The Organization

Sector for External Relations and Cooperation

• © UNESCO
• Ahmed Sayyad, Assistant Director-General for External Relations and Cooperation

Within the framework of its action, UNESCO co-operates with Member States, Associate Members, observers and territories, and coordinates its activities with the United Nations, its specialized agencies, programmes and organs, and with other international intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. The Sector for External Relations and Cooperation (ERC) plays a central role in developing above-mentioned relations and is headed by Ahmed Sayyad, Assistant Director-General for External Relations and Cooperation.

The cooperation with Member States is carried out in particular through sustained consultation and coordination with the National Commissions and the Permanent Delegations to UNESCO. The Programme for Parliamentarians, first introduced by UNESCO in 1994, aims to ensure that UNESCO’s values and objectives are reflected in national policy-making and legislation.
UNESCO seeks to develop new forms of partnership, with Cities and Local Authorities in order to strengthen the political commitment for the priorities and the initiatives of the Organization.

UNESCO cooperates with intergovernmental organizations, in particular the United Nations and its organizations and other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs).

UNESCO places emphasis on the development of a range of partnerships, alliances and other cooperative mechanisms so as to foster visibility and impact for its programme activities at international, regional and national levels. UNESCO collaborates with organizations representative of civil society, which are non-governmental and non profit-oriented.
The network of UNESCO Clubs, Centres and Associations, the first of which was created in Japan in 1947, is an important link between the Organisation and the civil society worldwide.

Activities involving relations with institutional partners are necessarily related with operational activities designed to increase the sources of extrabudgetary funding needed for project development in the Member States.