UNESCO to send monitoring mission to East Jerusalem

The Executive Board of the UNESCO has overwhelmingly voted for Arab draft resolutions calling for dispatching fact-finding commissions to Jerusalem to investigate the situation on the ground there. Speaking to KUNA on the vote, Kuwait's permanent representative to UNESCO Ali Al-Tarrah said the overwhelming approval of the draft resolutions submitted by six UNESCO member states reflected wide-scale international willingness to safeguard human heritage in occupied Palestinian territories and to push forward the Middle East peace process. "This vote ends a heated battle led by Arab, Muslim and friend nations to form a mission of experts in human heritage to investigate the current situation on the ground in Bab Al-Maghareba and East Jerusalem," he said. Forty-three countries have voted for the draft resolutions, while the US only rejected, with 12 abstentions. The Executive Board of the UNESCO is one of the three constitutional organs of UNESCO (the others being the General Conference and the Secretariat). It is elected by the General Conference. It consists of 58 member states, each with a four-year term of office