Its ambitious motto is engraved in ten languages ​​on a stone wall erected in its Parisian headquarters: "As wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of the peace".

"It has been 75 years of multilateral solidarity and we must continue for another 75 years," said Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, who underlined the "obvious benefits" of his country's "cordial cooperation" with Unesco. , in education, freedom of the press, or even in the preservation of the colonial heritage.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his part praised in an online video this organization which, "at the center of the UN network," brings tangible benefits to people around the world ".

Pope Francis, also from a distance, described Unesco as "the privileged interlocutor of the Holy See in the service of peace and the solidarity of peoples, the development of the human person and the protection of the cultural heritage of humanity. ".

Signed in 1972, the World Heritage Convention, the best known of Unesco, protects more than a thousand cultural and natural sites, classified in 167 countries.

"A Tribune"

"After 75 years of existence, Unesco's record is remarkable", particularly on heritage, remarks Chloé Maurel, associate researcher at the University of the Sorbonne, specialist in this institution and the UN.

All the more so as Unesco has been all these years "a platform where many speakers have expressed themselves, a forum for the countries of the South to allow them to assert themselves", continues this historian, in a written response to AFP.

Unesco, however, "did not support the movements of struggle for decolonization" in the years 1940-50, because "among its most important founding members were important colonial powers", France, United Kingdom and Belgium, "that she did not want to risk hitting", however, she pointed out in research published in 2009.

Even today, "the need to respect + political correctness + and not to offend any member state limits (its) freedom of speech", observes Ms. Maurel.

UNESCO Director General Audrey Azouley and French President Emmanuel Macron on November 10, 2021 in Paris Thibault Camus POOL / AFP

Unesco, throughout its history, has thus attempted to define standards, through conventions that have been discussed at length, such as those on copyright (1952), illicit traffic in cultural goods (1972), or the intangible cultural heritage (2003), whose signature took ... sixty years.

But it remains often criticized for its lack of dynamism and the weakness of its concrete achievements.

"very little funds"

"Originally, Unesco was not designed to be operational. It is an extremely legal organization which has an essentially normative role", underlines Mathilde Leloup, lecturer at the University of Paris 8, author of 'a thesis focusing in particular on Unesco's action in Mali.

The institution also operates "with very few funds", which "make it difficult for it to carry out large-scale actions on the ground," she notes.

Its budget is only around 700 million euros per year.

In 2015, however, Unesco allowed the restoration of the mausoleums of Timbuktu by Malian craftsmen.

It is involved in the reconstruction of Mosul, destroyed by three years of urban battle against the Islamic State, and Beirut, after the explosion of the port that devastated its center in 2020.

All countries in the world except the United States, Israel and Liechtenstein are part of it.

Washington and Tel Aviv left Unesco with a bang in 2017, after the Paris-based organization recognized Palestine as a member state.

A dialogue is underway with the United States so that they rejoin Unesco, affirms its director general Audrey Azoulay, whose four-year mandate was renewed on Tuesday.

"Unesco is a young girl full of projects: 75 years old is the prime of youth, welcomes Matthieu Guével, its communications director. Unesco protects the pyramids of Egypt, the Chinese wall, Machu Picchu, universal principles. Seventy-five years is just the beginning of the adventure. "

© 2021 AFP