Reflections on the Strategy of UNESCO

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Adapted from the response to a consultation

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Stakes and challenges at the dawn of the twenty-first century

We consider that UNESCO's mandate is the most exciting of all intergovernmental organizations. It is therefore with regret that our response focuses on its apparent inability to arouse such excitement in practice.

The most fundamental problem for UNESCO is that of learning new ways of listening and working with constituencies that may be articulating unexpected messages of relevance to a rapidly evolving social and institutional environment.

UNESCO has had a tendency to predetermine the kinds of information it considers relevant by a variety of devices that ensure that new signals are obscured or ignored. Such devices include:

• using outmoded categories within which to frame inquiries about its future, whilst framing such categories as the most appropriate
• framing questions in terms of the institutional agendas and momentum of existing divisional structures and excluding signals that cross departmental preoccupations
• restricting its consultation to bodies that have been recognized by criteria unrelated to the content of signals of potential significance to its future development and the nature of the crises to be encountered
• depending on consultation timeframes and programme restructuring that exclude emerging signals in favour of those evident months or years before
• indulging in expensive public relations gestures of questionable value at the expense of investment in substantive programmes

The challenge for UNESCO is not the current or foreseeable problems, but rather evolving a process for learning of, and dealing with, unforeseen problems that are liable to emerge in the future as requiring greater attention than those foreseen. Typically these will first be reported by unrecognized bodies and will cross and stretch departmental mandates. They will challenge existing mindsets and patterns of expertise. In this respect, UNESCO needs to develop a form of 'lifelong learning' for itself to ensure a posture of strategic nimbleness.

The following remarks are a development of a submission to the UNESCO Task Force on Education for the 21st Century: