UNESCO facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Flag of UNESCO
Abbreviation	UNESCO
Formation	16 November 1945; 79 years ago (1945-11-16)
Type	United Nations specialised agency
Legal status	Active
Headquarters	Paris, France
Head	Audrey Azoulay (Director-General)
Parent organization	United Nations Economic and Social Council

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 194 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions.

UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. Its constitution establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating framework. UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the events of World War II, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It pursues this objective through five major programme areas: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and communication/information. UNESCO sponsors projects that improve literacy, provide technical training and education, advance science, protect independent media and press freedom, preserve regional and cultural history, and promote cultural diversity.

UNESCO's activities have broadened over the years. It assists in the translation and dissemination of world literature, helps establish and secure World Heritage Sites of cultural and natural importance, works to bridge the worldwide digital divide, and creates inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication. UNESCO has launched several initiatives and global movements, such as Education For All.

UNESCO is governed by the General Conference composed of member states and associate members, which meets biannually to set the agency's programs and budget. It also elects members of the executive board, which manages UNESCO's work, and appoints every four years a Director-General, who serves as UNESCO's chief administrator. UNESCO is a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, a coalition of UN agencies and organizations aimed at fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals.

History

Origins

UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, to elect a Commission to study the feasibility of having nations freely share cultural, educational and scientific achievements. This new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC), was created in 1922 and counted such figures as Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Robert A. Millikan, and Gonzague de Reynold among its members (being thus a small commission of the League of Nations essentially centred on Western Europe). The International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) was then created in Paris in September 1924, to act as the executing agency for the ICIC. However, the onset of World War II largely interrupted the work of these predecessor organizations. As for private initiatives, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) began to work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development since December 1925 and joined UNESCO in 1969, after having established a joint commission in 1952.

Creation

After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an international organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), held in San Francisco from April to June 1945, a United Nations Conference for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF) was convened in London from 1 to 16 November 1945 with 44 governments represented. The idea of UNESCO was largely developed by Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom, who had a great deal of influence in its development. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, and a Preparatory Commission was established. The Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946 — the date when UNESCO's Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state.

The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Julian Huxley to Director-General. United States Army colonel, university president and civil rights advocate Blake R. Van Leer joined as a member as well. The Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the executive board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity. This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in the organization's fields of competence. As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate, political and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War, the decolonization process, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Development

Among the major achievements of the organization is its work against racism, for example through influential statements on race starting with a declaration of anthropologists (among them was Claude Lévi-Strauss) and other scientists in 1950 and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice.

In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems". It rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.

UNESCO's early work in the field of education included a pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, that started in 1947. This project was followed by expert missions to other countries, including, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal. In 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, led member governments to commit to achieving basic education for all by 2015.

The World Declaration on Higher Education was adopted by UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education on 9 October 1998, with the aim of setting global standards on the ideals and accessibility of higher education.

UNESCO's early activities in culture included the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam. During the 20-year campaign, 22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), Fes (Morocco), Kathmandu (Nepal), Borobudur (Indonesia) and the Acropolis of Athens (Greece). The organization's work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978. Since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 (Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage) and 2005 (Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions).

An intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951 led to the creation of the European Council for Nuclear Research, which was responsible for establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) later on, in 1954.

Arid Zone programming, 1948–1966, is another example of an early major UNESCO project in the field of natural sciences.

In 1968, UNESCO organized the first intergovernmental conference aimed at reconciling the environment and development, a problem that continues to be addressed in the field of sustainable development. The main outcome of the 1968 conference was the creation of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.

UNESCO has been credited with the diffusion of national science bureaucracies.

In the field of communication, the "free flow of ideas by word and image" has been in UNESCO's constitution from its beginnings, following the experience of the Second World War when control of information was a factor in indoctrinating populations for aggression. In the years immediately following World War II, efforts were concentrated on reconstruction and on the identification of needs for means of mass communication around the world. UNESCO started organizing training and education for journalists in the 1950s. In response to calls for a "New World Information and Communication Order" in the late 1970s, UNESCO established the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, which produced the 1980 MacBride report (named after the chair of the commission, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Seán MacBride). The same year, UNESCO created the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), a multilateral forum designed to promote media development in developing countries. In 1991, UNESCO's General Conference endorsed the Windhoek Declaration on media independence and pluralism, which led the UN General Assembly to declare the date of its adoption, 3 May, as World Press Freedom Day. Since 1997, UNESCO has awarded the UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize every 3 May.

21st century

UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member in 2011.

Laws passed in the United States after Palestine applied for UNESCO and WHO membership in April 1989 mean that the US cannot contribute financially to any UN organization that accepts Palestine as a full member. As a result, the US withdrew its funding, which had accounted for about 22% of UNESCO's budget. Israel also reacted to Palestine's admittance to UNESCO by freezing Israeli payments to UNESCO and imposing sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, stating that Palestine's admittance would be detrimental "to potential peace talks". Two years after they stopped paying their dues to UNESCO, the US and Israel lost UNESCO voting rights in 2013 without losing the right to be elected; thus, the US was elected as a member of the executive board for the period 2016–19. In 2019, Israel left UNESCO after 69 years of membership, with Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon writing: "UNESCO is the body that continually rewrites history, including by erasing the Jewish connection to Jerusalem... it is corrupted and manipulated by Israel's enemies... we are not going to be a member of an organisation that deliberately acts against us".

2023 saw Russia excluded from the executive committee for the first time, after failing to get sufficient votes.

Activities

UNESCO offices in Brasília

UNESCO implements its activities through the five programme areas: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information.

• UNESCO supports research in comparative education, provides expertise and fosters partnerships to strengthen national educational leadership and the capacity of countries to offer quality education for all. This includes the
  • UNESCO Chairs, an international network of 644 UNESCO Chairs, involving over 770 institutions in 126 countries
  • Environmental Conservation Organisation
  • Convention against Discrimination in Education adopted in 1960
  • Organization of the International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA) in an interval of 12 years
  • Publication of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report
  • Publication of the Four Pillars of Learning seminal document
  • UNESCO ASPNet, an international network of more than 12,000 schools in 182 countries

UNESCO does not accredit institutions of higher learning.

• UNESCO also issues public statements to educate the public:
  • Seville Statement on Violence: A statement adopted by UNESCO in 1989 to refute the notion that humans are biologically predisposed to organised violence.
• Designating projects and places of cultural and scientific significance, such as:
  • Global Geoparks Network
  • Biosphere reserves, through the Programme on Man and the Biosphere (MAB), since 1971
  • City of Literature; in 2007, the first city to be given this title was Edinburgh, the site of Scotland's first circulating library. In 2008, Iowa City, Iowa, became the City of Literature.
  • Endangered languages and linguistic diversity projects (UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger)
  • Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
  • Memory of the World International Register, since 1997
  • Water resources management, through the International Hydrological Programme (IHP), since 1965
  • World Heritage Sites
  • World Digital Library
• Encouraging the "free flow of ideas by images and words" by:
  • Promoting freedom of expression, including freedom of the press and freedom of information legislation, through the Division of Freedom of Expression and Media Development, including the International Programme for the Development of Communication
  • Promoting the safety of journalists and combatting impunity for those who attack them, through coordination of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity
  • Promoting universal access to and preservation of information and open solutions for sustainable development through the Knowledge Societies Division, including the Memory of the World Programme and Information for All Programme
  • Promoting pluralism, gender equality and cultural diversity in the media
  • Promoting Internet Universality and its principles, that the Internet should be (I) human Rights-based, (ii) Open, (iii) Accessible to all, and (iv) nurtured by Multi-stakeholder participation (summarized as the acronym R.O.A.M.)
  • Generating knowledge through publications such as World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development, the UNESCO Series on Internet Freedom, and the Media Development Indicators, as well as other indicator-based studies.
• Promoting events, such as:
  • International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World: 2001–2010, proclaimed by the UN in 1998
  • World Press Freedom Day, 3 May each year, to promote freedom of expression and freedom of the press as a basic human right and as crucial components of any healthy, democratic and free society.
  • Criança Esperança in Brazil, in partnership with Rede Globo, to raise funds for community-based projects that foster social integration and violence prevention.
  • International Literacy Day, 8 September each year
  • International Year for the Culture of Peace, 2000
  • Health Education for Behavior Change programme in partnership with the Ministry of Education of Kenya which was financially supported by the Government of Azerbaijan to promote health education among 10-19-year-old young people who live in informal camp in Kibera, Nairobi. The project was carried out between September 2014 – December 2016.
  • World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 21 May each year
• Founding and funding projects, such as:
  • Migration Museums Initiative: Promoting the establishment of museums for cultural dialogue with migrant populations.
  • UNESCO-CEPES, the European Centre for Higher Education: established in 1972 in Bucharest, Romania, as a decentralized office to promote international co-operation in higher education in Europe as well as Canada, USA and Israel. Higher Education in Europe is its official journal.
  • Free Software Directory: since 1998 UNESCO and the Free Software Foundation have jointly funded this project cataloguing free software.
  • FRESH, Focusing Resources on Effective School Health
  • OANA, Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies
  • International Council of Science
  • UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadors
  • ASOMPS, Asian Symposium on Medicinal Plants and Spices, a series of scientific conferences held in Asia
  • Botany 2000, a programme supporting taxonomy, and biological and cultural diversity of medicinal and ornamental plants, and their protection against environmental pollution
  • The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, translating works of world literature both to and from multiple languages, from 1948 to 2005
  • GoUNESCO, an umbrella of initiatives to make heritage fun supported by UNESCO, New Delhi Office
  • UNESCO-CHIC BIRUP, UNESCO-CHIC Group (China) Biosphere Rural and Urbanization Programme

The UNESCO transparency portal has been designed to enable public access to information regarding the Organization's activities, such as its aggregate budget for a biennium, as well as links to relevant programmatic and financial documents. These two distinct sets of information are published on the IATI registry, respectively based on the IATI Activity Standard and the IATI Organization Standard.

There have been proposals to establish two new UNESCO lists. The first proposed list will focus on movable cultural heritage such as artifacts, paintings, and biofacts. The list may include cultural objects, such as the Jōmon Venus of Japan, the Mona Lisa of France, the Gebel el-Arak Knife of Egypt, The Ninth Wave of Russia, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük of Turkey, the David (Michelangelo) of Italy, the Mathura Herakles of India, the Manunggul Jar of the Philippines, the Crown of Baekje of South Korea, The Hay Wain of the United Kingdom and the Benin Bronzes of Nigeria. The second proposed list will focus on the world's living species, such as the komodo dragon of Indonesia, the panda of China, the bald eagle of North American countries, the aye-aye of Madagascar, the Asiatic lion of India, the kākāpō of New Zealand, and the mountain tapir of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Media

UNESCO and its specialized institutions issue a number of magazines.

Created in 1945, The UNESCO Courier magazine states its mission to "promote UNESCO's ideals, maintain a platform for the dialogue between cultures and provide a forum for international debate". Since March 2006 it has been available free online, with limited printed issues. Its articles express the opinions of the authors which are not necessarily the opinions of UNESCO. There was a hiatus in publishing between 2012 and 2017.

In 1950, UNESCO initiated the quarterly review Impact of Science on Society (also known as Impact) to discuss the influence of science on society. The journal ceased publication in 1992. UNESCO also published Museum International Quarterly from the year 1948.

Official UNESCO NGOs

UNESCO has official relations with 322 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Most of these are what UNESCO calls "operational"; a select few are "formal". The highest form of affiliation to UNESCO is "formal associate", and the 22 NGOs with formal associate (ASC) relations occupying offices at UNESCO are:

UNESCO Institute for Water Education in Delft

Institutes and centres

The institutes are specialized departments of the organization that support UNESCO's programme, providing specialized support for cluster and national offices.

Prizes

UNESCO awards 26 prizes in education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, communication and information as well as peace:

Education

• UNESCO/King Sejong Literacy Prize
• UNESCO/Confucius Prize for Literacy
• UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development
• UNESCO Prize for Girls' and Women's Education
• UNESCO/Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize for Outstanding Practice and Performance in Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teachers
• UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education

Natural Sciences

• L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science
• UNESCO/Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science
• UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences
• Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology
• UNESCO/Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation
• UNESCO-Russia Mendeleev International Prize in the Basic Sciences
• UNESCO-Al Fozan International Prize for the Promotion of Young Scientists in STEM
• Michel Batisse Award for Biosphere Reserve Management

Social and Human Sciences

• UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science
• UNESCO/Juan Bosch Prize for the Promotion of Social Science Research in Latin America and the Caribbean
• UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence
• UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture
• UNESCO/International José Martí Prize
• UNESCO-UNAM / Jaime Torres Bodet Prize in social sciences, humanities and arts

Culture

• Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes (UNESCO-Greece)

Communication and Information

• UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize
• UNESCO/Emir Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah Prize to promote Quality Education for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities
• UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize

Peace

• Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize

Inactive prizes

• International Simón Bolívar Prize (inactive since 2004)
• UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education
• UNESCO/Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences (inactive since 2010)
• UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts

International Days observed at UNESCO

International Days observed at UNESCO are provided in the table below:

Member states

     UNESCO member states      UNESCO member state dependent territory with separate NOC      UNESCO associates      UNESCO observers

As of July 2023^[update], UNESCO has 194 member states and 12 associate members. Some members are not independent states and some members have additional National Organizing Committees from some of their dependent territories. UNESCO state parties are the United Nations member states (except Israel and Liechtenstein), as well as Cook Islands, Niue and Palestine. The United States and Israel left UNESCO on 31 December 2018, but the U.S. rejoined in 2023.

Governing bodies

Director-General

As of June 2023^[update], there have been 11 Directors-General of UNESCO since its inception – nine men and two women. The 11 Directors-General of UNESCO have come from six regions within the organization: West Europe (5), Central America (1), North America (2), West Africa (1), East Asia (1), and East Europe (1).

To date, there has been no elected Director-General from the remaining ten regions within UNESCO: Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and North Asia, Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, Australia-Oceania, and South America.

The list of the Directors-General of UNESCO since its establishment in 1946 is as follows:

Directors-General of UNESCO

Order	Image	Name	Country	Term
1st		Julian Huxley	United Kingdom	1946–1948
2nd		Jaime Torres Bodet	Mexico	1948–1952
–		John Wilkinson Taylor	United States	acting 1952–1953
3rd		Luther Evans	United States	1953–1958
4th		Vittorino Veronese	Italy	1958–1961
5th		René Maheu	France	acting 1961; 1961–1974
6th		Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow	Senegal	1974–1987
7th		Federico Mayor Zaragoza	Spain	1987–1999
8th		Koïchiro Matsuura	Japan	1999–2009
9th		Irina Bokova	Bulgaria	2009–2017
10th		Audrey Azoulay	France	2017–Incumbent

General Conference

This is the list of the sessions of the UNESCO General Conference held since 1946:

Session	Location	Year	Chaired by	from
1st	Paris	1946	Léon Blum	France
2nd	Mexico City	1947	Manuel Gual Vidal	Mexico
3rd	Beirut	1948	Hamid Bey Frangie	Lebanon
1st extraordinary	Paris	1948
4th	Paris	1949	Edward Ronald Walker	Australia
5th	Florence	1950	Stefano Jacini	Italy
6th	Paris	1951	Howland H. Sargeant	United States
7th	Paris	1952	Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan	India
2nd extraordinary	Paris	1953
8th	Montevideo	1954	Justino Zavala Muniz	Uruguay
9th	New Delhi	1956	Abul Kalam Azad	India
10th	Paris	1958	Jean Berthoin	France
11th	Paris	1960	Akale-Work Abte-Wold	Ethiopia
12th	Paris	1962	Paulo de Berrêdo Carneiro	Brazil
13th	Paris	1964	Norair Sisakian	Soviet Union
14th	Paris	1966	Bedrettin Tuncel	Turkey
15th	Paris	1968	William Eteki Mboumoua	Cameroon
16th	Paris	1970	Atilio Dell'Oro Maini	Argentina
17th	Paris	1972	Toru Haguiwara	Japan
3rd extraordinary	Paris	1973
18th	Paris	1974	Magda Jóború	Hungary
19th	Nairobi	1976	Taaita Toweett	Kenya
20th	Paris	1978	Napoléon LeBlanc	Canada
21st	Belgrade	1980	Ivo Margan	Yugoslavia
4th extraordinary	Paris	1982
22nd	Paris	1983	Saïd Tell	Jordan
23rd	Sofia	1985	Nikolai Todorov	Bulgaria
24th	Paris	1987	Guillermo Putzeys Alvarez	Guatemala
25th	Paris	1989	Anwar Ibrahim	Malaysia
26th	Paris	1991	Bethwell Allan Ogot	Kenya
27th	Paris	1993	Ahmed Saleh Sayyad	Yemen
28th	Paris	1995	Torben Krogh	Denmark
29th	Paris	1997	Eduardo Portella	Brazil
30th	Paris	1999	Jaroslava Moserová	Czech Republic
31st	Paris	2001	Ahmad Jalali	Iran
32nd	Paris	2003	Michael Omolewa	Nigeria
33rd	Paris	2005	Musa Bin Jaafar Bin Hassan	Oman
34th	Paris	2007	Georgios Anastassopoulos	Greece
35th	Paris	2009	Davidson Hepburn	Bahamas
36th	Paris	2011	Katalin Bogyay	Hungary
37th	Paris	2013	Hao Ping	China
38th	Paris	2015	Stanley Mutumba Simataa	Namibia
39th	Paris	2017	Zohour Alaoui	Morocco
40th	Paris	2019	Ahmet Altay Cengizer	Turkey
41st	Paris	2021	Santiago Irazabal Mourão	Brazil
42nd	Paris	2023	Simona Miculescu	Romania

Executive Board

Biennial elections are held, with 58 elected representatives holding office for four years.

Offices and headquarters

The Garden of Peace at UNESCO headquarters

The UNESCO headquarters is located at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, France. Several architects collaborated on the construction of the headquarters, including Bernard Zehrfuss, Marcel Breuer and Luigi Nervi. It includes a Garden of Peace which was donated by the Government of Japan. This garden was designed by American-Japanese sculptor artist Isamu Noguchi in 1958 and installed by Japanese gardener Toemon Sano. In 1994–1995, in memory of the 50th anniversary of UNESCO, a meditation room was built by Tadao Ando.

UNESCO's field offices across the globe are categorized into four primary office types based upon their function and geographic coverage: cluster offices, national offices, regional bureaus and liaison offices.

Field offices by region

The following list of all UNESCO Field Offices is organized geographically by UNESCO Region and identifies the members states and associate members of UNESCO which are served by each office.

Africa

• Abidjan – National Office to Côte d'Ivoire
• Abuja – National Office to Nigeria
• Accra – Cluster Office for Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo
• Addis Ababa – Liaison Office with the African Union and with the Economic Commission for Africa
• Bamako – Cluster Office for Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger
• Brazzaville – National Office to the Republic of the Congo
• Bujumbura – National Office to Burundi
• Dakar – Regional Bureau for Education in Africa and Cluster Office for Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal
• Dar es Salaam – Cluster Office for Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Tanzania
• Harare – Cluster Office for Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe
• Juba – National Office to South Sudan
• Kinshasa – National Office to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Libreville – Cluster Office for the Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe
• Maputo – National Office to Mozambique
• Nairobi – Regional Bureau for Sciences in Africa and Cluster Office for Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda
• Windhoek – National Office to Namibia
• Yaoundé – Cluster Office to Cameroon, Central African Republic and Chad

Arab States

• Amman – National Office to Jordan
• Beirut – Regional Bureau for Education in the Arab States and Cluster Office to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Palestine
• Cairo – Regional Bureau for Sciences in the Arab States and Cluster Office for Egypt and Sudan
• Doha – Cluster Office to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen
• Iraq – National Office for Iraq (currently located in Amman, Jordan)
• Khartoum – National Office to Sudan
• Manama – Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage
• Rabat – Cluster Office to Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia
• Ramallah – National Office to the Palestinian Territories

Asia and Pacific

• Almaty – Cluster Office to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
• Apia – Cluster Office to Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Tokelau (Associate Member)
• Bangkok – Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific and Cluster Office to Thailand, Burma, Laos, Singapore and Vietnam
• Beijing – Cluster Office to North Korea, Japan, Mongolia, the People's Republic of China and South Korea
• Dhaka – National Office to Bangladesh
• Hanoi – National Office to Vietnam
• Islamabad – National Office to Pakistan
• Jakarta – Regional Bureau for Sciences in Asia and the Pacific and Cluster Office to the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and East Timor
• Manila – National Office to the Philippines
• Kabul – National Office to Afghanistan
• Kathmandu – National Office to Nepal
• New Delhi – Cluster Office to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka
• Phnom Penh – National Office to Cambodia
• Tashkent – National Office to Uzbekistan
• Tehran – Cluster Office to Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan

Europe and North America

• Brussels – Liaison Office to the European Union and its subsidiary bodies in Brussels
• Geneva – Liaison Office to the United Nations in Geneva
• New York City – Liaison Office to the United Nations in New York
• Venice – Regional Bureau for Sciences and Culture in Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

Carondelet Palace, Presidential Palace – with changing of the guards. The Historic Center of Quito, Ecuador, is one of the largest, least-altered and best-preserved historic centres in the Americas. This centre was, together with the historic centre of Kraków in Poland, the first to be declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO on 18 September 1978.

• Brasília – National Office to Brazil
• Guatemala City – National Office to Guatemala
• Havana – Regional Bureau for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean and Cluster Office to Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Aruba
• Kingston – Cluster Office to Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago as well as the associate member states of British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curaçao and Sint Maarten
• Lima – National Office to Peru
• Mexico City – National Office to Mexico
• Montevideo – Regional Bureau for Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean and Cluster Office to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay
• Port-au-Prince – National Office to Haiti
• Quito – Cluster Office to Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela
• San José – Cluster Office to Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama
• Santiago de Chile – Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean and National Office to Chile

Partner organisations

• International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
• Blue Shield International (BSI)
• International Council of Museums (ICOM)
• International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
• International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL)

Products and services

• UNESDOC Database – Contains over 146,000 UNESCO documents in full text published since 1945 as well as metadata from the collections of the UNESCO Library and documentation centres in field offices and institutes.

Information processing tools

UNESCO develops, maintains and disseminates, free of charge, two interrelated software packages for database management (CDS/ISIS [not to be confused with UK police software package ISIS]) and data mining/statistical analysis (IDAMS).

• CDS/ISIS – a generalised information storage and retrieval system. The Windows version may run on a single computer or in a local area network. The JavaISIS client/server components allow remote database management over the Internet and are available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh. Furthermore, GenISIS allows the user to produce HTML Web forms for CDS/ISIS database searching. The ISIS_DLL provides an API for developing CDS/ISIS based applications.
• OpenIDAMS – a software package for processing and analysing numerical data developed, maintained and disseminated by UNESCO. The original package was proprietary but UNESCO has initiated a project to provide it as open-source.
• IDIS – a tool for direct data exchange between CDS/ISIS and IDAMS

See also

In Spanish: Unesco para niños

• Academic mobility network
• League of Nations archives
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists
• UNESCO Reclining Figure 1957–58, sculpture by Henry Moore
• UniRef
• National Commissions for UNESCO