UNESCO, the cultural agency most known for its promotion and protection of world heritage sites, has suspended American membership after the US has withheld funds from the agency for three successive years. Having provided 22 of the UNESCO budget prior to the cuts, America’s decision to withhold funding has led to the slashing of key components of UNESCO programs, including initiatives to increase education for young women around the world.
The decision to withhold funds was in protest to UNESCO’s recognition of Palestine as a country in 2011. Now entering its third year without US funding, which approximated an annual 70 million dollars, the agency has been forced to cut costs and frantically look for ways to make up for the loss by freezing hiring, cancelling new programs, and renegotiating contracts.
UNESCO sponsors key education initiatives, including Education for All and UNESCO’s Literacy Initiative for Empowerment, programs that promote early childhood education in countries including Iraq and Pakistan as well as 35 other countries with low literacy rates. Education for All, which goals include achieving gender equality in education and improving adult literacy rates by 50 % by the year 2015, has urgently called for more funding as the deadline approaches.
Though some countries, such as Norway, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, have pledged to increase their annual contributions to make up for the lack of US funding, the agency’s budget continues to suffer. This has prompted UNESCO to turn to the private sector for additional funding. UNESCO’s education programs have suffered the most from budget cuts partly due to the meagre private donations that education programs receive in comparison to other fields; only 8% f US foundations’ grants are allocated to education compared to the 53 per cent of US foundations’ grants that are allocated to health.
In 2012, UNESCO claimed to be in its “worst financial situation ever”. The Education for All website claims that an additional 16 billion dollars will need to be raised annually in order to achieve some of its goals in low-income countries by the 2015 deadline.
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Written by Ashleigh Brown