By Ulrike Zeigermann

UNESCO is currently under great pressure. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has been trying to reform itself since 2009. But instead of the promised greater visibility and effectiveness, it has been accused of being too political from many sides and is also in financial difficulties. In October 2017, the USA and Israel also declared their withdrawal. The UNESCO General Conference will now take place from 30 October to 14 November 2017, where the future of the organization will also be renegotiated.

Many unanswered questions at the 2017 General Assembly

"Since wars arise in the minds of men, peace must also be anchored in the minds of men," reads UNESCO's 1945 constitution. A noble goal, which, one might think, should meet with broad approval and generate diverse political commitment. However, if you follow the current debates within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the spirit of peace between the 195 member states does not seem to be particularly well anchored.

This makes it all the more exciting that many are currently looking to Paris, where the representatives of the member states have come together from 30 October to 14 November 2017 to discuss the future of this specialized agency of the United Nations. The sessions of the General Conference have been held in Paris every two years since 1946. The General Conference is UNESCO's supreme decision-making and supervisory body. It discusses administrative issues relating to the budget and the new management of UNESCO. However, the General Conference also spends two weeks discussing many substantive issues. And, indeed, there are many unresolved issues.

In 2009, a woman was elected to head UNESCO for the first time. Bulgaria's former Foreign Minister Irina Bokova won the election with a vision that promised a fundamental reform of the organization. However, despite many successful programs in recent years, in particular to promote sustainable development and peace through education, UNESCO is in a deep crisis in October 2017 - at the end of Irina Bokova's term of office.

The current crisis is first and foremost a financial crisis. The USA, UNESCO's most important contributor, has not paid into the budget since 2011, nor has Israel. Japan, the second most important contributor, has also repeatedly withheld money since 2015 and other countries are joining in. Overall, UNESCO is therefore missing almost a third of its budget. The debts of the member states now amount to over USD 640 million (as of November 3, 2017). However, these figures are not that surprising.

The financial problems are closely linked to the recent political crises crises. UNESCO is accused of being too political. Since the Palestinian Authority became a full member in 2011, Israel and the USA in particular have criticized the organization for making anti-Israeli decisions. The situation escalated in 2016 after the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem was only listed under its Muslim name in a controversial resolution and the Old City of Hebron in the West Bank was added to the World Heritage List in 2017 at the request of the Palestinians. On October 12, 2017, the USA and Israel finally declared their withdrawal from UNESCO at the end of 2018. Japan's protest, on the other hand, is about the inclusion of the documents relating to the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 in the International Memory of the World Register. Other member states, including Germany, also repeatedly accuse the organization of strong politicization.

In the past, too, states have repeatedly left the organization for political reasons. For example, South Africa was not a member state from 1957 to 1994, the USA from 1985 to 2003, Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1986 to 1997 and Singapore from 1987 to 2007. However, they all later became regular member states again. It is therefore perhaps premature to play out worst-case scenarios. Nevertheless, there can be no question of peace in the spirit of the member states at present. UNESCO is facing many challenges.

The new Director-General of UNESCO was officially appointed on November 10, 2017. The former French minister Audrey Azoulay had previously prevailed in the Executive Board against the Qatari candidate Hamad bin Abdulasis al-Kawari by 30 votes to 28. In addition to the acute financial problems and the central accusation of excessive politicization of the organizations, it also faces very specific strategic and structural issues that can only be touched on at the General Conference.

Strategic positioning and substantive profiling in the face of crumbling multilateralism

A central (strategic) aspect of its work will have to be UNESCO's positioning within the United Nations. Ultimately, UNESCO must also position itself strategically and skillfully within the debate on the future of the international (community of states) if it does not want to sink into political insignificance, also in view of the coming financial bottlenecks.

Even though the conflict between the USA and UNESCO has existed since the admission of Palestine in 2011, the decision to leave nevertheless took place in the era of "America First", during which US President Donald Trump turned his back on the Paris Agreement on climate protection and repeatedly and vehemently criticized the United Nations. The rhetoric of geopolitical unilateralism repeatedly resonates in Trump's polemics. In this respect, the decision of the USA, one of the most important political and economic nations in the world, is above all of symbolic significance. The then Director-General Irina Bokova therefore rightly expressed her regret at the decision of the USA and Israel to withdraw from UNESCO: "This is a loss for UNESCO, but also for the entire United Nations family and for multilateralism."

UNESCO is still a central specialized agency of the United Nations and the Secretary-General is a member of the UN ChiefExecutives Board for Coordination (CEB). For the new UNESCO Secretary-General Audrey Azoulay, her term of office will therefore not only be about creating new trust among the member states in order to bring her own organization out of the crisis, but also about strengthening the United Nations as a whole and developing a common vision for the future in order to prevent the international (community of states) from breaking apart.

Specifically, UNESCO is called uponto implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. UNESCO's goal and task is to promote mutual understanding and cooperation in education, science and culture to safeguard peace and security internationally. Against the backdrop of numerous current international and intra-societal conflicts, which are also reflected in UNESCO's internal problems, this goal seems more urgent today than ever. It is therefore all the more significant that a high-level ministerial meeting on the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (Education for Sustainable Development, SDG 4) is being held on the margins of the General Conference, at which initial experiences with implementation and further milestones will be discussed. This is certainly a political minefield, because even though the goals of the 2030 Agenda were unanimously adopted by all UN member states in 2015, heads of state and government often have their own ideas about good education policy and are reluctant to let anyone look at their cards. It is therefore important for UNESCO to act with diplomatic skill and to position itself clearly both strategically and in terms of content, as education is a prerequisite for understanding, respecting, exercising and demanding further human rights.

Professionalization and overcoming structural weaknesses in the face of a renaissance of national political interests

UNESCO's own structures are also conducive to its strong politicization. At the General Conference on November 8, 2017, new representatives of the member states were elected to the Executive Committee for the next four years. The Executive Committee acts as a supervisory body for the work programs and reviews the budget. The members of this body are divided into five country groups according to a fixed quota system. Germany also ran for a seat on the 58-member Executive Committee again in 2017. It was already a member from 2013-2017. However, unlike a supranational body such as the European Commission, the representatives of the member states on the Executive Committee primarily pursue national interests and are primarily accountable to their national governments. However, UNESCO will only be able to publicly highlight its political importance for the international (international) community if it succeeds in bringing together the individual national interests so that coherent work programs can be developed and implemented with solid funding.

On the other hand, the accusations of politicization must also be refuted by pointing out the inherently political aspects of (global) education policy. Even an independent mandate does not ultimately protect against the fact that even predominantly technical tasks, such as the issue of the inclusion of the documents relating to the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 in the World Documentary Heritage, can be highly politically charged. The desire for an apolitical international organization is therefore unrealistic and inappropriate. As a UN agency, UNESCO is primarily oriented towards the human rights-based value system of the United Nations. This normative value system should be the benchmark and point of reference for critical discussions on political decision-making processes. At the very least, this standard and normative reference point should be firmly anchored in the day-to-day work of the organization and its committees as well as in the setting of priorities for strategies.

The challenge in the current political debates during the General Conference, in the new Executive Committee and for the new Secretary-General is therefore to make the relevant decision-making processes more transparent and inclusive in future, while at the same time establishing a clear joint human rights-based and sustainable global education policy for the implementation of SDG4.