NEW MANAGEMENT TEAM ANNOUNCED AT UNESCO

Paris, January 16 (No.2001-04) - Pierre Sané, the present Secretary General of Amnesty International, and Sir John Daniel, a pioneer of open and distance education, are to join UNESCO, as Assistant Directors-General respectively of the Human and Social Sciences and of Education.

They are part of the newly appointed management team consisting of a Deputy Director-General and five Assistant Directors-General, recruited from outside the Organization by Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura.

Announcing the appointments last Thursday, Mr Matsuura stressed the transparency and competitiveness of the recruitment procedure, unprecedented on this scale in the history of the United Nations system.

The team supporting the Director-General is young by the standards of the United Nations, with an average age of 50, and geographically balanced. Asia is represented by, other than the Director-General himself, one Assistant Director-General; Latin America by a Deputy Director-General and an Assistant Director-General; Africa by two Assistant Directors-General, as is the Arab Region; Western Europe by three Assistant Directors-General; and Eastern Europe by one Assistant Director-General.

The new Deputy Director-General is Márcio Nogueira Barbosa of Brazil, a space research specialist and the Director-General of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias (INPE), where he showed his acumen as a “captain of industry”. He has served as Chairman of the International Committee on Earth Observation Satellites.

The arrival of Sir John Daniel and of Pierre Sané confirms the Director-General’s determination to reform UNESCO. Sir John Daniel, head of Britain’s Open University, is a visionary in his field. Before anyone else, he perceived the growing importance of distance education and has worked with numerous leading institutions in this area: among them the International Council for Open and Distance Education, the Commonwealth of Learning and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning.

Over 12 years, Pierre Sané (Senegal) supervised assistance programmes for the poorest areas of Africa with the International Development Research Centre of Canada. At the head of Amnesty International, he has earned an international reputation and widespread esteem.

The other appointments concern the science, culture, communication and information, and administration sectors. Walter Rudolf Erdelen (Germany) has been appointed to the post of Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences. Mr Erdelen is an academic with a long experience of international co-operation programmes in the sciences at the service of environmental protection and development, notably in the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia and Africa.

The archaeologist Mounir Bouchenaki (Algeria), has been appointed to the post of Assistant Director-General for Culture. The former Director of the Cultural Heritage Division, Mr Bouchenaki over recent months served as interim Director of the World Heritage Centre.

Abdul Waheed Khan (India) has been appointed to the post of Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information. As Rector of one of the world’s leading open universities, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, he has demonstrated leadership in the development of communication, distance education and education technologies. He will take office at the end of the first semester, when the incumbent, Alain Modoux of Switzerland, retires.

Eleonora Mitrofanova (Russian Federation) has been appointed to the post of Assistant Director-General for Administration. A member of the Duma, she sits on the committee which monitors the management and servicing of external debts, the use of foreign loans and the activities of the Central Bank.

 

****