UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

General Conference will provide the incoming Director-General with a mandate to review matters relating to
staffing and structure, and to revisit if necessary recent decisions in that regard. We are deeply gratified that the
Executive Board has already undertaken several reforms relating to the tenure of the Director-General that will
ensure greater accountability of the Executive Head of this Organization, such as the amendment proposed for a
term limit of two four-year terms and performance and conflict resolution clauses in the contract of employment.
These we welcome as first steps to better governance and stricter accountability for UNESCO as a whole.
6.10 Madam President, we ought at this juncture to express our thanks to the outgoing Director-General,
Mr Federico Mayor, who has served this august body for the past twelve years, for the invaluable work done in
the intellectual areas of UNESCO’s mission and, in particular, for the excellent documents produced from the
world conferences on higher education, science and culture. It behoves us now, Madam President, to evaluate the
results of these Conferences as we move into the new millennium to ensure that there is a systematic follow-up on
the directions pointed to rather than a new round of large conferences. Let us move from reflection to action,
from conference to coordination, from the analysis of problems to the assembly of promise.
6.11 Madam President, although not all of the Director-General’s commitments to the Caribbean have been
fulfilled, we are hopeful that the logic and merit of our requests will eventually prevail. Like the Pacific island
States, the Caribbean made a strong appeal for the launching of a focus on the region and the Focus on the
Caribbean was launched here in Paris with great fanfare last year. Today we have just and sufficient reason to
reiterate the appeals made that this initiative not be allowed to deteriorate into yet another vaporous promise. At
the last session of the Executive Board, Saint Lucia requested and the Board approved that each major
programme dealing with the Focus should include specific references to the action envisaged as well as
information on the budget allocations for the activities. This has still not been done and our appeal is not simply
in respect of this specific matter affecting the Caribbean, but is also a direct and fervent appeal to the General
Conference to urge that this practice of promise without substantiating resources, of symbolic action without
material follow-up, should cease forthwith.
6.12 The same difficulty has confronted the Caribbean with respect to the project on the General History of
the Caribbean. A five-volume undertaking, the project has been stymied for lack of adequate financial resources
despite undertakings provided at the highest level that extrabudgetary provision would be forthcoming.
6.13 Our appeal for rectification of these programming anomalies is consistent with the refocusing that needs
to be undertaken within this Organization. Madam President, achieving major outcomes and results does not
always require major expenditures – sometimes a small input makes a difference to the realization of an
important priority within a particular region. A long and careful examination needs to be made of programme
priorities and the allocation of resources within UNESCO to ensure that the right balance is struck between
Headquarters, Regional Offices and National Commissions. In the strengthening of the front-line defences for
peace, Regional Offices and National Commissions are an imperative to connect UNESCO to the vital social
movements and civil sectors that alone can make a difference to the successful realization of our ideals.
6.14 It is as a result of this perspective that Saint Lucia welcomed the culture of peace programme. Even
while we insist that the programme objectives, activities and administration need to be more crisply defined, we
recognize and embrace the imperative that it represents. We are fully supportive of the United Nations
proclamation of the Year 2000 as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the period 2001-2010 as the
International Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World. Saint Lucia has
developed a comprehensive, far-reaching programme to mark the Year for the Culture of Peace with the support
of government, private sector and non-governmental and civic organizations. This programme seeks to reach our
students and young people, challenging them to make peace and tolerance an individual as well as a collective
imperative in their lives and in their institutions. It is a message and an action plan for peace as the foundation of
personal discipline, peace as the construction of tolerance in community, peace as learning to live, play and work
together. In other words, peace as the normative condition of a civilized person and civilized society so aptly
summed up in the words of Benito Juarez, one of the giants of our Americas – “Peace”, he said, Madam
President, “is respect for the rights of the other”. This project is being submitted to UNESCO for its
consideration and support and we urge a more definitive commitment by UNESCO to this and other such efforts.
6.15 Madam President, I wish to conclude my intervention by making a passionate appeal to distinguished
delegates at this historic assembly to make this a transcendental moment. By fortuitous circumstance this
Conference is being held in the late evening of the old century. We will enter a new morning with a fresh
leadership in whom is invested our weathered but luminescent aspirations. We start the new day encumbered with
old preoccupations and persistent problems but infused with new hope. We are confident in our collective
capacity to walk directly into the sunlight of the new age and not be distracted by its shadows. This, Madam
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