Claudia Rosett

Surely Comedy Central’s The Daily Show meant well when it sent comedian John Oliver all the way to Africa to file a report savaging the United States for defunding the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Describing UNESCO as “an organization that helps people in need all over the world,” Oliver lampooned U.S. policy: “We had absolutely no choice but to cut off funding for tsunami victims and starving, drought-ridden African children.”

Having learned that the little West African country of Gabon had pledged $2 million to help make up for the more than $78 million per year America has stopped paying, Oliver flew to Gabon to investigate. There, he staged a series of skits, snatching books from children and berating the presidential press secretary because “little countries like America” are “tired of being pushed around by international heavyweights like Gabon.”

“We gave from the heart,” said the presidential aide. “That,” said Oliver, “is why you can’t have books anymore.”

The Atlantic hailed the piece as a paragon of do-good satire, and indeed it is funny—if you know nothing about UNESCO, or Gabon. 

UNESCO lost U.S. financial support through its own actions. Last fall, when the Palestinian Authority made its unsuccessful bid for statehood at the U.N. Security Council, it also applied to the U.N.’s Paris-based cultural organization. Over U.S. objections, UNESCO’s member states voted 107 to 14, with 52 abstentions, to grant the PA full membership. This decision set in motion a U.S. law that forbids the government from funding any part of the U.N. that tries to confer statehood on the Palestinians before they honor their promises to negotiate peace with Israel. The Obama administration had no choice but to stop the funding, which represented 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget. 

UNESCO’s director general, Irina Bokova, wants America’s money back. But rather than try to persuade UNESCO’s members to undo their admission of “Palestine,” Bokova has been pouring extravagant effort into persuading America to undo its law. Twice in the past six months, Bokova has traveled to the United States, most recently last month, with four UNESCO staffers in tow, for a 12-day road show with stops in Washington, Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. 

Self-promotion seems to be the name of the game at UNESCO these days, and winning airtime on Comedy Central represents a major PR coup. And there are other initiatives underway as well.

To supplement at least a dozen employees already based in UNESCO’s liaison office at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York, Bokova has now created a Washington liaison. For this slot, she tapped George Papagiannis, a former communications director for Rep. Nancy Pelosi. He and Bokova have been spoon-feeding the media with talking points that depict UNESCO as the world’s prime guardian of such worthy causes as Holocaust education, tsunami-warning systems, and literacy programs. In UNESCO’s narrative, the U.S. legislation now inconveniencing UNESCO is “outdated.” 

In fact, what’s obsolete is the notion that American interests are well served by a wastrel, despot-friendly organization that, for instance, just reaffirmed its decision to seat Syria on its human rights committee. The 59-year-old Moscow-educated Bokova began her U.N. career as an attaché of the Bulgarian mission in New York during the Cold War. The U.S. government welcomed her election as director general in 2009 chiefly because the rival candidate was Egypt’s minister of culture Farouk Hosny, an anti-Semite who favored burning Israeli books. 

Far from helping the world’s neediest, UNESCO’s top priority is helping itself. The Heritage Foundation’s Brett Schaefer calculates that 87 percent of UNESCO’s $326 million budget last year was allocated for its own staff, travel, and operating costs. More than half of UNESCO’s staffers are based in Paris, many pulling in tax-exempt six-figure salaries, with plush benefits and 30 days of vacation per year. UNESCO’s auditors reported that on travel costs alone, the organization was squandering more than $3 million annually via bad management and a taste for business-class airline tickets. A program of financial disclosure by senior UNESCO officials has been mysteriously delayed.