CAB129-33 — Page 458

27

Page 458

233

Secretary of the Ministry of Education was Chairman. The main features. of the resolutions which were adopted upon their report to the General ConfePerge 4569 sufarised in the following paragraphof 488

99. The Representation of UNESCO in the main Cultural Areas of the World. The proposal to strengthen UNESCO's contacts with and thereby to intensify its impact upon the main cultural areas of the world was approved at the Second Session in Mexico City in 1947. Such action can, however, involve a considerable cost. It is also likely to be more effective if it is carried out in concert with the United Nations and other Specialised Agencies with whom UNESCO might, for example, share premises. For these reasons UNESCO has delayed the establishment of regional centres despite an offer strongly pressed by the Government of Cuba at both the Second and Third Sessions to contribute towards the cost of establishing a Regional Centre to be located in Cuba.

100. The United Kingdom Delegation, while opposing the establishment of a regional centre in the Western hemisphere until a policy had been co-ordinated with the United Nations, nevertheless supported a more modest proposal, which was carried, to create at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, a cultural liaison service with the Middle East.

101. Relations with Member States. The United Kingdom Delegation was represented on the Drafting Committee which drew up the resolutions relating to the Annual Reports to be furnished by Member States in accord- ance with Article VIII of UNESCO's Constitution. The Commission was concerned to prevent rules being adopted requiring Member States to produce lengthy reports in great detail covering the whole of their year's work in education, science and culture, on the grounds that few Member States would be in a position to provide such material annually and that there would be few readers for such a voluminous series of reports if they were actually completed.

102. It was upon a motion of the United Kingdom Delegation that the Commission agreed to defer consideration of the draft regulations proposed for the preparation and application of International Conventions since the text proposed for the Commission's consideration had not been received by all Member States before their Delegations left home for the journey to Beirut. The matter is of obvious importance and Member States will no doubt wish to study the draft regulations in the light of similar rules worked out by the International Labour Office ‘and other international organisations in the past.

103. Relations with Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories.—The Conference accepted amendments proposed by the United Kingdom Delega- tion whose broad effect was to emphasise the role which the governments of the non-self-governing territories should themselves play in the implementa- tion of UNESCO's programme. The short description "non-self-governing used to describe territories such as many of the British Colonial territories for whose foreign relationships H.M. Government in the United Kingdom is responsible, obscures the great extent to which they are already self- governing, particularly in domestic matters of educational policy.

104. It is not unknown elsewhere for critics to seek to embarrass His Majesty's Government by charges of imperialistic oppression in its Colonial territories which can derive plausibility solely from deliberate suppression of and disregard for the true facts about the actual state of self-government in those territories at the present time, the conditions of its evolution and

28 Page 459 of 488