Purpose: Contribute to peace and security in the world by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.

Date of Origin: November 16,1945

Original Membership: 20 countries

Current Membership: 186 Member States (and the 4 Associate Members)

Location: Paris, France

Structure: The General Conference is the main decision-making body of UNESCO. It meets every two years and determines the policies of the Organization and approves the program and budget. Every six years it appoints the Director-General upon the recommendation of the Executive Board.

The Executive Board is composed of 51 Members and meets twice a year. It is responsible for the execution of the program adopted by the General Conference.

The Secretariat consists of the Director-General and the Staff appointed by him. The DG prepares the draft program and budget and formulates proposals for appropriate action. Five program sectors and a number of transverse units work in collaboration with the administrative services to carry out the program.

Recent Participation: In mid October of 1999, the French National Assemble and UNESCO plan to join together to host a "World Parliament of Children" in Paris, France. This assembly will bring together 380 boys and girls from schools in all of UNESCO's Member States. The hope of this meeting is to meet the new year of 2000 with a symbolic act. Since the children will be of all different ethnicities and from different cultures, the act will hopefully be seen as a message of fellowship and hope for the country as a whole. The children who will participate in the World Parliament this fall have already been chosen and are involved in the process of producing a "Youth Manifesto for the Twenty-first Century". The manifesto will be the children's contribution to the program "For a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence" which will be coordinated by UNESCO after the UN's decision to title the year 2000 the "International Year for the Culture of Peace". The first decade of the new millenium will be called the "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World". Hopefully the World Parliament of Children will give the young people of the world a chance to voice their hopes, fears, and opinions about what may occur in coming years and how these problems should be dealt with.

The opening of Azerbaijan to the world's economy has led to a need for specialized communications in Western languages such as English, French, and German for many different issues and purposes. This need is in part brought about by the change of the country's official language from Russian to Azerbaijani. The country of Azerbaijan is now faced with difficulties; they lack subject-specific terminology and are faced with a shortage of experts in the way of translators and interpreters. In order to aid Azerbaijan's leap into the community of Western nations, the Ministry of Education of the Azerbaijani Republic along with the Azerbaijani Commission for UNESCO and UNESCO itself organized an international conference in Baku in May of 1999. During this conference, experts in multilingual communications and language engineering conducted a series of workshops to promote the exchange of knowledge between Azerbaijani professors and Western counterparts. The goal of this conference was to create more political awareness, mobilize national assistance, and to establish relations between Azerbaijan and Western academic institutions.