Paris: New Humanity at the General Conference of UNESCO accredited NGOs 2012

The General Conference of the UNESCO partner NGOs took place in Paris from 12th to 14th December 2012; the over 300 in attendance represented 129 NGOs.
As one such organization holding UNESCO consultative status, New Humanity also participated in the conference, being represented by its President Francesco Pizzorno and by Chantal Grevin, its Main representative at UNESCO in Paris.

The Conference is held every two years for the purpose of electing the Liaison Committee of the UNESCO NGOs (CLONG), the body which liaises between the officially recognised NGOs and UNESCO.
This year’s theme was: “Culture and cultures: reconciling universality and diversity”.
Opened with the official welcome of Mr. Engida, Vice Director General of UNESCO, the Conference was chaired with great skill by Mr. Alain Mabanckou – a Congolese writer and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) – who, in his presentation, very much in tune with the event, highlighted the meaning and the value of the sense of belonging to one single human adventure, albeit experienced by the different cultures of this planet.

After the presentation of the report of CLONG’s activities and of the financial report by the outgoing president Mr. Bernard Loing, two separate workshops, one on “Culture and Education” and the other concerning “Culture and Science”, informed the lively dialogue, with a considerable number of contributions from experts in the questions.
There followed a series of important presentations from high-ranking UNESCO functionaries on the current situation and strategic prospective of the Agency underlined the importance of strengthening the partnership between NGOs and UNESCO and of promoting a culture of collective cooperation amongst NGOs.

In this perspective, the Conference worked assiduously to hone contributions, proposals and suggestions for the the Director-General regarding UNESCO’s medium-term strategy and the programming of the Organization’s budget in the four years from 2014 to 2017, as widely reported in the final resolution of the Conference, approved with general consensus.

From an organizational point of view, the Conference was also called upon to elect, for their two-year terms of office, the President and the Committee, composed of 10 members representing the different areas of the world (Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America, Eastern Europe and Western Europe).
The electoral operations, handled promptly and transparently, thanks, above all, to the excellent organization of Dr. Sabina Colombo (Sector for External Relations and Public Information), immediately allowed, without the need for a second vote, both the new President in the person of Mr. Patrick Gallaud (in the photo, together with the N.H. representatives), and the other 9 members Committee to be selected. These officers will be called upon, in the two-year period 2013-2014, to consolidate and develop CLONG’s role at UNESCO.