Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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UNESCO is celebrating its 60th anniversary. This brings back memories that go back 60 years. While UNESCO officially came into being on 4 November 1946, the drafting of the constitution had already taken place on 16 November 1945 in London. After lengthy discussions, a learned committee, headed by the British scientist and writer Julian Huxley, had come up with the constitution draft. Egypt was one of the countries participating in that meeting; she too is a founding member of this organisation. Egypt was represented by the late Ahmed Naguib Hashem, then director of the newly founded Egyptian Institute in London, and myself as secretary of the institute.

The preamble to the constitution resounded with lofty and noble declarations:

"The governments of the states party to this constitution on behalf of their people declare that since wars began in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defence of peace must be constructed... that a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace which could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world, and that the peace must, therefore, be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind.

"For these reasons," the preamble went on, "the states party... are agreed and determined to develop and to increase the means of communication between their peoples and to employ these means for the purposes of mutual understanding and a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other's lives."

And true to its avowed principles UNESCO has spared no effort in realising these lofty goals. It is quite significant that the constitution underlines the role of communication. This is why it is not surprising that communication has occupied quite a large portion of UNESCO's activities. It embraced the non-aligned proposal for a "New World Information Order", and formed a high-ranking committee headed by Sean McBride. This produced "Many Voices, One World", a report which has become the bible of communicators.

UNESCO's regular publications are an invaluable source of knowledge covering many fields. Among them are UNESCO Courier (now an Internet-only publication), World Reports on Education, Museum International (which has produced a special issue on Egyptian museums), and Biogines. A cursory look at some of these publications reveals the diversity of their subjects. Issues of the Courier are devoted to such topics as the communication boom, the environment, immigrants, refugees and slavery, among others.

It is also in the field of national heritage that UNESCO plays an important role. Egypt has been one of the benefactors of UNESCO's conservation programmes, and the contribution of the organisation to the saving of the Nubian monuments cannot be overemphasised. It also played a role in examining the ring road project, the circular highway which would have been constructed right through the Pyramids plateau if not for UNESCO sending a special delegation of experts to examine the issue at close quarters. The opposition of the delegation resulted in alternative routing.

Apart from Museum International 's special issue on Egyptian museums, it devoted one to Egyptian collections around the world, from the new Nubian Museum in Aswan, to exhibits in Russia. Other articles in the issue focus on techniques of safeguarding these collections. I would like to add here that there is in Cairo the Centre of UNESCO's Publications which undertakes the translation into Arabic of all UNESCO publications. It serves not only Egypt but the Arab World.

It is difficult, indeed impossible, to give even a bird's eye view of UNESCO's activities in the fields of culture, science, education and information. In all its efforts the organisation has been working for the internationalisation of culture, always underlining the importance of preserving national cultural identity and finding unity in diversity.