Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the General Meeting of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, December 22, 2023

Esteemed colleagues,

Friends,

I am glad to welcome you at the regular General Meeting of the Russian Federation Commission on UNESCO. By tradition, we are meeting on the eve of the New Year holidays. We continue this nice tradition.

I would like to note that our commission has acquired new members this year. I would like to greet them personally and wish them productive work in our close circle.

The outgoing year was not an easy one for UNESCO. As we know, after the beginning of the special military operation, the collective West began to intensify its efforts to politicise the organisation, and reduce its agenda to Ukraine. Their notorious double standards are reflected in regular anti-Russia resolutions on Crimea and Ukraine. The West is pushing through these resolutions by twisting the arms of the developing nations. These resolutions go beyond UNESCO’s mandate. It has no competence in this area. Attempts to defame Russia for “destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage" without citing any evidence are in the same category. Such evidence simply does not exist. Nor does UNESCO have any right to attribute guilt. UNESCO Secretariat employees admitted it themselves in private conversations.

At the same time, we still haven’t heard any statement condemning the act of terror at the Moscow Kremlin, a world heritage site. Nor has UNESCO Secretary-General Audrey Azoulay from France denounced the murder of Russian journalists although this is her direct mandate.

It is telling that many Western countries have remained indifferent to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and even opposed a relevant resolution at the recent session of the General Conference.

We are deeply concerned over the increasing disregard for UNESCO’s procedural rules and Charter, which are arbitrarily interpreted to carry out political orders. This is exactly how the return of the US to UNESCO was arranged (in a scandalous way) – there were no guarantees of Washington’s intentions to fulfil its commitments.

Bloc logic and divisive friend-or-foe thinking is gaining ground in an organisation that was initially supposed to unite nations in moral and intellectual solidarity.

Aggressive attempts were made to oust Russia from UNESCO’s leading and auxiliary bodies. At times even the most unseemly methods were used for this purpose, up to and including financial blackmail of the countries of the Global East and South. In these conditions, our country was not re-elected to the Executive Board and a number of other bodies of UNESCO despite support from more than a half of its members.

But the attempts to “cancel” Russia in UNESCO did not achieve the desired effect. As President Vladimir Putin noted at the St Petersburg Cultural Forum last November, in UNESCO we are conducting very serious projects that generate widespread interest in the world.

I will emphasise again that we are not closing ourselves off from anyone. On the contrary, we are interested in advancing a unifying agenda in both UNESCO and other international venues. This is borne out by the results of the analysis of UNESCO cooperation by the commission’s Secretariat, Russian agencies and thematic committees. I would like to use this opportunity to thank all those who took part in this work. Comparing notes like this revealed both potential and sticking points.

Our commission needs to intensify its efforts in a variety of areas. I suggest instructing the Commission's Secretariat to sum up the outcomes of today's discussion and deliberations prior to our meeting and outline specific steps to implement the proposed initiatives. We will send these proposals out for you to review.

Overall, we have accumulated a wealth of positive experience to build upon. Frankly, a mutually beneficial professional dialogue in UNESCO is still possible despite the blatantly unlawful actions of its Secretariat’s senior officials.

This is confirmed, in particular, by the outcomes of the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee. It took place in September in Riyadh in a businesslike and constructive manner. Congratulations to the Republic of Tatarstan on having the Astronomical Observatories of Kazan Federal University included on the World Heritage List.

The interagency Expert Council created this year at the Foreign Ministry has made a sizable contribution to shaping our policy at the Committee session. I would like to propose spreading the experience of creating expert councils to other areas of our UNESCO activities as needed.

In November 2023, Russia was re-elected to the International Hydrological Programme and the Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee. Following the elections, our colleagues joined the presidiums of the Information for All Programme and the Intergovernmental Programme for the Development of Communication. Congratulations to Mikhail Gusman and Anastasia Parshakova on their election.

I would like to highlight Margarita Simonyan’s assistance in creating a video about cases of mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and UNESCO. Tens of thousands of internet users saw its English and Russian versions.

I consider strengthening the regional dimension of our Commission important. In this regard, I welcome the establishment this year of the Commission’s regional committee in the Ulyanovsk Region and the resumption of a similar entity in Dagestan. Congratulations to our colleagues from Bashkortostan on the 25th anniversary of the republic’s regional committee.

In the autumn, Veliky Novgorod was included on the list of UNESCO City of Music programme which is part of the Creative Cities network. The international Memory of the World Register which is a list of documentary heritage of world significance was supplemented with Handwritings and Notes of Fyodor Dostoevsky in the outgoing year.  The celebration of anniversaries in 2024-2025 with which UNESCO could be associated includes the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Novodevichy Convent.

This is a major accomplishment given the number obstacles that the West is hysterically creating on the path of our cooperation with other countries.

To create additional incentives for talented scientists and to support breakthrough scientific achievements, we initiated and funded UNESCO’s largest annual prize in the basic sciences named after Dimitri Mendeleev. On December 13, the second ceremony for presenting the laureates with this prize took place in Moscow with great success. I would like to express sincere gratitude to the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education and Science for preparing and hosting this event in a very short time and at a high level. Due to artificial delays on the part of the Organisation's Secretariat in 2022, we missed the award ceremony, so we need to work towards restoring the normal annual schedule for presenting this award.

I would like to suggest that the commission members do more to involve the Russian private sector in supporting UNESCO projects. A good example is the scholarship programme for young scientists, Green Chemistry for Life, funded by PhosAgro since 2013. More than 40 young researchers, including 12 representatives from African countries, have received its grants.

The International Competence Centre for Mining Engineering Education under the Auspices of UNESCO plays an important role in advancing our interaction with UNESCO, including in its Global Priority Africa flagship programme. It was created at the St Petersburg Mining University. I would like to express special words of gratitude to its rector Vladimir Litvinenko for his major and proactive contribution to UNESCO's programme activities and timely steps to renew the agreement on the creation of this centre which expires in 2025.

Clearly, the Organisation's facilities can be put to better use in order to strengthen the national potential of African countries in culture, science, education, and media, all the more so as relations between Russia and African countries are about to reach the level of strategic partnership. Currently, we are implementing agreements reached at the second Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg in July. Cooperation in the humanitarian sphere is a priority, as laid out in the revised Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation approved by President Putin on March 31.

Russia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, and is home to people of different ethnicities and cultures who have lived in peace and harmony for centuries. It is important to continue to popularise our country's unique experience, including in an important matter such as language policy, the preservation and development of the languages of indigenous peoples. We are now entering the third year of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages celebrated from 2022 to 2032. Last week, a delegation from the Federal Agency for Ethic Affairs represented our country in Paris at a meeting of the Global Task Force for the preparation of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2023. The Russian Committee of the Information for All programme continued the tradition of theme-based international conferences. In 2023, such conferences took place in three regions of the Russian Federation, namely, Khanty-Mansiysk, Yakutsk, and Ufa.

Russian Language Day was celebrated at the UNESCO headquarters for the first time on June 6, Alexander Pushkin’s birthday, with the support of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs. This ceremony was made possible jointly with the CIS member states and came as an outstanding event as part of the declared Year of the Russian Language as the language of interethnic communication in the CIS in 2023. All this is unfolding in the context of the creation, at the initiative of the President of Kazakhstan, of the International Organisation for the Russian Language, which encourages all interested countries on our planet to join it.

I would like to highlight the participation of the Russian agencies and our Commission’s programme committees in drafting UNESCO regulatory documents. In March, the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, to which we contributed significantly, came into force. The Russian Code of Ethics in the Field of Artificial Intelligence was another contribution to the implementation of the corresponding UNESCO recommendation. Almost 250 state and private entities from 17 countries have joined it.

The draft UNESCO Framework for Culture and Arts Education is in its final phase of coordination. It will be adopted at the ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi in February 2024. I look forward to our experts taking an active part in this work and in work to draft a new recommendation for the ethical use of neurotechnologies which is a top priority.

This is only a portion of the work carried out in UNESCO in the outgoing year. Numerous projects and initiatives are being implemented in Russia, primarily under the auspices of our Commission.

Everyone agrees with the need to continue international cooperation in areas falling under the mandate of the Organisation and to assist developing countries, and uphold UNESCO ideals and principles. This is Russia's duty and destiny as a great cultural power.

Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of our country's accession to UNESCO which is a good occasion to look back on the year and outline plans for the future. All ideas are welcome. I encourage you to go right ahead and come up with your suggestions.

In line with our tradition, I would like to close by wishing everyone a happy upcoming New Year and Merry Christmas. I wish you all the best, good health, and professional success in the coming year.