A New Vision for UNESCO: Interview with Egypt’s Nominee for the Director General of UNESCO

Moushira Khattab shattered the glass ceiling for women across the Middle East when she was appointed Egypt’s Minister of Family and Population in 2009. Prior to this landmark appointment she led the fight against Female Genital Mutilation and child marriage as the head of the National Council on Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) and honed her negotiation skills as Ambassador to South Africa, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Her storied career as a diplomat took her from Vienna to Melbourne and to the UN Headquarters in New York. As one of the leading advocates for the rights of the child, she served as Vice Chair, Rapporteur, and member of UN Committee on the Rights of the Child between 2002 and 2010, and headed various other UN bodies. The latest chapter for Moushira Khattab might soon be UNESCO Director-General, as she was nominated in July 2016 as Egypt’s candidate for the upcoming Director-General elections. If elected, she will be filling the shoes of the highly influential Irina Bokova. Khattab agreed to answer some of our questions on the changing role of the UN in the 21st century. You are one of the best-known champions of the rights of women and children. You have devoted much of your career to the advancement of girl’s education and empowerment. What is the role you see United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) playing in advancing those rights? One of the biggest achievements of the UN is its human rights system. Member states have committed themselves to protect, promote and implement human rights for their citizens without any discrimination based on gender, religion or any other grounds. With the reform of the UN system, there is more coordination and cooperation between various UN entities. UNESCO was established in 1945 with a clear mandate in the fields of education, culture and sciences. Today UNESCO has expanded its scope of work. Gender equality has become a global priority for UNESCO and inextricably linked to its efforts to promote the right to education and support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Education is a human right; it is also a tool for accessing other human rights. Deprivation of the right to education impairs access to other human rights. Education is the first and most crucial of the five main domains comprising the mandate of UNESCO. UNESCO is committed to promoting gender equality in and through education systems from early childhood to higher education, in formal, and non-formal settings and in all intervention areas from planning infrastructure to training teachers. Girls and women usually feature high among most vulnerable groups who suffer deprivation of the right to education. They are usually victims of multiple deprivations including poverty and exclusion hampering their full enjoyment of the right to education. The education of girls and women has the highest impact on the family. UNESCO has unique expertise in helping states improve access to and quality of education. UNESCO has played a role in implementing the Millennium Development Goals. This active role continues with the launch last year of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030. SDG 4 to ensures “Quality and inclusive education and lifelong learning” heralds a paradigm shift both in the role and vision of UNESCO. It signals a move from Education to learning. Learning is a proactive process and transcends education. UNESCO’s initiative on the global network of learning cities generates unprecedented opportunities for learning. It also broadens the concept of learning to embrace life skills and civic learning. Learning is not confined to one goal dealing with education but is rather intertwined within the 17 goals of Sustainable development. With the rising wave of violent extremism and terrorism the role of UNESCO with regards to Education becomes even more important than ever. Education is the most effective tool to protect youth from radicalization through building peace in the minds of men and women; the primary objective of UNESCO. Member states are urged to support and empower UNESCO more than ever. UNESCO’s field structures are crucial. Equally important is its partnership programs with key actors nationally, regionally and with other UN agencies as well as governments and civil society. Looking back on your efforts on children’s rights reform in Egypt, and looking forward to the future challenges, what is the role of implementation in advancing human rights. Implementation is key. Without implementation, human rights become empty slogans. The United Nations human rights system is one of the successes of our multilateralism. Its strength lies in its emphasis on implementation. The primary responsibility for the implementation of human rights falls upon States. Implementation of human rights requires raising the awareness of individuals of their rights. Equally important is capacity building for professionals. The measures of implementation of human rights at the national level also include putting in place the following:

• A national legal framework harmonised with the internationally agreed human rights standards as defined by the UN human Rights conventions.
• A national action plan with time bound objectives.
• A centralised data system disaggregated as per grounds of discrimination.
• Allocation of budgetary resources to the maximum available and, where possible, through international cooperation.
• Partnership with the civil society.
• Monitoring and evaluation.

What is your vision of education in the 2030 development agenda? The value of education is clear — it can be used to fight terrorism, but how can education be advanced in conflict zones and n areas where extremist forces are hostile towards girl’s education?   SDG 4 provides for inclusive and quality education and lifelong learning. Education is consequently not confined to one or two goals. We are no longer talking education but an ongoing lifelong learning process. This is intertwined in all 17 goals. Education is no longer confined to class rooms. It is no longer a one-way stream as in teachers teaching their students. it is an interactive learning process that goes both way. Teachers learn from their students as much as they teach them. Education or learning is the most effective tool for the prevention of radicalisation and combating violent extremism and terrorism. The right to education should not be interrupted due to conflict situations. Conflict situations, however, should provide an opportunity to provide learners with education of a better quality than they used to receive before the eruption of violence. It should include civic education and life skills. It should strive to empower learners to the maximum of their abilities and above all build peace in their minds as well as enlightenment and progressiveness in general. We should be vigilant that during times of conflicts and instability girls and women are more vulnerable to violence and abuse including deprivation of the right to education. Special measures must be put in place to ensure their protection and prevention of such violations. The international community, governments, civil society and the UN system led by UNESCO have the responsibility to provide quality education that includes raising awareness about human rights global citizenship and advancing tolerance and acceptance of the other. Placing culture at the heart of development policies constitutes a breakthrough and marks a substantial step forward for sustainable development in many fields. How do you think UNESCO can strengthen culture in a way that it does not reinforce some of the cultural practices that disadvantage women and minorities? Cultural rights constitute an integral component of human rights. Every individual is entitled to fully enjoy and actively participate in the cultural life of his or her country of origin or the newly adopted society. The definition of culture has evolved over the years. Culture is the manifestation of human intellectual achievements be it in heritage, arts, literature or otherwise. Culture is also a dominant set of values or practices of communities and societies at large. Culture is the identity. Every individual must learn about his or her culture and be proud of it. Special attention must be given in this regards to minorities and disadvantaged groups including indigenous people and the disabled. Culture is indeed at the heart of development policies and should always be promoted and advanced. We should jointly defend culture against allegations of condoning any form of violence or abuse. We must be courageous in pointing out harmful and regressive practices such as Female Genital mutilation or child marriage and take concrete measures to raise awareness about their dangers with a view of eradicating such harmful practices. UNESCO can play a major role in both cases through its wide array of existing programs and through new creative ideas that would combine culture, education and communication (all of them main sectors of UNESCO.) How can UNESCO promote access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and contribute to the realization of Goal 9 of the SDGs, which focuses on building resilient infrastructure and fostering innovation?  When young people can be reached through relevant mobile app solutions in local languages, this becomes an increasingly important goal. ICT is a tool that ensures equal opportunities. ICT can play a huge role in furthering the efficacy of our endeavours. In today’s highly connected world, geographic location, distance, time zones and language barriers have all become a thing of the past. ICT has today also become a utility and a necessity. These two utilities are interdependent and complement one another. A city supported by a backbone of high speed networks and wide spread access to technology is much better placed to access learning resources on demand irrespective of user location, language, time zone or social background. Conversely, a knowledgeable, well educated society is well poised to make the most of technology to develop even better learning systems and resources. Technology is becoming better, cheaper and easier to access by the day. The advances we see today are astonishing and allow us to do things in record time and with an ease we could not have dreamed of two or three decades ago. Fostering innovation is at the heart of everyday work of UNESCO through its work on Science, Youth, Communication, Education and much more. The organisation needs to be more forthcoming in its reach out to the younger generations to benefit them and benefit from them. If elected both youth and advancing the use of ICT will be among my top priorities because I truly believe this is the way forward, the path to the future. How can the SDGs contribute to the advancement of science? What are the policies to support developing countries in advancing their scientific and technological capacity in areas such as water and climate change? SDGs signal a global will to embrace agreed goals. It is of utmost importance to agree on the tools of achieving such goals. International cooperation is a key measure of implementation. Building partnerships is essential as well as transfer of technology while taking into consideration the development needs of poorer and developing nations. Advancement of science has a great impact on our daily life let alone all domains of UNESCO’s mandate. The simplest example is the value of adopting scientific thinking as a way of life. It is a human right to have equal access to science and scientific advances. It is a shared responsibility to cater for the needs of countries at different levels of developments. As in the case of climate change, mitigation and adaptation need to go hand in hand. UNESCO is also playing a leading role through its many specialised programs such as the International Hydrological Programme (IHP), Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme or the International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) and it can do much with increased coordination between those programmes.   Photo by www.moushirakhattab.com