M'Bow out
The United States intends to fulfil its promise to withdraw from Unesco, the United Nations educational and cultural organisation, by the end of the year. By doing so, it will deprive Unesco of a quarter of its funds. Britain, however, does not intend to follow suit. Foreign Office Officials, acting with extraordinarily little Political supervision, profess themselves Largely satisfied with a collection of minor cOncessions extracted from the organisa- tIon's autocratic director-general, Amadar Mahtar M'Bow. None of these concessions comes near to dealing with Unesco's prob- lems. These are that the organisation is intensely politicised and intensely hostile to the West. The New International Eco- nomic Order and the New World Informa- tion Order, projects on which it has been spending western money for some years, are each designed to subject the habits of the free nations to a repressive internation- al bureaucracy. More than 80 per cent of Mr M'Bow's huge staff work in Paris rather than in the field, and many of the more senior members have recently resigned, complaining that promotion is never made according to merit, and that Mr M'Bow is trying to set up, a staff of short-term contracts, owing their livelihoods entirely to his patronage. To this Britain contri- butes more than six million pounds, and gets nothing but insults and humiliation in return. To give the necessary notice, Bri- tain must declare within the next two months that she will withdraw at the end of 1985. This she should do. Such a declara- tion would not be irreversible, but it would be sure to bring other European countries with her and so to force Unesco to react rather more decisively than before. The most basic condition for staying in Unesco should be that Mr M'Bow goes.
Previous page
