UNESCO is not, however, a funding agency. Its own budget is quite limited and could be compared to that of a medium-sized university. So, its role is not direct funding, but rather the mobilization of resources and assistance in their appropriate use. UNESCO has promoted the cause of education at many of the development aid agencies: it makes every attempt to increase the volume of global amounts earmarked for education and to direct the flow of aid towards those in most need. Until the World Conference on Education for All in 1990, the total amount of international aid
assigned to primary education represented less than 5 per cent of the total annual aid allocated to all levels of education. Primary education accounted for only 3 to 4 per cent of the total amount of World Bank loans to education for the years 1964-1969, compared to nearly 30 per cent for 1990-1994. The Organization also strives to mobilize resources for causes and activities which, depending upon the period, seem to be of lower priority for
multilateral or bilateral donors. This is true even for national
authorities, particularly when illiteracy, minority groups, the
disabled and, generally speaking, all those who today tend to be designated ‘deprived’, are at stake.
When speaking of operational activities, special mention must be made of the emergency action schemes aimed at enabling
countries to cope with the consequences of conflict, of natural disasters – earthquakes, floods – and of industrial accidents, such as chemical or nuclear contamination. Humanitarian assistance has high priority in the Organization’s programme. The early years saw the development of post-war reconstruction programmes in Asia and in Europe and assistance to Palestinian refugees; in 1960 there was an emergency programme to maintain educational services in Congo-Léopoldville to meet a request of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to all specialized agencies; during the last decade, with the proliferation of civil war, UNESCO has become increasingly involved in humanitarian aid programmes carried out under the umbrella of the United Nations in Asia, in Africa and in Europe, striving to meet the immediate educational needs of the victims (see box on Emergency Action, p. 234).
Over the last fifty years, the conception and form of operational activities have evolved in line with stronger national capacities to make decisions as to priorities, the most appropriate form and type of assistance, and to manage projects, as well as in respect of needs which change as their education systems develop. Direct technical assistance, which consisted of supplying basic services and exchanges, gradually gave way to ‘upstream activities’ and to co-operation of a more intellectual nature in order to carry out sectoral analyses and frame national strategies and programmes. Today, within a new international context, co-operation is moving towards forging partnerships for development.
To manage its operational activities the Organization has gone, not without some trial and error, from centralization to decentralization, and from the co-existence of separate activities of an intellectual and operational nature to integration. As early as 1950 the Organization set up a Department for technical assistance which had full control over all extrabudgetary projects and fellowships. After that, following various structural reforms, it entrusted the implementation of projects to the Sectors, and then to the programme units and field offices concerned, so as to establish permanent interaction between what was being said and what was being done.
In 1951, the resources made available to UNESCO by various extrabudgetary funding agencies represented around 12.5 per cent
of the Regular Programme budget, with less than $1 million to cover the programmes of all the sectors. In 1972, the Education Sector alone was allocated a Regular Programme budget of $10 million to match the $17 million of extrabudgetary resources provided by the other United Nations agencies, with additional funds coming from other extrabudgetary sources. In 1996, the Regular Programme budget for education was $54 million plus approximately $59 million foreseen from extrabudgetary resources, only 40 per cent of which from the United Nations, the rest coming from other extrabudgetary sources.
