The question, Is there a future for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) could be asked about many institutions set up since World War II to promote international cooperation. In answering it, we may discover that, in a rapidly changing world, policy about what we want from those institutions has not been carefully thought out. For example, have we consulted our friends and allies about future needs for cooperation? In the case of UNESCO, most of the 158 members of that organization appear convinced that UNESCO has a future that is important to them--even without the formal and full participation of the United States. They make it clear, however, that our active presence would result in a more productive operation for everyone's benefit.
In 1945, at the end of six years of terrible suffering and devastation, the allied nations were moved by a combination of idealism and immediate practical necessity to establish the major international agencies that now make up the United Nations system. One of those agencies, UNESCO, the Allied leaders said, was to build the foundations of peace and promote mutual understanding and human rights through cooperation in education, science, culture, and communications. The United States was a prime mover in the establishment of UNESCO. Nazism and fascism had been defeated, we emphasized, and must not be allowed to recur. Constructive opportunities lay ahead if nations could learn together and collaborate in a peaceful search for knowledge.
The wartime Allies confidently anticipated a better world. Toady, in contrast, it may be said that major threats and struggles lie ahead and may be even more threatening to human survival than was World War II. Those threats come not merely from atomic and other weapons, but from accelerating environmental degradation and global climate change. Our shared knowledge of what is happening and why and what we can do about the environment is inadequate. Moreover, we sense that our models of economic and social development are not sustainable and have led to unacceptable gaps between peoples: Affluence and technological marvels on the one hand contrast with growing inequities marked by poverty and illiteracy on the other.
Learning to live together and to discover the scientific and ethical bases for survival appears to require that the cooperative machinery of UNESCO be assured of a future. But we cannot analyze and describe a future for that organization until we (a) examine past experience with UNESCO more closely, especially what has worked well; and (b) collaborated with other nations in thinking through what is needed and wanted from cooperation in the future.
We carried out such collaborative planning in 1944-45. It is needed even more today. At the moment, however, the examination is being carried out by UNESCO's members without the participation of the United States.
UNESCO's member states are not only giving an affirmative answer to the question, Does UNESCO have a future?, but are coming close to adoption of a plan of action that would concentrate programs on fewer main goals. Some differences may remain as to the relative amounts of resources to be given to the several functions of the agency, but there is apparent agreement on the assumptions and main programs. The members think of UNESCO as an integral member of the UN family, the one directly concerned with the minds, the hearts, and consciences
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