CAB129-33 — Page 435

Page 435

evident that this part of UNESCO's work has not succeeded in capturing the imagination of the world and that voluntary agencies haveProteuse UNESCO as a channel for large sums that they are believed to be providing for educational reconstruction.

10. In Communication, a field which United Kingdom Delegations have always considered as offering great opportunities for the reduction of ignor- ance and prejudice through broadcasting, film and Press, we can record only limited progress.

In both Reconstruction and Communication clear and concrete objectives have been selected, but difficulties have been found in developing with the necessary speed and on the necessary scale the methods needed to achieve them. Nor are we sure that these methods are likely to be recognised and developed in the immediate future. This fact is the more serious since it is in these two fields that the needs are greatest and effective action could do most to reassure a distressed world that an inter-govern- mental organisation for education, science and cultures is a force which not only raises problems but can solve them.

11. In the remaining programme fields it is not possible to say with con- viction that general aims have yet been successfully translated into practical objectives. In Arts and Letters and in Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, it has not been possible to draw up co-ordinated programmes of work of the same importance and urgency as in the other fields. It is evident that these subjects are difficult to organise internationally. Two isolated examples, however, of international co-operation successfully developed through UNESCO suggests that at least these particular programme fields are capable of effective development and that their present difficulties can be overcome with experience. These are the International Theatre Institute and the Inter- national Council of Philosophical and Humanistic Societies. Nevertheless, we must record our uneasiness at the lack of balance of the present pro- gramme. It has, for example, made it impossible since in no field can money be voted except for projects of first rate importance, to achieve an distribution of funds between the several fields of UNESCO

activities.

222

h by

12. The balance between the various aspects of the Organisation's work seems to us to be a matter of exceptional importance. It requires the deepest consideration which national delegations can bring to the problem and the most constructive criticism/of individual and national opinion. We are aware of the criticisms that can be, and have been, levelled at UNESCO. In studying those criticisms, we are confirmed in our belief that no one openly challenges the high purposes and fundamental aims for which this inter- national organisation exists. The best informed criticism has generally been concerned with the need to translate the general aims and purposes of the Organisation into concrete objectives which offer hopes of practical achieve- ment. As we have said this criticism has already been met in some of the fields for which UNESCO is responsible, and particularly in those of though

h Education and the Natural Sciences, The Programme approved by the Third Session of the General Conference provides a body of concrete and worth-

perfectly while activities which, when carried out, will make a direct contribution to balanced international understanding and social welfare.

nevertheless

13. The problem in our view is primarily no longer what to do but how best it can be done. A number of practical objectives have now been worked out which are in line with the general purpose of UNESCO described in its Constitution. It is in trying to reach these objectives on a world scale that a new set of problems has been raised, more complex and more urgent than the initial problems of converting general aims into particular tasks.