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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, Nov 16 –  UNESCO, like the whole UN system under Antonio Guterres is falling apart in politicization, corruption and fraud. Inner City Press has been reporting on serious malfeasance by the French Audrey Azoulay at UNESCO in Paris, almost as bad as Antonio Guterres' corruption in and of the UN in New York. A fish rots from the head. 

Despite all the wrongdoings duly exposed by Inner City Press, little progress has been made in cleaning up the Agency, mainly due to the criminal complicity of the member states. Their political attitude is in fact a green light given to DG Azoulay to continue these practices and even intensify them in the last two years of her tenure.

The member states are therefore entirely responsible for the collapse of UNESCO, as of the wider UN under Guterres.  Since the beginning of Azoulay's mandate, following a totally unexpected election, the French DG and her team have treated the organization as if it were her private store. The reason why this continues to happen has a simple and direct explanation. At UNESCO, the governing bodies are inaudibly observing, instead of governing or administering.  In recent days, this situation has remained unchanged and unchallenged. DG Azoulay is still unpunished for her dictatorial power over democratic processes, including the General Conference's election of Executive Board members this week, which she has no right to do.

Her outrageous intervention in these elections, without any fear of sanctions, is striking.  DG Audrey Azoulay's cabinet often complains that member states are too obstructive with regard to her plans and too severe with regard to her management. This is rarely true. On the contrary, member states complacently forget to remind Audrey Azoulay of the very clearly separated prerogatives that result from the constitutional obligations of member states and the rules of conduct for international staff, including the DG.

 This week, the ire of the member states may seem silent, but it is clearly directed against the lobbying statements made in private by Azoulay and her team in coordination with certain member states such as Djibouti in favor of the election of several countries - including the particular case of Palestine - to the Executive Board.  This may seem weird in the context of the current confrontation in the Middle East, but the fact is that Azoulay has been campaigning for Palestine to obtain a seat on the Executive Board in order to counter other Arab countries she considers less favorable to her policy of mismanagement and corruption.

 The Palestinian Ambassador to UNESCO, Mounir Anastas, who has held this post for almost a decade and lived in France for even longer, is considered a close friend of Azoulay and therefore fully deserves her support. As a result of Azoulay's typical political maneuvering, Iraq's election to the Executive Board was seriously compromised, but it finally went ahead.

 This is a matter of grave concern, as Azoulay's failure to comply is contrary to the Agency's ethics and tradition, and undermines member states' confidence in the credibility of a fair and democratic electoral process under Audrey Azoulay's tenure. 

The violation of principles, the political and ethical implications of her behavior should be a grave concern to member states which are normally aware that the Constitution of UNESCO clearly stipulates 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”. 

 Since her election, DG Audrey Azoulay totally disregarded the Constitution of UNESCO as well as her oath pronounced as per the usual ritual at the beginning of her mandate. Therefore, in the specific case of DG Azoulay, after all the collected and duly exposed evidences with respect to her mismanagement, to her misuse of public funds, to her disrespect for rules and regulations, to her unreserved allegiance to the French national authorities, a specific mechanism will have to be established in order to ensure that any other DG in the future be subject to severe disciplinary sanctions if ever acting like the French DG.

 The term of DG Azoulay could therefore be used as a matchless bad-practice experiment that can only be followed by improvements with future Director-generals.

 It's obvious that the French Government, represented by the French Ambassador to UNESCO, Philippe Franc, will do an about-face on all the above criticism and, as a matter of principle, try to protect the French DG so that she can get away with murdering the Agency despite France's disastrous image as a host country.  Ambassador Franc keeps repeating that he was appointed "to protect" Audrey Azoulay. The question is, why does she need such political protection and what does he need to protect her from so assiduously?

What offenses must remain hidden? As end of mandates are always quite painful for all of her predecessors, we will certainly soon have all these aspects related to the “protection” of Azoulay by the French duly revealed. Watch this site.

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