• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the fifth extraordinary session of the General Conference of UNESCO

3 July 2023 19:26
1305-03-07-2023

The 5th extraordinary session of UNESCO's General Conference concluded its work in Paris on June 30. Russia's position on its resolution regarding the financial matters related to the United States' return to UNESCO has been set out by Permanent Delegate of the Russian Federation to UNESCO Rinat Alyautdinov in his statement. I would like to dwell on the following.

First, the procedure enabling the United States to resume its UNESCO membership has been carried out in violation of the Charter and in circumvention of the General Conference's effective Rules of Procedure without a thorough analysis of all the key issues, primarily as regards Washington's full and unconditional repayment of its outstanding debt to the UNESCO regular budget. As a result, the US has restored its vote and eligibility in exchange for mere unsubstantiated promises to take certain purely domestic steps with regard to the debt. We are facing double standards once again in the spirit of the notorious "rules-based order."

Second, Washington is known to be the biggest debtor owing UNESCO over $600 million. It stopped financing the Organisation back in 2011, and sent an official notification on its withdrawal to its headquarters in October 2017. Now the United States has been restored to full membership in exchange for a "promise" to approach the US Congress with a "request to consider the issue" of making the payment for 2024 and repaying the arrears. In a nutshell, Washington in its characteristic manner continues to live on borrowed money, this time at the expense of UNESCO.

Third, the non-consensus resolution approved by the General Conference in violation of the fundamental principle of sovereign equality of states, a resolution that the Russian Federation emphatically dissociates itself from, is unlikely to open before UNESCO the prospects for strengthening the true multilateralism and mutually respectful dialogue. Rather the contrary, it will lead to the assertion within UNESCO of the collective West's ideological diktat, given that the West does not recognise the World Majority countries' right to preserving their civilisational, cultural, and worldview identity. Washington is not concealing the time-serving motives of its comeback. Its representatives repeatedly declared in public that they were going to "oppose China's influence" at UNESCO.

It is obvious that Russia is another country against which the United States will attempt to push through its bloc divides at UNESCO, thereby introducing destructive influences to its agenda through its artificial Ukrainisation.