France's Audrey Azoulay was appointed on Friday evening as the new Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) by the Executive Council of the organization which is currently holding its 202nd session in Paris. The candidate from France obtained 30 votes out of the 58 at the Executive Council, against 28 votes for counterpart rival Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari (Qatar). The appointment of Ms. Azoulay to this post should be submitted to the 195 member States of UNESCO for approval on the 10th of November at the 39th session of the General Conference of the Organization, which will be organized from 30 October to 14 November. UNESCO's new DG is set to be in office on 15 November. Born in 1972, Mrs. Azoulay occupied between February 2016 and May 2017 the position of Minister of Culture and Communication in the French government. A former student of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, she graduated from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (1996) and has a Master's degree in Business Administration (Lancaster University, Great Britain, 1993). In September 2014, she was appointed Cultural Adviser to the former President of the French Republic, François Hollande. The Director-General of this UN organization is initially appointed for a period of four years and may be appointed for a second and final four-year term. In addition to Ms. Azoulay and Mr. Al-Kawari, five other candidates were nominated for the post of Director-General of UNESCO: Polad Bulbuloglu (Azerbaijan), Pham Sanh Chau (Viet Nam), Moushira Khattab China) and Vera El-Khoury Lacoeuilhe (Lebanon).
