UNESCO: The United Nations Organization for Culture, Science, and Education

Its budget: six million dollars
Its aim: the search for pure truth
The free exchange of ideas
The importance of relations among peoples
Strengthening the spread of education and culture

On the occasion of the meeting of “UNESCO” in Lebanon, and of the measures being taken in government and cultural circles to make this great world conference unique of its kind, “The Woman's Voice” thinks it well to acquaint its readers with something about this great cultural organization.

1 — The Origins of UNESCO

In 1931 Léon Bourgeois came before the League of Nations to advocate a cooperation founded on study, publication, and art. Thereupon the League of Nations created an international committee for intellectual cooperation, whose first president was the French philosopher Henri Bergson.

In 1935 an International Bureau of Education was founded in Geneva, supervised by a select group of innovators in this field; the scope of this bureau has widened over the past four years until it has become an international institution comprising 17 nations.

During the late war, between 1942 and 1946, the ministers of education of the Allied governments, at a meeting held in the British capital, took up the question of the revival of education once the war should lay down its burdens. They studied the question of supplying the schools, restoring the libraries and laboratories, tracing the dispersed works of art, and other matters. These studies were continued at the meetings held by the Allied ministers of education.

In the spring of 1945 the French delegation submitted to the San Francisco conference a proposal expressing the views the Allied ministers of education had put forward and the principles that are considered today the foundation of UNESCO. In early November 1945 a conference was held in the city of London under the presidency of Mrs. Ellen Wilkinson, at that time Minister of Education in Britain. At this conference it was decided to establish the United Nations organization for culture, science, and education, called for short UNESCO.

2 — The First General Conference of UNESCO

Forty-seven states took part in this conference, represented by delegates or observers. The conference was also attended by fifty-seven observers who had no right to vote, representing sixty-five private international organizations comprising millions of individuals from various cities.

In November 1947, during the second general conference of UNESCO in Mexico City, it was decided to admit Austria, Italy, and Switzerland to membership.

After the first general conference, Liberia ratified the basic convention and became a member of UNESCO.

At the general conference in Paris, UNESCO approved its budget, which came to $6,950,000.

UNESCO's budget for 1947 amounted to six million dollars, the member states contributing to this budget in proportion to their contribution to the budget of the United Nations, with a slight increase, since the members of UNESCO are fewer in number than the members of the United Nations. The United States, for its part, provides 44.03% of the entire UNESCO budget.

3 — UNESCO's Work in 1947

UNESCO's program in 1947 comprised four great projects touching most of the fields within UNESCO's competence:

First — assistance toward the revival of education, science, and culture in those member states stricken by the calamities of the late war.

Second — the assistance to be given to the member states, for the villages and the countryside, in the service of fundamental education: this is a vigorous general campaign against illiteracy, aiming to provide more exact educational means in the future and to set a general minimum standard of fundamental education for those long illiterate.

Third — the development and encouragement of international understanding, by organizing experiments in practical studies for educators; by improving school textbooks and educational aids; by studying the kind of teaching that aims to bring about international understanding in the schools of the member states; by enlisting also the international relations clubs and the centers of world studies; and finally by the exchange of scholars and teachers among the different countries.

Fourth — the creation of a committee to found an international scientific institute for the Amazon (in South America), charged with raising the standard of living and drawing full benefit from the productive possibilities of that far-flung portion of the tropical forest zone, in order to encourage and coordinate the work of scientists and specialists in the fields of the national, natural, and social sciences.

4 — The Reasons for UNESCO's Existence

In truth, the idea of UNESCO is not new. Its existence goes back to the day when there arose in man the desire to live and work in full understanding with his fellow human beings. What is truly new is that UNESCO has brought this desire out into practical existence and has come to embody that dream of realizing the human community in a form to which history knows no parallel. When the founders of this organization drew up its charter, they were careful to affirm that its duty was to devote itself to the free search for pure truth, to “the free exchange of ideas and knowledge,” and to the development and diversification of relations among peoples, so that a better understanding may come about among them and they may become acquainted with one another's ways more exactly and more truly. UNESCO is a specialized body within the United Nations organization whose aim, as its constitution states, is to encourage cooperation and understanding among the nations; to strengthen the spread of popular education and of culture; and to help in preserving knowledge and in advancing and diffusing it, by encouraging cooperation among the nations in all branches of intellectual activity. Those are the means that help toward the attainment of UNESCO's general goal as set forth in its constitution: to work for the preservation of peace and security by binding closer the ties of cooperation among the nations through education, science, and culture, so as to secure international respect for justice, for law, and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms necessary to all, without any distinction of race, religion, language, or sex...

UNESCO cost six million dollars in 1947. That sum barely equals the price of one light cruiser; it is the price of ten bomber aircraft; and it is one-eightieth part of what the Second World War used to cost every single day.