R 241420Z JUL 08
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC
INFO RUCNSCO/UNESCO COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 001418 
 
UNESCO PARIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: UNESCO SCUL BE
SUBJECT: UNESCO BRIEFING ON THE NOVEMBER 2008 INTERNATIONAL 
CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION (ICE) 
 
REF:  PARIS 1172 
 
¶1. Summary: On June 27, 2008, UNESCO briefed Member States on the 
organization of the November 2008 International Conference on 
Education (ICE) sponsored by UNESCO's Bureau of International 
Education (IBE) to be held in Geneva.  The topic of this conference 
is "Inclusive Education: The Way of the Future".  The Secretariat 
explained the need for more resources to fund the conference.  It 
also explained that member states will elect the Conference 
President, Vice Presidents from each of the regional groups, and a 
Reporter of the ICE.  In addition, regional groups must nominate 
representatives for the Conference's drafting committee. 
 
¶2. Most important, comments made during the briefing clearly showed 
the danger that the ICE will be used to promote a new normative 
instrument on education.  Belgian representatives stated their 
intention to bring their initiative for greater public regulation of 
private education (reftel) to the Conference.  Statements from 
Norway, France, and others that the Conference outcome must have 
follow-up and real impact on UNESCO's education activities make it 
likely that the ICE's recommendations will be discussed at the 
October 2009 General Conference.  That body has the ability to 
authorize a negotiation of a new normative instrument. End Summary. 
 
¶3. Opening remarks made by Assistant Director-General for Education 
Nicholas Burnett referenced four international education conferences 
to be held over the next twelve months. In addition to the ICE, 
Burnett spoke about the Conference on the United Nations Decade of 
Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), to be held in Bonn, 
Germany, in March 2009, the UNESCO International Conference on Adult 
Education (CONFINTEA VI), to be held in Brazil in May 2009, and the 
World Conference on Higher Education, to be held in Paris in July 
¶2009. He highlighted the fact that there exists important links 
among all four conferences.  According to Burnett, inclusive 
education will be emphasized at each one, as well as sustainable 
development. Following Burnett's comments, Director of the IBE, 
Clementina Acedo, gave a presentation on the state of the 
preparations for the ICE. A question and answer period followed. 
 
Francophone Belgian Initiative for Private Education Regulation 
 
¶4. Comments made by Belgian representatives during the question and 
answer period revived US concerns regarding the campaign being led 
by the government of Belgium's French-speaking Community to push the 
issue of state regulation of private education. (reftel) The Belgian 
Ambassador to UNESCO, Philippe Kridelka, reaffirmed Belgium's 
support for state regulation of private education and indicated that 
Belgian representatives would be raising the issue at the ICE. In 
particular, the Minister of Education of the French-speaking 
Community of Belgium will be attending the ICE and taking part in a 
panel on public policy.  The unspoken goal of the action planned by 
the Belgians may be to ensure that a recommendation on this issue is 
placed in the conference's final communiqu, with an eye to bringing 
about a discussion at the UNESCO General Conference in October 2009 
for a possible normative instrument. 
 
¶5. When making reference to the May 2008 international seminar 
entitled "The State as the Regulator of Education", (reftel)a 
non-UNESCO meeting sponsored by the Belgian Francophones but 
attended by U.S. Embassy Brussels, IBE representatives and other 
countries, Kridelka referred to it as a "preparatory meeting" of the 
same nature as the ten official ICE regional preparatory workshops. 
More troubling, in responding to Kridelka's remarks, Acedo also 
referred to the Brussels meeting as a "preparatory meeting". 
(Comment:  This is disturbing, because the outcomes of official 
workshops will bear directly upon what is discussed at the IBE 
conference in November.  In addition to three regional preparatory 
conferences, such workshops have produced a number of conclusions 
that are to be integrated in an ICE reference document to be 
published in September 2008. Due to US discomfort with state 
regulation of private education (as it is envisioned by the Belgian 
Francophones and their supporters), the US is concerned that the 
Director of the IBE would place the Brussels meeting on equal 
footing with the official ICE workshops and conferences. This 
gesture could imply that conclusions drawn at this meeting ought to 
enjoy the same weight as that given to the outcomes of the 
UNESCO-sanctioned preparatory workshops and conferences. While the 
US cannot prevent the Belgians from raising the issue of state 
regulation of private education, the US should be able to ensure 
that any recommendations that came out of the May 23 Brussels 
meeting have no place in the forthcoming reference document. 
Discouragingly, Acedo did not make any specific mention of this 
fact. End Comment.) (Note: In a private conversation following the 
ICE information meeting, the US confirmed with UNESCO 
representatives that the Brussels meeting was indeed not an official 
ICE preparatory meeting and made it clear that any such reference is 
inaccurate.) 
 
¶6. Another concern stems from the Belgians' avowed intention to seek 
a place on the ICE's drafting committee, the group responsible for 
drafting the communique that is agreed upon by all participants at 
the end of the conference and which includes broad policy 
recommendations. The designation of the drafting committee will take 
place on the opening day of the conference, along with the 
designation of the ICE bureau members. Specifically, the drafting 
committee is to be comprised of two representatives from each 
regional group while the bureau is to be comprised of one 
representative from each regional group. (Note: It has been decided 
already that the bureau's Chairperson is to come from an Arab State 
and the Reporter from a Latin American State.) Should Belgium 
procure a spot on the drafting committee, this will be an 
opportunity for the Belgian Francophones and their supporters to 
push their state regulation initiative and move to have the issue 
included in the final text of the communique.  Our overarching 
concern is that, in doing so, the Belgian delegation may succeed in 
recommending that the issue of state regulation of private education 
be put on the larger UNESCO agenda, which could give momentum to 
bringing this issue up at the October 2009 UNESCO General 
Conference, the first step toward developing a new normative 
instrument (Comment:  The U.S. should seek to procure a spot on the 
drafting committee as one of the two representatives from our 
regional group. End Comment.) 
 
¶7. During the question and answer period, a number of delegations, 
including Canada, Norway and France, expressed concerns about what 
"tangible" or "concrete" outcomes will come out of the ICE. The 
ensuing discussion further demonstrated the potential for a broad 
consensus in favor of a new normative instrument. The Canadian 
delegation, which has also expressed opposition to the Belgian 
Francophones' agenda, specifically asked what the legal status of 
the documents produced by the ICE would be. In response, Acedo 
reminded the assembly that recommendations had been adopted at the 
2001 and 2004 conferences, and that in 2004 these had simply taken 
the form of "messages to the world". The final forms of the texts 
that are to come out of the upcoming ICE were to be discussed in 
greater depth by the IBE. The Norwegians asked how the eventual 
results of the ICE might feed into the next C4/C5 budget framework, 
as well as into the Education for All (EFA) and South-South 
cooperation initiatives. Both Norwegian and French delegations 
seemed eager for a document that entailed specific "actions" or 
"outputs", with the French going as far as to say: "We need texts 
that lead to actions."  The French delegation's comments generally 
implied that the central outcome of the ICE ought to be a final text 
that demonstrates linkages between the work of the conference's four 
main workshops and the work of the drafting committee. Nick Burnett 
expressed sympathy for the views expressed above, agreeing that the 
ICE ought to produce concrete outcomes that entail a certain measure 
of accountability and that feed into UNESCO's broader mission. He 
spoke in a general manner of the need to find a "mechanism" by which 
one might integrate the outcomes of the ICE into the General 
Conference's discussions as well as into the regular UNESCO budget. 
 
Strategy for Countering the Francophone Belgian Initiative 
 
¶8. The USG's position regarding the ICE's endorsement of a new 
normative instrument on the right to education should ultimately be 
governed more by the substantive intent, wording, and scope embodied 
in such an instrument than by its title or the form it takes (i.e., 
a "convention" versus a "recommendation" versus a "declaration" or 
"charter").   The U.S. would of course prefer to see no follow-on 
UNESCO normative instrument result from this meeting.  However, we 
realize that we cannot discount the possibility of such an 
initiative emerging from the conference.  If this occurs, then in 
the hierarchy of UNESCO normative instruments (judged in terms of 
descending acceptability for the U.S.), a declaration would be the 
least objectionable; a recommendation, more objectionable; and a 
convention the most objectionable.  As UNESCO documents go, a 
declaration is largely hortatory; a recommendation politically, but 
not legally, binding on all UNESCO Member States; and a convention, 
legally binding but only on those Member States that ratify it. 
 
¶9. This breakdown of instrument types at UNESCO has potential 
implications for U.S. negotiating strategy during the ICE 
conference, particularly if the Conference proposes that UNESCO 
adopt a new "normative" instrument to address the issue of state 
regulation of private education.  In that event, we should try our 
best to steer the debate towards adoption of either a declaration or 
recommendation, and avoid if at all possible a conference decision 
that mandates a legally binding normative instrument (e.g., 
convention, treaty, or international agreement).  If, despite our 
best efforts, the ICE conference decides to urge UNESCO to create a 
new, legally binding instrument on education, a potential fallback 
strategy might be to try to steer UNESCO towards adopting a 
"protocol" to the 1960 UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in 
Education rather than adopting an entirely new stand-alone 
convention.  A stand-alone convention would be more likely lead to 
an open-ended endorsement of dangerous, new educational norms, and 
accompanying legal rights, that extend far beyond the finite scope 
of the 1960 Convention, which prohibits discrimination in education. 
 The benefit of a protocol is that, as a subsidiary companion 
instrument to the 1960 Convention, it could afford us a greater 
chance to remain within the existing scope of that Convention and 
still address the main theme of the ICE Conference, i.e., "inclusive 
education" for those in society who are currently excluded from the 
protections of the 1960 Convention. 
 
Education and Food 
 
¶10. The Malaysian Ambassador brought up the issue of rising oil 
prices and the fact that the budgets of national governments in 
certain developing countries are being increasingly channeled 
towards paying for oil subsidies and thus leaving less and less 
money for allocations to the education sector. Certain developing 
countries, he pointed out, are currently facing a situation where in 
the ICE ideal of a more inclusive educational system is inherently 
at odds with the reality of their national financial situation. He 
concluded his remarks by asking if the conference would be 
addressing this problem. In his response, Burnett acknowledged the 
gravity of the problem described by the Malaysian Ambassador and, 
then, went on to bring up the threat also posed to developing 
countries by rising food prices, lamenting the fact that both the 
oil and food crises impact the amount of funds that a given family 
has available for a child's schooling. Though admitting that he was 
unsure how to best deal with such problems, Burnett acknowledged 
that they needed to be addressed. It was unclear what Burnett meant 
by this, but his comment was troubling and could lead to more 
involvement by UNESCO in international agricultural and energy 
issues.  (Note:  The Director General held an information meeting 
for the upcoming Executive Board on July 18 and both the Ambassadors 
from Brazil and Malaysia raised the need for UNESCO to address the 
issue of food and energy for the same reasons cited above.  The 
Director General's response was that other UN agencies address these 
issues. End Note.) 
 
Funding the ICE Conference 
 
¶11. The final major issue raised at the ICE information meeting was 
the fact that the ICE faces a considerable funding gap. The Swiss 
delegation announced that it would make an additional donation of 
USD 100,000 towards the ICE budget, a donation that follows their 
original voluntary contribution of 100,000 CHF. Even with this 
donation, USD 572,000 remains to be mobilized before November in 
order to meet the USD 2,172,000 budget envisioned.  The Secretariat 
appealed to Member States for funds but admitted, in a response to 
the Indonesian Ambassador, that relatively little has been done to 
engage the private sector to help fund the ICE. At the moment, the 
private sector has only been solicited for the funding of an 
exhibition to be on display during the four-day conference. Acedo 
said, however, that she was confident that the private sector would 
soon be involved to a greater extent and, moreover, that private 
sector contributors would be recognized for their involvement. Both 
the Indonesian and Afghani delegations made a point of displaying 
their support for greater private sector involvement. 
 
 
OLIVER