United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established by a constitution signed in London on 16 November 1945, which entered into force on 4 November 1946. Its founding preamble famously declares that "since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed." UNESCO is headquartered in Paris and operates through a network of field offices, institutes, and category-2 centres worldwide.

The agency's mandate spans five major programme sectors: education, the natural sciences, the social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. It is governed by a General Conference of all member states, which meets biennially, and an Executive Board of 58 members that supervises the programme between sessions. The Director-General, elected for a four-year term, leads the Secretariat.

UNESCO administers several flagship normative instruments, including the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which created the World Heritage List of cultural and natural sites; the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage; and the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. It also coordinates the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), and Global Geoparks, and produces the Global Education Monitoring Report.

Membership and politics have at times been turbulent. The United States withdrew in 1984 under the Reagan administration over management and ideological concerns, rejoined in 2003, withdrew again in 2018 alongside Israel citing alleged anti-Israel bias following Palestine's 2011 admission as a member state, and rejoined in 2023. UNESCO's normative work on press freedom, media safety, AI ethics (its 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence was the first global standard-setting instrument on the subject), and Holocaust and genocide education continues to make it a frequent reference point in MUN committees and IR scholarship.