Received B’nai B’rith Presidential Gold Medallion Award for Human Rights Work

B’nai B’rith mourns the loss of Vaclav Havel, who brought attention to injustice through his work as a writer, activist, dissident and eventually first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia.

Witold Zyss, B’nai B’rith’s permanent representative to UNESCO, reports:

The General Conference of UNESCO, meeting in Paris from 25 October to 10 November 2011, decided to admit Palestine as member state of the Organization. The General Conference is the supreme instance of UNESCO, composed of all the member states (now 195), meeting once in two years to approve the programme and the budget of the Organization and decide on other important issues.

The item on the admission of Palestine was taken up on Monday 31 October 2011, immediately after the end of the general policy debate in which the last speaker, still as observer, was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Palestinian Authority who  made a passionate plea for the admission of Palestine as member state.