UNESCO interviews 9 candidates for Director-General, 4 of them are Arabs

CAIRO - 28 April 2017: Four Arabs, including an Egyptian woman, are amongst the nine potential candidates running for UNESCO’s top post are in the interview process from April 27 to 28, to succeed the current chief of UNESCO, Bulgarian Irina Bokova, who started her tenure in 2009 and was re-elected for a second term in 2013.

The nine candidates are Moushira Khattab from Egypt, Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari from Qatar, Saleh al-Hasnawi from Iraq, Vera El-Khoury Lacoeuilhe from Lebanon, Audrey Azule from France, Polad Bulbuloglu from Azerbaijan, Pham Sanh Chau from Vietnam, Qian Tang from China, and Juan Alfonso Fuentes Soria from Guatemala.

Khattab, Ph.D is Egypt's former Minister of Family and Population, former Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, and ambassador of Egypt to the Republic of South Africa, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She is also a human rights activist advocating the rights of children and women and the former Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child based at the UN Headquarters in Geneva. Her Ph.D was on the rights of the child from Cairo University, an M.A. in International Relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

The interviews of the nine candidates take place during the 201st Board session on April 27 and 28.The UNESCO General Conference chooses a new director general every four years, which was previously every six years.