Fifty-nine states support Egypt’s nominee to UNESCO

CAIRO – 14 August 2017: Michael Worbs, the chairperson of the Executive Board of UNESCO, which comprises of 58 members, officially announced on March 6 the names of nine candidates running for the post of Director-General of UNESCO. Among the candidates is Ambassador Moshira Khattab, former Egyptian minister of state for family and population and a career diplomat.

Khattab’s biggest support came from Africa, as she has been nominated by 55 African countries - constituting all members of the African Union - at the African Summit in Addis Ababa in early July.

It is worthy to mention that Khattab initiated and led a great campaign between 2003 and 2008 to raise awareness of the harmful and sometimes fatal effects of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a common practice in Africa. The campaign ended with the promulgation of a law incriminating the practice and penalizing offenders with prison time and a fine.

On Sunday, India announced its support for Khattab in the elections that will be held in October. The news was delivered by Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj in a phone call with Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry.
On the other hand, Shoukry declared that Egypt supports the nomination of Judge Dalveer Bhandari for another nine-year term as judge in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Among Arab countries, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have expressed their support for Khattab’s nomination throughout the last two months.

The procedure of the nomination of the Director-General of UNESCO goes as follows:
One of the candidates will be chosen via secret ballot in a vote that will be held during the board’s 202nd session in October 2017, before his/her name is announced by the board’s chairman in the General Conference during its 30th session in November 2017.
Delegates to the General Conference “shall consider this nomination and then elect, by secret ballot, the person proposed by the Executive Board,” according to UNESCO’s website.

Khattab received a doctorate in Child’s Rights from Cairo University, in addition to a master’s in International Relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the U.S. and a bachelor’s in Political Science from Cairo University's Faculty of Economics and Political Science.

She was ranked third in 2013 out of the five leading female human rights activists in the Middle East and North Africa.

Among Khattab’s eminent job positions are her diplomatic and ministerial duties as the former minister of family and population in Egypt, former assistant minister of foreign affairs, and ambassador of Egypt to the Republic of South Africa, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Serving in Egypt’s diplomatic missions in Australia, Hungary, Austria and the United Nations (New York and Vienna), she played a human rights activist role for advocating the rights of children and women, and she also served as former chair of the U.N.
Committee on the Rights of the Child based at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva.

Khattab experienced two profound transformations, as Ambassador to the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic during its historic dissolution (1992-1994) and as Egypt’s first ambassador to South Africa during its transformation to democracy under Nelson Mandela (1994-1999).