| In Corrupt UN of Guterres UNESCO
Constitution Mocked By Audrey Azoulay A La
Francaise
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video
UN GATE, Jan 29 –
From
the corrupt UN
of Antonio
Guterres in New
York, the
whole UN
system has
been corrupted now
into,
including
UNESCO.
The Cabinet of Director General
Audrey Azoulay is increasingly accommodating
the numerous requests from the French
authorities in order to ensure that French
compagnies get juicy agreements with UNESCO,
that French cities get UNESCO labels and that
former presidential and Quai d’Orsay aides be
given cushy senior positions in UNESCO’s
Secretariat.
The cronyism reaches into every corner of
UNESCO, and nepotism is also rife.
Member States representatives indicate that
the international body has reformed little in
the two years since the election of Audrey
Azoulay and, on the contrary, UNESCO became
over that short period a byword for
inefficiency, nepotism, retaliation and
corruption.
The organization is stuffed with French bosses
- it has promoted many French managers to
senior posts in the organization and taken on
a number of French consultants that it cannot
afford the properly qualified staff it needs
to run its programs effectively. Despite
all interventions by member states and the
exposure in the press, the Director General of
UNESCO Audrey Azoulay did not get the clear
message that this is not the way to run UNESCO
as if the Organization is part of the French
Administration.
In 2019, four Heads of UN Agencies had
resigned because of proven severe
mismanagement and politically biased
decision-making quite identical to the ones at
UNESCO. After UNAIDS, the UN Palestinian
refugee agency, the UN’s environment body and
the UN biodiversity Agency, the same move is
expected at UNESCO. The issue of the
considerable prejudice to UNESCO created over
the two-year ill-advised management practices
is now addressed by member states. More and
more Ambassadors believe that for the good of
UNESCO, Madam Azoulay has to step down as did
the 4 Heads of UN Agencies before her.
Privatizing and using UNESCO for her own
personal profits and the ones of her home
country is not acceptable anymore. It is
an open secret inside UNESCO that the Quai
d’Orsay and the Elysée are ruling the
organization in place of the good-looking
marionette, says one high official of the
agency. And this is where the crux of the
problem is situated.
In actual fact, the Constitution of
UNESCO, signed on 16 November 1945, is clearly
stipulating in its Article VI (item 5.): “The
responsibilities of the Director-General and
of the staff shall be exclusively
international in character. In the discharge
of their duties they shall not seek or receive
instructions from any government or from any
authority external to the Organization. They
shall refrain from any action which might
prejudice their positions as international
officials. Each State Member of the
Organization undertakes to respect the
international character of the
responsibilities of the Director-General and
the staff, and not to seek to influence them
in the discharge of their duties.
It appears, that since her election, DG Audrey
Azoulay totally disregarded for two years now
the Constitution of UNESCO as well as her oath
pronounced as per the usual ritual at the
beginning of her mandate.
The big question is what will the president of
the General Conference (Turkey) and the
chairman of the Executive Board (Equatorial
Guinea) do in order to bring to an end this
anti-constitutional behavior or the
Director-General. The Constitution of
UNESCO does not provide legal basis for an
impeachment process. Still, member states
consider constitutionally unbearable to allow
the continuation of DG’s politically biased
Administration. Therefore, in the specific
case of DG Azoulay, after all the collected
and duly exposed evidences with respect to
her unreserved allegiance to the French
national authorities, a specific mechanism
will have to be established by the Chairs of
the two main governing bodies in order to
ensure that French DG Audrey Azoulay is
subject to the utmost disciplinary sanctions
and consequently removed from office before
the end of her mandate in 2021. In the
case of DG Azoulay, there is no danger
whatsoever of a partisan, politically
motivated impeachment that would lower the bar
for imposing the ultimate sanction – the
political equivalent of the death penalty – on
future Director-generals.
But at the UN, after all the cases of Heads of
Agencies successfully revoked, the impeachment
case of DG Azoulay must set an example
internationally. It is obvious that the
French Government and the rich club countries
will flip-flop on those impeachment principles
and try to protect the French DG, since they
are all aware that getting the UNESCO top
position again by one of them in the near
future is a mirage. Will that short-sighted
strategy work? The future will tell. This is
where UNESCO stands today. We will have more
on that.
***
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