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El Salvador: Bureaucratic Problems Let us begin with the bureaucratic problems. UNESCO is structured as a hierarchy typical of the culture of war, with the Director-GENERAL at the top, and under him a series of ASSISTANT Director-GENERALS, each of which presides over an equally hierarchical SECTOR, and so on down the line. Each line of authority - and by the time one arrives at the bottom of the pyramid there are hundreds of them - is a separate entity, jealous of its power, authority and - above all - budget! Arriving in El Salvador in 1993 to take part in the initial culture of peace programme there, I found myself caught in a bureaucratic dispute between two UNESCO sectors, each of whom wanted control of the programme: the Social Science Sector and the representative of the Education Sector who headed the office in Central America. At one point, a friend found notes from a telephone message being delivered to the Assistant Director-General of Social Sciences - in whose sector I had been officially placed - saying that I was working for the "enemy" - i.e. the Education Sector. Actually, in setting up the first UNESCO working group for the culture of peace, I had asked a Latin American staff member from the Social Science sector to join the group and work on the El Salvador project. And I even used the few funds from my own budget to send him on mission to El Salvador to help launch it. However, having arrived later on mission, I found him in full dispute with the person whom the Central American office had engaged to lead the project. In my naive way, I worked with everyone, trying to understand and encourage the contribution each could make. And the person hired by the Central American office, Francisco Lacayo, was excellent. He was a veteran political activist, having been a leading Sandinista in Nicaragua in the early days after the revolution and had played a major role in their literacy campaign. At one point he was apparently responsible for as many as one hundred thousand literacy teachers in the field. Literacy, long the specialty of UNESCO, seemed to me the best model for the culture of peace. We spoke at times of the methodology of a culture of peace as a "second literacy", as important for social relations as being able to read and write. I found Francisco a gentle as well as committed "peace promoter" and realized that with people like this we could be successful in cultivating a culture of peace. Given Francisco's talents, it was especially disappointed when the people from the Social Science Sector tried to undermine him, and when later the head of the Central American office did not support him, seemingly out of jealousy. Despite all of the problems, however, it was the project that he managed, radio programmes for rural women in El Salvador, that became the greatest success of the Culture of Peace Programme (see below). I shall not recount here all of the ways that the Social Science Sector tried to block my work in developing the Culture of Peace Programme, even though after it became a priority of UNESCO, they did not hesitate to try to take credit for it. One example will suffice. When it was time in the spring of 1993 to plan the UNESCO budget for 1994-1995, I went along with a representative of the Social Science Sector to see the person responsible for drafting the budget for the Director-General. She asked us how much should be in the budget for the Culture of Peace Programme. I had spent some time doing the necessary calculations and said "one million dollars", offering to give the detailed budget breakdown if needed. She then turned to the sector representative who came with me and he said simply "nothing". "What do you mean, nothing?" she asked him. "I mean there should be no money for the programme", he said. In the end, the Director-General decided to allocate it $200,000 and by the time the two years were over, having needed additional allocations to fulfill the work needed, we spent almost exactly one million dollars. By then the Programme had been taken out of the sector and put directly under the control of the Director-General. |