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

specific contract which he or she signs and which is signed by the President of the General Conference - I believe
it is you who will sign as the other party - and until that time this General Conference is perfectly within its rights
to determine what the nature of that contract is. The fact of the matter is that this substantive decision can only be
made in a private meeting of this General Conference, although the amendment to the Constitution which will
allow that is perfectly in order before this plenary.
43.4 I want to go further, and say that the notion of the length of a strategic plan having any bearing
whatsoever on the length of tenure of an appointee is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because strategic plans
have no sanctity about their duration and can be adjusted to suit the Organization, at various periods in its
existence. I also want to add that one of the weaknesses of our recent history has been our inability or refusal to
evaluate the performance of our staff, our employees and our programmes, and if we have to take longer than
four years to decide whether someone who is the head of the Organization is performing in accordance with the
desires of the General Conference, we might as well close up the shop. And I would therefore like to indicate that
without any reservation I would support, and my country supports, the proposal that the term of office should be
four years with the possibility of a reappointment for a subsequent four years. Thank you, Madam.
44. The PRESIDENT:
I thank the representative of Trinidad and Tobago. I now give the floor to the representative of
Zimbabwe.
45.1 Mr MAMBO (Zimbabwe):
Thank you Madam President. Zimbabwe has given a lot of thought to the issue at hand and we subscribe
to the idea that has been expressed by India and Venezuela. Indeed, we believe that six years is adequate time for
any Director-General coming fresh into the job to get the job done; four years is in our view definitely too short. I
am not quite clear about the arguments here. We are told in the document presented to us that modern
management practice suggests that 12 years is too long a period for one person to run an organization such as this
one. It is not clear, to me at least, whether this claim is based on research findings. After all this is an
international organization and one would have wanted to see some back up information to substantiate this claim.
It is not clear to me either why six years was adopted as a period. There must have been some reason for
choosing such a term for the Director-General. I don't believe it was by chance; but whatever rationale was used I
would be very pleased to hear what it was.
45.2 I agree, Madam President, that 12 years is indeed a long time if the Director-General does not know
what he is doing, but if he does know what he is doing then it is a blessing we have someone who can actually run
the Organization effectively for 12 years. I would agree with the representative of Trinidad and Tobago that what
we need is a method of removing a Director-General who is not performing even before his first tenure is
completed, but the use of short terms as a way of removing people who are not doing their job is not the right
way of doing things. I think we should resist the urge to change the way things are done in this Organization
simply because we are not happy with the way one Director-General or another has been acting. I have noted
with concern that some of the changes that we have been proposing for this Organization during this General
Conference are really targeted at containing the individual rather than developing the policies we require to run
this Organization so as to achieve our objectives and our vision. We should not develop policies aimed at
containing Directors-General to stop them from doing their work. We should develop policies that are consonant
with what we need in this Organization. This Organization will cease to be an intellectual organization, to
become a technical organization if we are seen to be changing the terms of a contract two days before appointing
an individual who had been given the impression that he was going to be appointed for six years. This afternoon,
in an earlier debate, delegates argued that they could not take a decision owing to the lack of information. Right
now I would like to argue that there is no information to persuade us that six years is better than four or four is
better than six except conjecture and perceptions. We need hard information here, Madam President. I think the
delegate of France did indicate that we do not have enough information on what happens elsewhere. We have no
information on why six years were chosen in the first place. So, Madam President, my view is that we should not
even discuss this matter at the present session of the General Conference but postpone consideration to the next
session. Thank you.
46. The PRESIDENT:
I should like to thank the distinguished representative of Zimbabwe. Dear friends, before we continue, I
shall read out the list of speakers again. The Republic of Korea will be followed by Lesotho, Honduras,
Argentina, Saint Lucia, Nigeria, Australia, Jamaica, Mexico and South Africa. I presume that much of what you
intend to say has already been said, so I would ask for an effort to be concise. Thank you. The Republic of Korea
has the floor.
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