After EFA: What Next

Last night in our seminar, UNESCO: Agenda for the 21st Century, we conducted a role playing exercise in which the students debated future priorities for the global educational system.

Education for All (EFA) has been the basis for international efforts in education since 1990, complemented by the educational Millennium Development Goals and the Fast Track Initiative. Universal primary education was to be achieved by 2015, with a broader agenda that focused on lifelong learning as well as schooling.

While there has been great progress towards universal primary education, there are many nations which will not achieve that goal. Moreover, the quality of education has often suffered from the expansion efforts, and many observers feel that there is a dramatic need for better education as well as more education. Similarly, there are huge needs for educational opportunities for youths who are out of school, for trade and vocational educational services, for growth and improvement of higher educational systems, for better opportunities for girls' and women's education, for education for the disabled, and for more and better educational opportunities for marginalized groups and for the poor.

My co-coordinator of the course, Frank Method, make the point that there surely should be some global agreement reached on priorities for education after 2015. It will surely take several years to achieve such an agreement. The question was posed: "what can UNESCO do now and in the near future to help the world reach such an agreement, and further, to reach an agreement that will be effective in promoting education worldwide?"

There are a number of things UNESCO can do, including:

• Continuing the monitoring of EFA so that the negotiations will be based on a clear understanding of what has been accomplished and what remains to be done;
• Providing a forum for Ministers of Education and others to discuss the issues and opportunities now, before agreements have to be formalized;
• Supporting educational planning efforts in member countries so that they will enter the negotiation process with a clear picture of their internal priorities and of the potential roles of donors, civil society and the private sector in achieving their educational goals;
• Networking via National Commissions for UNESCO, Associated Non-Governmental Organizations, University Chairs and Networks and other means to stimulate wide discussion of the future priorities within the global community of educators and those interested in education;
• Mobilizing and publishing expert advice through seminars and publications; and using the media to bring the matter to the attention of the general public and to promote public interest in the priorities for future efforts to promote education.

It seems likely that a well defined sequel to EFA will help:

• to stimulate global efforts to improve education, and
  
• help governments, donors, NGOs and others to coordinate their efforts to achieve greater efficiency and relevance.

On the other hand such efforts could easily founder by lapsing into platitudinous generalities, by failing to offer enough benefits to the various participants to engender compromise, by failing to recognize the legitimate interests of the key participants, or by degenerating into fruitless controversy over the sources of funding or the locus of control.

The conclusion: UNESCO can and should play a useful role now and in the next few years in helping its member nations to reach a useful accord on the sequel to EFA.

Election of the Director General

A new Director General of UNESCO is to be elected, with the final decision taking place in the meeting of the General Conference in October. The election seems to be heating up. Here are excerpts from two recent articles:

From the Media Line (February 2, 2009):

Controversy continues to follow Egypt’s minister of culture Farouk Hosny as he attempts to build a global consensus for his candidacy as the next chief of the United Nations cultural organization, UNESCO, with Israel and the United States the most outspoken critics of his election......

The United States and Israel have been lobbying against Hosny’s candidacy, arguing that he is not equipped to deal with the international community. The Bush administration allegedly asked Egypt to reconsider the minister’s nomination.

An American Embassy official in Cairo confirmed the Bush administration was opposed to Hosny’s election, saying that his past comments and actions had threatened to undermine international cultural institutions.

From an article by Beth Day Romulo in the Manila Bulletin (February 9, 2009):

Ambassador Irina Bokova, of Bulgaria, is campaigning for the post of UNESCO Director General with a tour of 15 countries, to drum up support for her campaign. In Asia, she will also visit Japan, South Korea and Thailand, then travel to the United States, Moscow and African countries.

From Petar Kostadinov in the Sofia Echo (Bulgaria):

In May 2008, Bulgaria's Government nominated the country's ambassador to France, Irina Bokova, to become Unesco director-general in the place of Koichiro Matsuura, whose term of office expires in 2009.

Bokova has already received the full support of the majority partner in the ruling coalition, the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

From the Penki News (Lithuania) (January 30, 2009):

During his visit to Davos for the World Economic Forum, President of the Republic of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus met with President Ilham Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Gillani Syed Yousaf of Pakistan.......

President Adamkus asked for Azeri support to the candidature of Ina Marčiulionytė nominated by the three Baltic states for the position of UNESCO Director General. The issue of support for the Baltic candidature was also brought up in the meeting with the Prime Minister Gillani Syed Yousaf of Pakistan. According to the President, support from Pakistan as a member of UNESCO Executive Council would be highly appreciated in this matter.

Editorial Comment: I have heard rumors that current and former staff members of the UNESCO Secretariat are interested in running, if they can get the support of their governments.

I wonder whether there might be an intellectual leader from Latin America, India or China who might be a better candidate than any of those who have so far announced for the position. Ten years ago there were eleven candidates, so perhaps more will appear.

The time is fairly short for before the deadline for countries to nominate their candidates. For all practical purposes, the decision will be made long before October as the delegates and their governments pledge to support one candidate or the other. JAD

UNITAR Evaluation of Impact of World Heritage

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) will hold the Hiroshima Management and Conservation of World Heritage Sites Workshop from April 19 to April 24, 2009. The workshop is jointly sponsored with UNESCO's World Heritage Center, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, and the Getty Conservation Institute.

The 2009 Workshop is entitled “Conservation for Peace - World Heritage Impact Assessment”. It begins the second five year cycle in this program of workshops. There were five previous workshops.

The participants (up to 30) will consist of:

• Potential or actual heritage site managers;
• Natural/cultural conservation specialists and trainers;
• Decision makers and government officers within national World Heritageadministrations such as the Ministries of the Environment, Culture, Forestry, Conservation or Tourism;
• Representatives of national academic institutions, think-tanks and civil society.

Read more!

THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS: WHAT IMPACT ON MULTILATERALISM AND UNESCO?

The UNESCO Future Forum will be held on 2 March 2009 at UNESCO Headquarters to reflect on the ramifications of the present financial and economic crisis and their implications for international cooperation in general and in particular for UNESCO’s domains, namely education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.

Click here to download the Power Point presentation created to introduce the topic.

UNESCO and Trade In Higher Education

Some three million people are enrolled in institutions of higher education outside of their own countries. The Internet is transforming distance education, and it seems certain that there will be a dramatic growth in Internet mediated international educational services. While education was traditionally what economists term a "non-tradable" service, it is increasingly an element in international commerce. Indeed, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been the site of negotiations on trade in educational services, including primary, secondary, post-secondary and adult education services, as well as specialized training such as for sports. (These negotiations have been suspended with the suspension of the Doha Round.)

Not surprisingly, UNESCO too plays a role in this evolving system of international education. An important initiative in this respect is the UNESCO Portal on Higher Education Institutions which is intended to help students choose recognized institutions of higher education worldwide. It also publishes Study Abroad, an international guide to higher-education study opportunities and scholarships offered by higher education institutions and international organizations in some 151 countries.

Two aspects of UNESCO's program are describe below:

The UNESCO/OECD forum on trade in educational services conducted three international meetings early in this decade. The first of these meetings was held in Washington in May of 2002, cosponsored by the U.S. Government Departments of Education and Commerce, the Center for Quality Assurance in International Education (CQAIE, located in greater Washington D.C.) and the U.S. National Committee for International Trade in Education (NCITE). The second meeting were held in November of 2003 in Norway, and the third in 2004 in Australia. UNESCO in collaboration with the OECD has promulgated ‘Guidelines on Quality Provision in Cross-border Higher Education’.

UNESCO Conventions of the Recognition of Studies: A series of regional conventions have been negotiated and deposited with UNESCO by which countries pledge to recognize Studies, Certificates, Diplomas, Degrees and other Academic Qualifications in Higher Education provided by qualified institutions in other signatory nations of the region. (A convention is a multi-party treaty.) Read more...

These conventions in turn have led to the creation of regional bodies which work to facilitate the efforts of nations in the regions to improve the quality of higher education, such as The Asia Pacific Academic Recognition Network (APARNET).

The World Conference on Higher Education will be held 5-8 July 2009 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

Celebration of Darwin Anniversaries

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. Incidentally, 50 years ago there was a centennial edition of the book with an introduction by Julian Huxley (the first Director General of UNESCO, known for his seminal book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis); the centennial edition remains instructive and has been reissued this year in paperback. Huxley came from a distinguished family. His brother was the writer Aldous Huxley, and his half-brother a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; and his paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin and protagonist of evolution.

Down House (c) English Heritage Photo Library

Down House, Darwin's Home and Workplace from 1842 until his death in 1882 has been on the list of tentative candidates for inclusion in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites since 1999 and is the nominee of the United Kingdom for 2009.

As part of the commemoration of Darwin's work, UNESCO is sponsoring a series of symposia with the International Union of Biological Sciences. (Read more about the symposia.)

Perhaps the most enduring memorial to Charles Darwin would be the protection of the Galapagos Islands. These have a unique biological diversity, and Darwin's visit to the islands was instrumental in helping him to develop his theory of evolution. The Galapagos Islands have been recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1978 and the Galapagos National Park (of Equador) has been a part of UNESCO's global network of bioreserves since 1984. Unfortunately, the Galapagos Islands have been on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in Danger since 2007.

The "Other" Education Programs Of UNESCO

Last week in our UNESCO seminar we discussed the role of the organization in coordinating the Education for All global program. This week we discussed the other sections of the UNESCO education program. The discussion in class raised complex issues that I will address in this posting.

The Components of UNESCO's Education Program

There is a complex education program managed in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, which includes not only the monitoring and support of the Education for All program but also a number of other activities. UNESCO also funds and works through:

• A decentralized set of six educational institutes and two education centers
• The UNESCO Institute of Statistics which emphasizes educational statistics (but also works in areas of scientific, cultural and communications statistics)

UNESCO also influences education via programs and activities managed by its

• 27 cluster offices covering 148 member states,
  
• 21 national offices (each serving a single member state),
  
• 10 regional bureaus (4 of which -- Nairobi, Beirut, Bangkok, and Santiago de Chile -- are for education),
  
• and liaison offices in Geneva an New York.

Moreover, other programs of UNESCO conduct educational activities within their specific fields of action.

There are many other organizations that have affiliated with UNESCO (without UNESCO funding), through which UNESCO can influence educational systems and educators:

• 623 UNESCO Chairs and 60 UNITWIN networks of universities
• 335 non-governmental organizations that have affiliated with UNESCO
• partners from the private sector (multinational corporations, small and medium enterprises, philanthropic foundations, professional and economic associations, as well as other organizations of the business community and individuals.)
• 4,000 UNESCO clubs in 100 countries
• 7,900 UNESCO Associated Schools in 176 countries
• National Commissions for UNESCO which are required by the organization's charter in each of the 193 member states.
  

Follow the Money

According to UNESCO's Approved Program and Budget for 2008-2009, the budget for UNESCO's education program (exclusive of overhead for the overall operation of the agency) is about US$88.5 million per year. That can be compared to the budget for my local school system (Montgomery County, Maryland) of US$2.2 billion per year. According to the OECD Development Assistance Committee, the total commitments to educational aid in 2007 were US$10.2 billion.

About 62 percent of the overall education program budget is in the regular budget and the rest is to come from "extrabudgetary resources" donated to the organization. UNESCO divides it educational budget between that of the six educational institutes (US$7.9 million per year, of which only US$250 thousand is voluntary contribution) and four subprograms. Two of these ("Global leadership in EFA, coordination of United Nations priorities in education, and development of strong partnerships" and "Provide capacity development and technical support to assist national efforts in achieving the Dakar Goals") appear to be primarily in support of Education for All. The other two ("Development of a global framework and networks for capacity development in planning and management of education systems" and "Promote policy dialog, research, set norms and standards") appear to relate primarily to the non-EFA efforts. These latter two subprograms have a total annual budget of US$26.2 million, of which three-quarters is from the assessed contributions and one-quarter from voluntary contributions.

Governance

The central educational programs of UNESCO are managed by the Secretariat under the direction of the 193 member General Conference (one-nation, one vote) that meets every other year, and the 58 member Executive Board. The decentralized Institutes and Centers have their own governing bodies.

Of course the myriad organizations affiliated with UNESCO which do not receive UNESCO funding have their own independent governance structures.

Complementary Organizations

UNESCO operates within a web of intergovernmental organizations. Some, such as the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization have important educational interests within their own spheres of activity (e.g. WHO: medical and nursing education and non-formal health education; FAO: agricultural education and agricultural extension services; ILO: lifelong learning and technical and vocational education.) Some have even more direct involvement with schooling:

• The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF): This is a fund administered under the United Nations system which received over US$3 billion in donations in 2007. The Executive Director is an American, and the United States is UNICEF's largest donor. It is governed by an Executive Board of 36 members with a specified regional distribution elected for four year terms by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
  
• The United Nations University (UNU) does research and capacity building. It has a headquarters in Tokyo and 14 research and training centers/programs around the world as well as a network of associated and cooperating institutions and scholars. The Rector of the UNU has the rank of Undersecretary General of the United Nations. The UNU Governing Council has 24 appointed members and several ex officio members including the Secretary General of UNESCO. The UNU is funded by voluntary contributions, with an annual budget of some US$75 million per year and an Endowment with nearly US$400 million.
• The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) seeks "to deliver innovative training and to conduct research on knowledge systems to develop the capacity of beneficiaries." Its Director General has the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. It is a relatively small agency that emphasizes executive training for UN staff and for personnel of the 190 member nations of the UN.
• The United Nations Development Program is a program of the United Nations organization itself. It is currently emphasizing efforts in support of the Millennium Development Goals. The UNDP Administrator is the third highest ranking member of the United Nations staff after the United Nations Secretary-General and Deputy Secretary . The current Secretary General is a Turkish citizen (with long experience in intergovernmental organizations) but in its early years the Secretary General was always a U.S. citizen. In 2005, the UNDP’s entire budget was approximately US$4.44 billion. Of that total, core, unrestricted financing reached approximately US$921 million. Non-core, earmarked contributions grew to over US$2.5 billion, and resources to support countries’ own development programs totaled US$1.02 billion. The UNDP Executive Board is made up of representatives from 36 countries around the world who serve on a rotating basis.
• Multilateral Development Banks: The World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank and other regional development banks provide loans and grants to developing and transition countries. The World Bank has the largest budget among these, but other development banks may have larger budgets within their regions. The World Bank has transferred about US$36.5 billion in loans and credits for education since the Bank started lending in the sector in 1963. Funds for the multilateral development banks are obtained by borrowing from capital markets; they borrow money at good rates due to the guarantee provided by donor nations. They also receive pledged contributions to concessionary windows such as the International Development Agency of the World Bank Group. The president of the World Bank is generally considered to be named by the U.S. government, and the Members of the Board of Directors are elected to serve specific regions by a process which recognizes the financial contributions to the Bank of the nations within the specific regions they represent.
  
• The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) provides some educational services for some refugees. The United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Mid East (UNRWA) provides educational services for its target population.
  

Donor nations also have bilateral development assistance programs which provide financial and technical assistance to the educational sectors of developing nations. (According to the OECD Development Assistance Committee, in 2007 total donor assistance amounted to US$120.8 billion, while that for all multilateral agencies amounted to US$11.8 billion.)

The OECD, sometimes thought of as a "rich nations club" provides intergovernmental services to its member states. There are also a number of regional international organizations (e.g. European Union, Organization of American States) that have educational programs serving the governments in their regions.

The fundamental point is that donor nations provide relatively little economic support for education through UNESCO, favoring other channels over which they have more influence in the governing bodies.

UNESCO as an Institutional Response to Globalization

In the past the global education sector was highly fragmented, not only into national sectors but even into local educational systems within nation-states. In the 20th century, especially in its second half with increasing globalization, national educational communities found it increasingly possible and important to deal with each other. Indeed, social institutions are evolving to allow them to do so.

Think about a market as an institution that is not an formal organization but that allows large numbers of buyers and sellers to interact in a productive manner, especially through an economic process which Adam Smith termed “The Invisible Hand”. The social institution that is allowing national educational communities to interact globally may too function via an invisible hand. However, as an economic market depends on formal organizations such as regulators and standards organizations for its functioning, so the evolving global institution allowing interaction among national educational communities also involves formal organizations, among which is UNESCO, or better, the core network of UNESCO related organizations.

Is UNESCO More Like a Spider or a Starfish?

My first thought when I consider the term “institution” is to think of large, formal organizations such as manufacturing firms, governments, schools systems, or UNESCO. My friends who are economists tend, I believe, to think of the market as the prototypical “institution”. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to think of a broad spectrum of social institutions.

UNESCO is of course a formal organization, and as such it is an enormously complex, highly decentralized organization, beset by very complex governance structures and weak financing, as well as a multinational, multilingual, multiethnic staff dispersed among offices in 50 countries. Its Education Program is then seen as a vertically organized program within this complex structure.

The UNESCO Education Program can also be seen as an the nexus of a network of a large number of interacting organizations – Institutes, Centers, National Commissions, Associated Schools, Clubs, University Chairs and Networks, affiliated Non-Governmental Organizations, and other partner organizations. This network is in turn part of a still larger network of Ministries of Education, school systems, professional organizations of educators, etc.

In this respect, one might consider The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. I quote from the author's description of the book's thesis:

One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realize is spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don't just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.

Using this metaphor, UNESCO is perhaps more like a starfish than like a spider, especially in terms of its quite decentralized system of governance, management and control.

Management theory was developed in the 20th century, and in most of that century focused on the management of large, centrally managed organizations. It has been suggested, notably in The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D., Jr. Chandler, that these spider-like organizations evolved because the information processes of the large hierarchical organization more adequately met the needs of expanding industries than did markets.

With the Information Revolution the world is seeing many large organizations downsize, outsourcing many of their functions. Essentially the increasingly powerful information infrastructure is thought to make other means of coordination possible which are still more efficient and effective than those of traditional hierarchical organizations. As a result, there is much more interest among management theorists in decentralized organizations and their management.

While UNESCO's Constitution calls for National Commissions to share with their national governments the responsibility for the governance of UNESCO, in fact it is the governments that have taken most of the authority for that representation. Thus most of the people functioning in UNESCO's governing bodies are members of large, bureaucratic organizations. One expects these people to naturally conceive of management in terms of the theories most applicable to the hierarchical organizations in which they work. To the degree that UNESCO is decentralized rather than centralized, starfish-like rather than spider-like, alternative management theories may be more effective.

The lack of central planning and control over UNESCO's myriad educational activities bothers most bureaucrats, including many of those involved in UNESCO's governance. The question should be asked, however, whether the organization achieves more with its limited financial and human resources in advancing global education objectives of its member states with its current structure than it could with a more traditional bureaucracy.