Bulgaria’s former foreign minister, 57-year old Irina Bokova , has taken over as the first woman Director-General of UNESCO, the Paris-based U.N. agency for Education, Science, Culture and Communication. On September 22, Ms Bokova emerged triumphant after UNESCO’s 58-member Executive Board voted for her following a long and difficult five-round electoral battle which pitted her against Egypt’s influential Culture Minister Faroukh Hosni.
Ms Bokova polled 31 votes to Mr. Hosni’s 27, after the latter had to publicly apologise for anti-Semitic remarks made to the Egyptian parliament. Ms Bokova joined Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry’s U.N. and Disarmament Department in 1976. She was foreign minister for a brief period in 1996-1997 and until her election was serving as Bulgarian Ambassador to France. Her candidature had the support of the Americans and the Germans while Mr. Hosni had strong backing from France. Ms Bokova’s election gave rise to anger in the Arab world where a majority of persons said the West had once again manipulated the election to keep Islamic nations outside the corridors of power within the U.N. system.
Europe has held the leadership of UNESCO for 45 of the organisation’s 64-year-old history. Although Ms Bokova has been described as the first person from a former Soviet bloc nation to lead UNESCO, she is in fact a European, since Bulgaria is a member of the EU. The post of Director-General has thus returned to Europe.
Ms Bokova, a petite attractive woman who favours tailored suits in strong colours, spoke to Vaiju Naravane in Paris about her election and her priorities for the organisation.
You presented a long and detailed “vision document” when you made your electoral pitch to UNESCO’s Executive Board during the last electoral process. So how do you see the organisation, its role, its future?
What exactly is UNESCO? Many people ask me that. The organisation is truly diverse and its member states too differ on what it is all about. Some countries say you should not be in the business of building schools; others say “Why don’t you come and train our teachers?” I feel we are at a crossroads and have to rethink the role of UNESCO because the world has changed so profoundly with the economic crisis, globalisation, and the emergence of new world powers. The economic crisis has also forced us to re-evaluate certain fundamentals — where our action should lie, what should be the emphasis.
We all know that UNESCO is the U.N. agency for Education, Science, Culture and Communication but what direction should it take? When the organisation was created it was meant to promote only intellectual cooperation and exchange of ideas. With the years UNESCO has become more involved with practical issues out in the field and today it plays a dual role — acting as a think tank, being the venue for an inter-cultural dialogue, about tolerance, conflict resolution, cultural diversity and how to reconcile the contradictions the world faces. On the other hand, out in the field, UNESCO helps governments to formulate educational policies, it is active in the field of scientific cooperation and I think this is a sphere where UNESCO can deliver more, and then UNESCO also has a role to play in combating climate change, promoting better water management, a relatively new area of action.
What do you see as being your biggest challenge?
One of the biggest challenges is also how to better integrate UNESCO into the United Nations system while retaining our leadership in certain areas, especially because the organisation is not a development agency. We are a leader in the field of education but we have to convince our partners of that leadership role.
I shall be laying the accent on education and science as the two key areas of UNESCO’s action. On the management side, I shall create a new task force on reducing bureaucracy and bottlenecks, ensuring that there is a better circulation of information in-house with greater transparency.
Since the question of the freedom of the press has landed UNESCO into so many controversies, can you be counted on to guarantee that independent journalists will be on the jury of the World Press Freedom Prize and to honour the choices of that jury, no matter the reservations expressed by certain member states?
Definitely. UNESCO is an organisation which has a great deal of responsibility in the area of freedom of expression and the prize is both important and symbolic of this organisation’s defence of freedom of expression, so I can assure you that I shall be able to withstand pressures and continue to do what UNESCO has been doing in that area.
The election was acrimonious. What is the atmosphere at UNESCO now? Could the divisions that emerged further impact the organisation and prevent UNESCO’s work from going forward?
Well, the election was, I would say, very competitive. It was extremely stimulating as well. We had nine candidates, including four women, and we competed equally, men and women. From the beginning I was the candidate of Bulgaria not the candidate of any region or any superpower. I was finally elected with 31 votes and I presume I had support from every region — Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe. This gives me strength to go ahead with my work.
The atmosphere has vastly improved. I received calls of support from Egypt, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab nations — I mention these countries in particular because they supported my main competitor. The message I am trying to pass is that the election was not about divisions between north and south or between Europe and the Islamic world.
UNESCO receives extra budgetary funds and also has endowed prizes financed by persons outside the organisation. Several individuals use these endowments and the name of UNESCO to further their own personal agendas, and to push vested interests which are not always in concordance with those of the organisation. What do you plan to do about that?
You have put your finger on the question of transparency, efficiency, financing and how the name of UNESCO is used and I am going to look into this issue very closely. UNESCO has a very small budget. But before we can raise serious money we have to prove that we are efficient, transparent and are capable of delivering. Fifty per cent of our budget goes on education, which is as it should be because I believe that in this time of crisis, education is the key which will help us make progress. In the present circumstances funding of course is very important and the question of financing was part of the electoral campaign. You had candidates promising to bring in funds if they were elected. That was not my case because UNESCO is not for sale! But I do recognise that fund-raising is an important part of the job. But it is equally important to ensure that the money then is used properly if UNESCO is to fully assume its role. The difficulty and the challenge is to make this money work for the objectives of the organisation. I am determined not to privatise UNESCO but to use both budgetary and extra-budgetary funds in an optimum manner.
What are your priorities for the organisation you now head?
Very definitely education, without a doubt. I think UNESCO should take the lead in formulating a comprehensive policy on education, not only looking at primary and secondary education but also higher education and link the three to vocational and technical training. I have spoken to the World Bank about this and we must tap all available resources and formulate an overall policy which will look at education from different perspectives.
What about issues such as culture?
I would also like to re-launch a debate on culture. I regret that culture has not been marked out as one of the millennium development goals, because although it is true that it is difficult to quantify culture, it is at the centre of the debate on development and I am not only speaking about culture as art but also as culture as a means to conflict resolution and as the search for identity. With the Convention on Intangible Heritage and other such instruments, UNESCO plays an important role to help balance out societies. UNESCO is also undertaking a review of its Convention of World Heritage as well as the Convention on Cultural Diversity — this is normal and natural given the state of flux in which the world finds itself.
