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".

If this pious wish did not stand the test of reality, the deadly conflicts never ceasing, the organization shows many successes.

"It is an immense idea, after the censures, the stigmatizations and the autodafés (of the second world conflict, editor's note), to consider as universal what each civilization, each culture, produced of more beautiful", recognized the First French Minister Jean Castex.

Unesco is waging "the only just war, the only one worth waging, that against ignorance," he continued.

"It has been 75 years of multilateral solidarity and we must continue for another 75 years," said Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, who was speaking in an institution historically visited by the greatest intellectuals and artists: the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso to South African President Nelson Mandela, passing by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who in 1952 delivered a plea against racism.

"A Tribune"

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres praised in an online video an organization "at the center of the UN network", when Pope Francis, also from a distance, described Unesco as "the privileged interlocutor of the Holy See at the service of peace, of peoples' solidarity (...) and of the protection of the cultural heritage of humanity ".

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

But "the need to respect + political correctness + and not to upset any member state limits (its) freedom of speech", observes this historian.

Unesco, throughout its history, has tried to define standards, through long-discussed conventions, such as those on copyright (1952), illicit traffic in cultural goods (1972), or heritage. Intangible Culture (2003), whose signature took ... sixty years.

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

"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.

"Very little funds"

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.

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

She claims to have played an important role during the Covid-19 pandemic by allowing 400 million children to continue their education.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, for his part, congratulated the institution's "gigantic work" on the environmental level, "a colossal contribution for the international community".

Unesco has made the preservation of the environment one of its priorities for the years to come.

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.

"We are living at a critical moment: the existence of the planet and of humanity are threatened," said the latter, calling for "the bet of collective intelligence".

And Ms. Azoulay to quote the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and his "absolute faith in the destiny of humans" to close the event: "I know that one day we will see the absolute light. That we will progress together. This hope is irrevocable. "

© 2021 AFP