By Nick Mann | 12 March 2012

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has set out how it plans to achieve its programmes for 2012/13 despite ‘severe funding constraints’.

Members of the organisation’s executive board met on Friday to approve a strategy for the next financial year that focuses on reducing costs and giving its programmes a ‘sharper focus’. Money will also be sourced from outside the organisation’s main budget.

Unesco was forced to rethink its plans after its decision to admit Palestine as a member in October prompted the US to suspend its financial contribution to the body’s running costs. The US move reduced the Unesco budget for 2012/13 from $653m to $435m.

Under its ‘road map’, Unesco will continue to focus on its priorities, which include Africa and gender equality, as well as programmes for youth, small island developing states, and countries in post-conflict and post-disaster situations.

But they will do so with ‘sustained mobilisation’ of additional resources – including the Special Emergency Fund which was set up to plug the gap in the Unesco budget left by the US’s decision to withdraw funding.

Unesco will also make ‘systematic savings’ in administrative areas, staffing and non-staffing costs. Staff vacancies have already been frozen and an Efficiency Working Group has devised a wide range of efficiency and cost-saving measures that are already being implemented.

The organisation will also continue with reforms aimed at increasing the focus of its programmes, giving it a ‘better and more meaningful’ presence on the ground, forging stronger partnerships with other bodies and achieving a ‘more streamlined’ governance system.

Unesco director general Irina Bokeva said: ‘The road map now provides the organisation with a clear sense of direction, and it sets firm targets to meet as we move forward.

‘I am determined to meet the targets we have set in all areas – including cost efficiency, restructuring and human resource management.’