07 Aug 2016

Botswana National Commission for UNESCO has national and international responsibility of making it possible for Botswana to accrue tangible and non-tangible benefits from her UNESCO membership.

Speaking at the launch of the Botswana National Commission for UNESCO at Maharaja in Gaborone, the Minister of Education and Skills Development, Dr Unity Dow said, “the national commission is efficiently and effectively guided and supported by national commissioners.”

The commissioners, she added represent select and critical key government ministries, departments, civil society and private sector based on the UNESCO competence areas as determined by the general conference.

She said much had not been done despite the efforts made by the Botswana National Commission for UNESCO to capacitate and guide on the UNESCO areas of competences.  

The minister said Botswana over the years had indirectly missed out on some of the opportunities that otherwise could had benefited the UNESCO member states and the wide United Nations system.  

“We have a collective responsibility. Botswana’s membership to UNESCO needs to yield significate results. It is therefore of great importance that we collectively work together and raise our profile. 

Visibility of UNESCO in Botswana needs to be evident to anyone across the globe. We can only achieve this by committing time and energy through identifying and subsequently implementing niche areas,” she said. 

Dr Dow said, “I will be looking up to your respective institutions to turn the national priorities of Botswana into meaningful benefits to Batswana as informed by the Sustainable Development Goals and National Vision and Strategies.”

She said during the last 38^th Session of UNESCO General Conference, Botswana had a candidate for the UNESCO executive board, but did not ganner enough votes to get a seat in the board.  

One of the issues of concern, she said was the visibility of Botswana as a UNESCO member state,” she said.

She however thanked the former commissioners and welcomed Kgosi Puso Gaborone for accepting the Botswana UNESCO chairmanship, noting that they appreciate his leadership and contribution and thanked him for serving in the commission. 

For  his part, Kgosi Puso thanked the minister for appointing him to the chairmanship of the committee of national commissioners.

“You appointed me despite the knowledge that I have a huge constituency of bogosi and being the chairperson of Ntlo Ya Dikgosi. 

I realise we have a huge task ahead of us. 

We need to commit to this assignment and deliver our ministries and institutions on the UNESCO mandate in Botswana,” he said.   ENDS