United Nations High Week, when the General Assembly convenes annually, may have ended Friday, but there are still more than a few important meetings at the international body this week. On Tuesday, the executive board of UNESCO—the UN’s cultural arm responsible for protecting World Heritage sites and facilitating international cooperation in education, the arts, sciences, and culture—met to decide on its new director-general.
In a decisive vote, the board nominated only one candidate: Khaled El-Enany Ezz. In a speech, Simona-Mirela Miculescu, president of the General Conference of UNESCO, cited El-Enany’s “unwavering dedication” to the organization, as well as a “tireless two-year campaign,” during which he visited 65 countries.
“Above all, the guiding motto of your campaign, ‘UNESCO for the People,’ has clearly resonated with us all. In those four words lies your moral compass, a promise to equity, respect for human dignity, and a refusal to let policy drift from principle,” Miculescu said. “At this time when humanity is at a crossroads, your vision reassures us that our organization will advance true to its mission: to place people first, to advance peace and sustainable development for all.”
The 54-year-old El-Enany served as Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities from 2019 to 2022 and is a professor of Egyptology at Helwan University in Cairo. He previously served as minister of antiquities from 2016 until that department was merged with tourism in 2019. He also served as director of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. During his term in the Egyptian government, he supervised the construction and renovation of more than 20 museums, often in collaboration with UNESCO. He was integral to the development of the Grand Egyptian Museum, a $1 billion institution that partially opened last year after a decade of development. (The GEM will have its grand opening in November.)
El-Enany is the first Arab director-general, and he will take on the role at a particularly fraught time for the organization. UNESCO has arguably been at the forefront of the two major ongoing conflicts—in Ukraine and Gaza—as both locales have experienced unprecedented levels of destruction of cultural sites, primarily by Russia and Israel, respectively.
In February of this year, UNESCO reported that 341 cultural sites—including 26 religious structures, 150 buildings of historical or artistic importance, and 31 museums—across Ukraine have been damaged since the outbreak of war in February 2022. The following year, Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO’s outgoing director-general, promised more than $10 million toward rehabilitation efforts.
Meanwhile, in June, an investigation by a UN commission concluded that Israeli attacks on cultural and religious sites in occupied Palestinian territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination. It said that the sheer number of attacks on heritage sites—110 since October 7, 2023, per UNESCO—indicates a “clear disregard for the Palestinian people’s religious beliefs, culture, and heritage and undermines the Palestinian people’s culture and identity.”
The organization has also been heavily criticized by the Trump administration for platforming “divisive social and cultural causes,” as well as for alleged anti-Israel bias—a charge also levied by Israel. (The Times of Israel, in a piece raising the specter of anti-Israel bias, noted that El-Enany was replacing UNESCO first Jewish director-general, Azoulay, who was elected to the position in 2017.) In July, Trump announced that the US would withdraw from UNESCO at the end of 2026, a move that would deal a heavy blow to the organization’s finances.
While El-Enany is undoubtedly qualified—UNESCO noted that he managed more than 2,000 sites as minister—the selection is already fueling discourse in Israel that the organization is doubling down on supposed anti-Israel bias. Still, El-Enany told reporters after the vote that he will strive for “technical” deliberations “rather than the politicization of the organization.”
El-Enany must still be confirmed by UNESCO’s general body in November, though it has never rejected a selection made by the executive board.
