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By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UN GATE, April 18 – Using Coronavirus as a pretext to rule with even less oversight and accountability is a trend, from the UN Secretariat of Antonio Guterres to the UNESCO of Audrey Azoulay, who is plotting with her French cabal to keep it closed until September, and do whatever she wants until then.

It is a fact that UNESCO is mainly about advancing the narrow interests of France and of its European Union allies in a detrimental to other countries tactic. Since the beginning of her term, DG Audrey Azoulay is constantly demonstrating her utmost endeavor to make this advancement successful.

This week, however, a new juncture has been reached in her efforts to obtain full power by excluding member states from any control over her mismanagement of UNESCO. 

For more than a month now, DG Azoulay is left with unconstitutional leeway to launch initiatives and global coalitions, establish partnerships and devastate UNESCO’s secretariat at her discretion, without any risk of being held to account or required to report to the governing bodies. 

This episode clearly brought to the fore the problem of governance as a major challenge for UNESCO. The privatization of the Agency by the French led to dangerous disequilibrium between the 3 bodies forming the governance as established by the Constitution of UNESCO – the General Conference that determines the policies and the main lines of work of the Organization, the Executive Board that ensures its overall management and the Secretariat which is the branch in charge of the execution of its programs, as decided by the member states. Let’s emphasize on that last one – programs are shaped and adopted by member states, not by the Secretariat. 

This is actually the crux of the problem for Madam Azoulay. She never wanted to accept that the Constitution is not allowing for a monarchy-type management of UNESCO. For two years now Madam Azoulay is running UNESCO as a private shop with all power usurped by her Cabinet. As pointed out by a senior official: “Her wet dream is to be able to declare “l’UNESCO – c’est moi”, reference made to the famous “l’Etat c’est moi” of the French King Louis XIV, but this only shows her pettiness as a human being, her ignorance of the UN and her pathological obsession aggravated by unhealthy political ambitions at national level in France”.

 In such a way, the COVID-19 sanitary crisis became the perfect occasion for taking full control over the operations of the Agency without any obligation to consult or report to member states.

The Cabinet of Madam Azoulay convened recently an internal task force including staff from Legal Affairs department and from the Secretariat of Governing Bodies in order to outline possibilities to keep UNESCO locked down for another three to fours months in order to keep the full power self-granted to Madam Azoulay and make sure member states become irrelevant in the governance process of UNESCO. 

According to internal sources, the plan of the Cabinet of DG Azoulay is to re-open UNESCO only in September unless the exposure by Inner City Press and other media spoils those plans and drives member states to protest and pressure Madam Azoulay to stick to the lockdown strategy of the French government as she usually does and possibly reopen progressively the Agency in May. 

In hijacking UNESCO’s governance, Madam Azoulay is unreservedly supported by the French ambassador to UNESCO Veronique Roger-Lacan. The ambassador had learnt her lesson and is now docilely obeying Audrey Azoulay. Indeed, Veronique Roger-Lacan got badly scolded during the general conference of UNESCO, for letting member states approve resolutions that were “requesting the Director-general” instead of “Begging the Director general”.

In the parallel world of DG Azoulay no one is supposed to expect her to comply with requests by member states but to deal only with polite solicitudes concerning her realm. 

This is why, in order to avoid another discomfiture that could jeopardize her professional career, Ambassador Roger-Lacan is in permanent contact with the Cabinet of DG Azoulay. She is taking orders directly from the Chief of the Cabinet Nicolas Kacyandes, and executing instruction assiduously.

The email sent by her this week to states member of the executive board proves largely that point. In it, the ambassador is urging member states not to agree convening a meeting of the board using the fake argument of the confidentiality just in order to facilitate Madam Azoulay’s aspirations to rule alone the Agency for another few months.

Needless to say, her email provoked rich amount of puzzlement, smirks, snickers, and barely stifled - if not - outright giggles.  Some ambassadors even asked the rhetorical question whether this position of France and of the EU countries would be sustainable and even possible had the DG of UNESCO been from Asia, Africa or Latin America.

The negative answer is obvious and the only reason why France is pushing for such an unprecedented free hand is because Madam Azoulay is French. Period.  Thus, despite all warnings by some member states about the illegality and anti-constitutionality of the current situation, DG Azoulay together with the French, Italian, German and Spanish Delegations to UNESCO,  and with the collusion of the Chair of the Executive Board, are using the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse for justifying the immobilization of the governing body, for entombing accountability and for spreading around unpunished corruption and abuse of power.  This is UNESCO today. This is the UN of Antonio Guterres. We will have more on that. Watch this site.

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