Unesco

 U.N.E.S.C.O. 

U.N.E.S.C.O. stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization. It is a specialized wing of the United Nations. Its goal is to promote world peace and security through international collaboration in education, arts, sciences and culture. U.N.E.S.C.O. is made up of 193 member countries and 12 associate members, along with non-governmental, intergovernmental, and private organizations. It is headquartered at the World Heritage Center in Paris, and also has 53 regional field offices and 199 national committees that make its global mandate easier.

 

U.N.E.S.C.O.  was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations's International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. Its constitution establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating framework. U.N.E.S.C.O.'s founding mission, which was shaped by the Second World War, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It works on its goal in five major fields: education, natural sciences, social or human sciences, culture and communication or information. U.N.E.S.C.O. sponsors projects that improve literacy, provide technical training and education, advance science, protect independent media and initiate  freedom, preserve regional and cultural history, and promote cultural diversity.

U.N.E.S.C.O.'s activities have increased over the years. It assists in the translation and dissemination of world literature, and helps establish and secure World Heritage Sites of cultural and natural importance. U.N.E.S.C.O. has launched several initiatives and global movements, such as ‘Education For All’, to further advance its main objectives.

U.N.E.S.C.O. is governed by the General Conference, which is composed of member states and associate members, which meets once every two years to set the agency's programmes and the budget.  It also elects members of the executive board, which manages U.N.E.S.C.O.'s work, and appoints a ‘Director-General’ every four years, who serves as U.N.E.S.C.O.'s chief administrator.

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Facts:

There are thousands of U.N.E.S.C.O. World Heritage sites all over the world. Over 150 different countries play host to U.N.E.S.C.O. sites of heritage. 

Both the UK and the USA have joined and left U.N.E.S.C.O. on a number of occasions as a result of international politics. The US, in particular, criticized the organization in the early 1980s, citing their concerns over U.N.E.S.C.O. harboring anti-West bias. The US re-joined in 2003.

U.N.E.S.C.O., while based in France, has cluster offices all over the world. Most of these cover at least three nations at a time.  There is a further HQ catering to cluster offices, which is in New Delhi, India.

A British company secretly funded Congolese rebel groups in order to open a U.N.E.S.C.O. world heritage site to oil drilling.

The Galapagos Islands became a National Park in 1959, A U.N.E.S.C.O. World Heritage Site in 1978, and was named a Biological Marine Reserve in 1986.

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UNESCO's early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by expert missions to other countries, including, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal. In 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, led member governments to commit to achieving basic education for all by 2015.