"The foundational aspirations of UNESCO rest upon the modernist rhetorics of progress, development, and uplift that many critics consider its fatal flaw. Forged in the twilight of empire and led by the victors of the war and major colonizing powers, UNESCO's founders sought to expand their influence "
"Dag Hammarskjold, the much revered Secretary-General of the United Nations from1953 to his untimely death in 1961, put it best when he said that such organizations were created not to bring us to heaven but in order to save us from hell."
"It is not possible to fathom the creation of UNESCO's programs without understanding the history of UNESCO itself, its dystopian beginnings, and its utopian promise."
"Together they (many critical accounts and analyses of UNESCO) tell the story of an imperfect organization that began with midcentury optimism but rapidly devolved from an assembly of statesmen to a tyranny of states."
"Entreating the world to conserve its cultural and natural places in the face of escalating industrialization and destruction can surely only be a positive step, yet how nations mobilize that call and at whose expense reveals a more complex dilemma."
"These are the complicated stories of conservation, the underneath of things, that UNESCO cannot officially recount, since the nation-state is the ultimate arbiter of World Heritage. That tension between international aspiration and national machination on the ground constitutes a central strand that"
"It is not only issues of nationalism and sovereignty that rankle, but the inability of today's World Heritage regime to incorporate the living aspects of heritage that necessitate rights of inclusion, access, use, and benefits. This view further bolsters the point that the organization cannot contin"