Voting for next chief of UNESCO moves into third round

A third round of voting will be held tomorrow to try to select the next Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after none of the nine candidates for the post were able to obtain a majority of ballots in the first two rounds.

The third round is scheduled to start about 3:30 p.m. tomorrow in Paris, where UNESCO’s Executive Board is conducting its latest session, the agency said on its website.

Earlier this week the 58-member Executive Board interviewed all nine candidates and then discussed those interviews in a private meeting. Voting is by secret ballot and a winner is chosen by a simple majority of the board. The first round was held yesterday and the second round was conducted this evening, but neither round produced a winner.

The nine candidates are comprised of five men and four women. They include Lithuania’s Ambassador to UNESCO, Ina Marciulionyte; Bulgarian former foreign minister Irina Gueorguieva Bokova; Ivonne Juez de A. Baki of Ecuador; and European Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner (Austria).

The other candidates are: Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosny; Tanzania’s Sospeter Mwijarubi Muhongo; Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko; Algeria’s Mohammed Bedjaoui; and Assistant Director-General of UNESCO’s Africa department, Nouréini Tidjani-Serpos of Benin.

The person chosen by the board will serve a four-year term. The term of Koïchiro Matsuura, the current Director-General, ends this November. Having served two terms, he is not eligible for another stint.