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Library and Information Society

Notes organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom,
the United States of America and the USSR. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference
proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the
recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), held
in San Francisco in April–June 1945, a United Nations Conference for the establishment of an
educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF) was convened in London 1–16 November 1945.
44 governments were represented. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced
and signed by 37 countries, and a Preparatory Commission was established. The Preparatory
Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946 – the date when UNESCO’s
Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state.
The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr.
Julian Huxley to the post of Director-General. The Constitution was amended in November 1954
when the General Conference resolved that members of the Executive Board would be representatives
of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their
personal capacity. This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the
CICI, in terms of how member states would work together in the Organization’s fields of competence.
As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO’s mandate, political and historical
factors have shaped the Organization’s operations in particular during the Cold War, the
decolonization process, and the dissolution of the USSR.
Among the major achievements of the Organization is its work against racism, for example through
influential statements on race starting with a declaration of anthropologists (among them was Claude
Lévi-Strauss) and other scientists in 1950 and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and
Racial Prejudice. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO claiming that some
of the Organization’s publications amounted to “interference” in the country’s “racial problems.”
South Africa rejoined the Organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.
UNESCO’s early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education
in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by expert missions to other
countries, including, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949. In 1948, UNESCO recommended
that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal. In 1990 the
World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide
basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum
held in Dakar, Senegal, led member governments to commit to achieving basic education for all by
2015.
UNESCO’s early activities in the field of culture included, for example, the Nubia Campaign,
launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to
keep it from being swamped by the Nile after construction of the Aswan Dam. During the 20-year
campaign, 22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest
in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), Fes (Morocco),Kathmandu (Nepal),
Borobudur (Indonesia) and the Acropolis (Greece). The Organization’s work on heritage led to the
adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural
Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the
World Heritage List in 1978. Since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity
have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 (Convention for the Safeguarding of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage) and 2005 (Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity
of Cultural Expressions).
An intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951 led to the creation of the
European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1954.
Arid Zone programming, 1948–1966, is another example of an early major UNESCO project in the
field of natural sciences. In 1968, UNESCO organized the first intergovernmental conference aimed
at reconciling the environment and development, a problem which continues to be addressed in the

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