

The comment drew official protest from Israel, which opposed Hosny’s election until last month when a secret agreement was reached between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The deal, however, has not stopped other critics from condemning the candidature, and two weeks ago Hosny wrote in French newspaper Le Monde that he regretted the book-burning statement, and that he had no desire to “hurt Jewish culture or any other culture.”

“I am a man of peace,” Hosny wrote. “I know that peace comes through understanding and respect. In the name of these values I want to go back on the words that I used, which were taken as an appeal to burn Hebrew books.”

He said that his words had not been pre-meditated but that they had rashly expressed his indignation about the plight and suffering of Palestinians.

With African countries reluctant to see a European nominee win the post – there have been five European director-generals since the agency was formed in 1945 – Hosny may still have a chance. But the nomination of other African candidates complicates the picture, say analysts.

“If Hosny doesn’t win, the Arab world will definitely be disappointed,” says Dr. Waddick Doyle, director of the department of Global Communications at the American University of Paris.

“What worries me is that there is no real discussion of people’s qualifications to run the organisation and actually do something with it,” he told IPS. “Instead the whole debate is reduced to identity politics and the quota system.”

According to UNESCO, its 58-member executive board will “consider the candidatures and propose one name” at its next session, set for Sep. 7-23. “Each of the candidates will have to be interviewed and will have to outline their vision of UNESCO,” said the agency’s spokesperson Sue Williams.

The “winner” will have to be approved by the agency’s General Conference (to be held in Paris in October). The conference will name the new director- general, Williams said.

The second term in office of current director-general Matsuura ends in November. He was elected in 1999 and again in 2005. UNESCO’s rules prohibit a third term.