Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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The nomination of Minister of Culture Farouk Hosny to the post of Director General of UNESCO brought back to me memories of over 50 years ago. On 1 November 1945 the Conference for the Establishment of the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organisation began its work at the London Institute of Civil Engineers, one of the few buildings in London that had not been damaged by the German blitzkrieg.

Representatives of twenty countries met to lay the foundation of this World Organisation, the same twenty countries which had signed the charter of the United Nations in San Francisco on 26 June 1945. Egypt was one of the London Conference participants and was represented by the late Ahmed Naguib Hashem, director of the Egyptian Institute in London, along with my humble self as secretary of the Institute. I remember Naguib Bey, as we used to call him, telling me, "Come and watch how international meetings proceed."

You can imagine my feelings, a young man of less than 24 years old, sitting among a bevy of leading world intellectuals and ministers. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I also listened to a discussion that would eventually result in the changing of the name of the organisation. A number of imminent scientists, including Julian Huxley the leading British scientist (who became the first director general of the organisation) proposed the inclusion of science in the title and it thus became the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The Conference was inaugurated on 1 November by Prime Minister Clement R Attlee in which he said "In the new world order towards which we are moving it is essential that we should have appropriate machinery to deal with each of the major fields of human activity. This covers not only the special field of education in all its branches and at all its stages, it includes the whole intellectual realm with al its goodly states and kingdoms, the sciences, the humanities, the fine arts, research for the advancement of knowledge and the whole vast territory in which ideas are disseminated! Prime Minister Attlee concluded his speech with a sentence that began the preamble of the UNESCO Constitution "Do not wars, after all, begin in the minds of men?

This last sentence was taken up by the American delegate and well known writer Archibald MacLeish, who prepared the draft of the constitution which read: "The Governments of the States Parties to this constitution on behalf of their people declare:

"That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed."

The Constitution then goes on to say, "That ignorance of each other's ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war... That the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man and constitute a sacred duty which all the nations must fulfill in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern."

And so the preamble continues, concluding: "In consequence whereof they do hereby create the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation for the purpose of advancing, through the educational and scientific and cultural relations of the peoples of the world, the objectives of international peace and of the common welfare of mankind for which the United Nations Organisation was established and which its charter proclaims."

The Constitution was signed by the 20 participants on 16 November 1945.

The creation of UNESCO was hailed by many of the representatives including, memorably, Ellen Wilkinson, the British Minister of Education and the President of the Conference. The achievement of greater and more effective international cooperation in the field of education and in the fields of culture generally - of science and the arts - is the immediate purpose of this meeting. But that purpose has behind it a greater and even more moving objective: the common understanding of the masses of the peoples of the world.