[10] UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the events of World War II, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations.

[16][17] This new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC), was created in 1922[10] and counted such figures as Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Robert A. Millikan, and Gonzague de Reynold among its members (being thus a small commission of the League of Nations essentially centred on Western Europe[18]).

[22] After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945.

[26] United States Army colonel, university president and civil rights advocate Blake R. Van Leer joined as a member as well.

[27] The Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the executive board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity.

[28] This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in the organization's fields of competence.

As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate, political and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War, the decolonization process, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

[31] In 1955, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems".

[37] The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam.

This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), Fes (Morocco), Kathmandu (Nepal), Borobudur (Indonesia) and the Acropolis of Athens (Greece).

[47] In the field of communication, the "free flow of ideas by word and image" has been in UNESCO's constitution since it was established, following the experience of the Second World War when control of information was a factor in indoctrinating populations for aggression.

[68] The UNESCO transparency portal[88] has been designed to enable public access to information regarding the Organization's activities, such as its aggregate budget for a biennium, as well as links to relevant programmatic and financial documents.

The list may include cultural objects, such as the Jōmon Venus of Japan, the Mona Lisa of France, the Gebel el-Arak Knife of Egypt, The Ninth Wave of Russia, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük of Turkey, the David (Michelangelo) of Italy, the Mathura Herakles of India, the Manunggul Jar of the Philippines, the Crown of Baekje of South Korea, The Hay Wain of the United Kingdom and the Benin Bronzes of Nigeria.

Finland Portugal Turkey Albania Belarus Bulgaria Cuba Grenada Jamaica Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Venezuela Bangladesh China India Indonesia Japan Philippines Burundi Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Madagascar Zambia Zimbabwe Egypt Jordan Morocco France Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Switzerland Hungary Poland Russia Serbia Argentina Brazil Dominican Republic Uruguay Afghanistan Kyrgyzstan Philippines Pakistan South Korea Thailand Benin Congo Guinea Ghana Kenya Namibia Senegal Togo Saudi Arabia

Tunisia Austria Iceland Turkey Armenia Azerbaijan Lithuania Chile Grenada Haiti Mexico Paraguay Saint Lucia China Cook Islands India Japan Philippines Vietnam Angola Botswana Congo Djibouti South Africa Tanzania Egypt Jordan Kuwait France Germany Italy Spain United Kingdom United States Albania Czech Republic Serbia Slovakia Argentina Brazil Cuba Dominican Republic Australia Bangladesh Indonesia Pakistan South Korea Sri Lanka Burkina Faso Côte d'Ivoire Gabon Liberia Mauritius Mozambique Nigeria Iraq Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia The UNESCO headquarters is located at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, France.

UNESCO was perceived as a platform for communists and Third World dictators to attack the West, in contrast to accusations made by the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 2010, Israel designated the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem – both in the West Bank – as National Heritage Sites and announced restoration work, prompting criticism from the Obama administration and protests from Palestinians.

[154] In October 2010, UNESCO's executive board voted to declare the sites as "al-Haram al-Ibrahimi/Tomb of the Patriarchs" and "Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel's Tomb" and stated that they were "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories" and any unilateral Israeli action was a violation of international law.

[159][160] On 28 June 2011, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, at Jordan's insistence, censured[clarification needed] Israel's decision to demolish and rebuild the Mughrabi Gate Bridge in Jerusalem for safety reasons.

Bokova cancelled the event after representatives of Arab states at UNESCO argued that its display would "harm the peace process".

UNESCO amended the decision to cancel the exhibit within the year, and it quickly achieved popularity and was viewed as a great success.

In response, Israel denounced the UNESCO resolution for its omission of the words "Temple Mount" or "Har HaBayit", stating that it denies Jewish ties to the key holy site.

[165][166] After receiving criticism from numerous Israeli politicians and diplomats, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ayelet Shaked, Israel froze all ties with the organization.

"[171] It was also rejected by the Czech Parliament which said the resolution reflects a "hateful anti-Israel sentiment",[172] and hundreds of Italian Jews demonstrated in Rome over Italy's abstention.

[172] On 26 October, UNESCO approved a reviewed version of the resolution, which also criticized Israel for its continuous "refusal to let the body's experts access Jerusalem's holy sites to determine their conservation status".

[176][177] In February 2011, an article was published in a Palestinian youth magazine in which a teenage girl described one of her four role models as Adolf Hitler.

[178] In 2012, UNESCO decided to establish a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza in the field of astronomy, astrophysics, and space sciences,[179] fueling controversy and criticism.

[186] In 2015, Japan threatened to halt funding of UNESCO because of the organization's decision to include documents related to the 1937 Nanjing massacre in the latest listing for its "Memory of the World" program.

[187] In October 2016, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed that Japan's 2016 annual funding of ¥4.4 billion had been suspended, although he denied any direct link with the Nanjing document controversy.

[65] On 25 May 2016, Turkish poet and human rights activist Zülfü Livaneli resigned as Turkey's only UNESCO goodwill ambassador.