After 12 year hiatus, UNESCO commission appointed
As part of its mandate, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) funds a national commission in every signatory country. But for the past twelve years, the Belize chapter has been non existent. Why? Officially, the group just stopped meeting. Unofficially sources tell News Five that one by one, the assets, monies and members simply started to disappear. The end result was a quagmire of paperwork that put us in UNESCO’s bad books. But for the past year, officials have been hard at work trying to convince the U.N. that this time; we’re serious about maintaining the commission mandate. News Five’s Karla Vernon explains.
Karla Vernon, Reporting
This afternoon, eighteen new members of Belize?s National Commission for UNESCO were officially sworn in during ceremonies at the House of Culture in Belize City. Former members say that after a decade of dormancy, the revival of the commission is welcomed.
?You mentioned that the commission hasn?t met for twelve years, but nobody really explained why. What were the problems? Did it just fall apart? Was there lack of participation??
Roy Cayetano, Secretary General, UNESCO Commission
?Well I think that meetings just stopped being called. The president at the time was Santos Mahung and he was the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education. It is usually the president who calls meetings, I was in the commission at the time and I can only say that meetings stopped happening.?
?I think it might have been a falling off of political will, but you cannot blame the present administration, you can?t blame the Prime Minister or Minister Fonseca for that. Then of course after things fell apart it was not easy bringing them back. Back in place again. I believe there is now a keen interest because we realize how much we have lost by not having a commission and the working groups in place. I believe that like the Minister said, this is not to be a commission on paper, this is going to be an active commission the way it was before. Up to the time it ceased to be functional.?
Commission President, Minister of Education Francis Fonseca today admitted that past difficulties were also due to ?faulty accounting practices?.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
?UNESCO, obviously is an U.N. agency and rightly so they expect that there will be a proper accounting of all projects that are under taken within our country. The fact is that for many years that was not the case. I am speaking very frankly to you here today, because we have to understand the role that we have to play as we move forward.?
?Certainly Teresita Levy from the Ministry of Education, who was designated as the Secretary General over the last eighteen months or so, that has been her sole focus, her sole responsibility in making sure that Belize, as a country, gets back in good standing with UNESCO. And I am very happy to say that we have achieved that.?
Deputy Administrator of the National Institute of Culture and History, Andy Palacio is one of the new commission members.
Andy Palacio, Deputy Administrator of NICH
?There are several areas under UNESCO that we can look forward to getting involved with for example other potential candidates of Masterpieces of the World and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The whole issue of Mayan traditional dances; Belize also has a strong tradition in traditional healing practices, those two can be submitted for consideration under that programme. There are skilled persons around the country who can be proposed as human living treasures, we can begin to look at these things. A lot of these persons with these types of skills and knowledge can be found in the rural areas of Belize.?
?Belize has for too long not been reaping the full benefits of its membership from UNESCO so here we have an opportunity to get input from the various members of the commission and from the different working groups that we will be forming here today. To start to tap into UNESCO to see how we can derive the available benefits in the area of training, in the different awards that UNESCO proposes, and just generally whatever UNESCO has to offer, to make Belize available as a receptacle for these benefits.?
Reporting for News Five, I am Karla Vernon
The new commission met in its first meeting immediately following today’s inauguration ceremony.
