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The United Kingdom Delegation to the Third Session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
REPORT
To the Right Honourable GEORGE TOMLINSON, M.P..
SIR,
Minister of Education
That
During September and October, 1948, you appointed us as the United Kingdom Delegation to the Third Session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Conference was held in Beirut, Lebanon, from 17th November to 11th December, 1948, and we now submit the following report upon its work.
2. Delegations from thirty-seven of the forty-four member States of UNESCO attended the Conference. Notable absentees were Delegations from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Polish Government explained that, as diplomatic relations between Poland and the Lebanon did not exist, it was unable to send a delegation. The Governments of the other two countries gave no reasons for not attending.
3. In our opinion the organisation of the Conference showed a marked improvement over the two earlier Conferences. All the items on a heavy agenda were considered and the Conference completed its work within the allotted time. The official proceedings of the Conference, including all the programme, administrative and financial resolutions adopted, have been published in full by UNESCO.* For this reason, we confine ourselves in Part II of this Report to a summary account of the main decisions taken by the Conference.
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4. We would like first to comment upon the general development of the organisation, its programme and the very real difficulties it is encountering and, to a remarkable extent, overcoming. The Secretariat of UNESCO has been gradually developing the various techniques necessary for translating the Constitution and the decisions of General Conferences into appropriate and adequate action. The Department of Education has now evolved a well-organised plan of work and we have been favourably impressed with that of the Department of Natural Sciences. The latter may perhaps be regarded as a prototype and we think it worth describing in some detail. Its central conception is that of a clearing house, its most effective action being the stimulation of action in other more formal organisations, and thich informal
provision of such aid as may be needed. As other departments of UNESCO's Secretariat should be, it is therefore in touch with (a) Governments, through ts Department of External Relations, (b) National Commissions, which represent the bodies concerned with education, science and culture in the several Member States; (c) Regions of the world, which may include several countries, through UNESCO's own field and regional offices, such as the four Field Service Co-operation Offices; (d) International Governmental
*Records of the General Conference of UNESCO, Third Session, Volume II Resolutions, I.M. Stationery Office, price Os, Od.
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Organisations such as its sister agencies in the United Nations or the smaller, more specialised bodies such as the International Institute of the Hylean Amazdhage the5proposed International InstRageofthe AriZone; (e) İnter national semi or non-governmental organisations which direct financial assist. ance from UNESCO can strengthen and develop or even create, as in the case of the newly formed International Union for the Protection of Nature; (1) Individuals throughout the world who alone can ensure that UNESCO, while it remains an inter-governmental agency, maintains a living relation- ship with experts throughout the world who are in a position to give valuable advice to the Organisation as well as to receive it.
5. Such in outline are the means whereby UNESCO can carry out its task. It must work wherever possible through the National Commissions and Member Governments since it is through them that it derives its main support. But it is, and must be, in touch with men of light and learning in countries which are not yet Member States; it has taken into its Secretariat citizens of such countries and, in addition, through the international non- governmental, semi-governmental and governmental organisations, it has a measure of collaboration from practically every country in the world.
6. Over the past two years there has been an improvement in the planning of the UNESCO programme. That programme must be judged as a whole. New and urgent tasks may be suggested for inclusion in it, and we have studied all available advice and criticism in. search of suggestions as to what ought to have been done but has not been done. We have found none that is not included in one form or another in the present programme. At the same time we have examined critically many new proposals which seemed to us, and to the General Conference, to be insufficiently urgent for inclusion. At the outset, the Leader of the United Kingdom Delegation urged the Con ference when it considered new proposals not to be afraid to say
no" merely because no good reason could be urged against them. While the United Kingdom Delegation recognised that a wide programme was necesi sary in order to secure the co-operation of as many workers as possible in the wide field of education, science and culture, our readiness to broaden UNESCO's programme was tempered by the sense that within each of the many legitimate fields of activity a strict spirit of economy in the use of limited resources must prevail.
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7. The deficiencies in UNESCO's programme will remain a standing chal lenge to teachers in schools, to university lecturers and professors, to scientists, artists, writers, philosophers, psychologists and social workers generally throughout the world. The programme of UNESCO will be what they make it
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8. In considering the programme which the Conference finally approved. our own criticism as a Delegation has been and remains severe in certain matters. While we think that the most fruitful work has been, and will be done in the fields of Education, Natural Sciences, Libraries and the Exchange of Persons, other fields appear to us to have developed less satisfactorily and to promise less certain results.
9. Bearing in mind the great needs of educational, scientific and cultural reconstruction and the appreciable contribution towards meeting those needs which the United Kingdom was able to make through the Lord Mayor's Appeal for Children, we regret that owing to its inadequate resources the reconstruction programme of UNESCO has not measured up to the expecta tions it aroused, still less to the immense problems still before it. It seems
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