With growth slowing and families struggling to make ends meet, it is an appalling injustice when money ends up in the hands of criminals – money that could be spent on much-needed global growth and development” // KHALED EL-ENANY Khaled El-Enany assumed office as director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on 15 November 2025, the first director-general from an Arab country and the second from Africa. He served as minister of antiquities of Egypt in 2016 and minister of tourism and antiquities from 2019 to 2022 and previously directed the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and the Egyptian Museum. He has also been a professor of Egyptology at Helwan University in Egypt for 30 years.
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alone – the water, oceans, transboundary resources and the climate we share. Intercultural dialogue and cultural diversity reinforce this effort. Communi- ties that know who they are – that can see their history represented and their heritage valued – are more resilient. Access to reliable information completes the pictures, preserving the conditions for democratic life and limiting the spread of disinformation and hate speech. These are not ‘soft’ investments; they are strate- gic ones. The progress achieved in recent dec- ades is real, but fragile. Child mortality is at its lowest level ever recorded, and life expectancy has increased on every con- tinent. Since 2000, 327 million additional children have enrolled in school. Yet for the seventh consecutive year, the number of children and young people out of school has risen – now reaching 273 mil- lion, one in six worldwide. Conflicts are at their highest level since 1946. This con- trast captures a defining challenge of our time: progress is uneven and increasingly vulnerable. It demands renewed commit- ment to the human rights that underpin it – the right to education, to science, to culture, to free and reliable information – and the resolve to act more decisively. A RENEWED COMMITMENT Responding to this challenge is what ‘UNESCO for the People’ means in prac- tice. In a fast-changing world, UNESCO is sharpening its focus on the people it serves – students, teachers, scientists, artists, journalists and communities. It translates its mandate into tangible progress in people’s everyday lives: close to communities, present in the field, effec- tive in implementation. It structures its work on those most affected – children in conflict zones, women excluded from science, communities whose heritage is
under threat. And it carries hope: the con- viction that education, knowledge and intercultural understanding can build the societies we want to inhabit. This is especially urgent because, in situations of conflict, social fragility, and environmental and climate shocks, the continuity of fundamental human rights is increasingly at risk. UNESCO works before, during and after crises – not as a humanitarian agency, but as an actor of continuity, resilience and social rehabil- itation. Sustainable development cannot be achieved without this foundation. When social cohesion fractures, when intercultural dialogue breaks down, when disinformation corrodes public trust, the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recede further from reach – which is precisely why the G7’s engagement matters. At Évian, the G7 can play a decisive role. It has already done so by placing educa- tion high on its agenda, notably through the ministerial meeting held at UNESCO in March and another in May under the French presidency. Today, the G7 can go further: by treating education, the sciences and culture as strategic investments in a more fragmented world; by placing the protection of children and young people – especially online – at the heart of digi- tal and AI governance; and by supporting international cooperation that strength- ens intercultural understanding and preserves social cohesion in times of crisis. This is how peace is built, and this is where hope is grounded: day by day, in classrooms and laboratories, through scientific cooperation and the safeguard- ing of heritage, through the protection of cultural diversity and of free and relia- ble information, in public spaces rooted in knowledge, dialogue and trust. A world that invests in these foundations is a world that chooses its future.
Khaled El-Enany, director-general, UNESCO
T he G7 meets in Évian at a time of widening global imbalances, growing strain on multilateral cooperation and rapid far-reaching change across societies. Artificial intelli- gence is reshaping access to knowledge. Pressures on biodiversity and natural resources challenge sustainable develop- ment. Hate speech spreads across digital spaces, and children and young people – more connected than ever – are increas- ingly exposed to disinformation and harmful content. And yet, amid these fractures, there is room for hope – if we act with clarity and purpose. In the face of these challenges, edu- cation, the sciences, culture and information are not peripheral concerns. They are the foundations of societal resil- ience, of social cohesion and of peace – not peace as the mere absence of con- flict, but as something built every day: in classrooms, in laboratories, in the stories societies tell about themselves and about each other. EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF RESILIENCE Education builds the social fabric. It equips individuals to distinguish facts from manipulation, to engage responsi- bly in public life, and to understand one another across differences of culture, language and origin. The social and human sciences help societies understand the roots of polarisation and radicalisa- tion, and offer evidence-based pathways towards greater cohesion. Scientific coop- eration and science diplomacy, anchored in shared knowledge rather than political division, provide tools for managing the global commons that no state can protect
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