National Commissions for UNESCO are national organizations that were established by Member States of UNESCO and which are the only such bodies in the whole UN system.[1] T
The national commissions were established under Article VII of the Constitution of the UNESCO[2] by UNESCO member countries on a permanent basis, and are associated with the government bodies of the member countries.[2] Currently, there are 198 such National Commissions.[3]
History
During the Cold War different national commissions in different Balkan states initiated counter-hegemonic cultural rapprochement and cooperation between isolationist Albania, Warsaw Pact countries of Bulgaria and Romania, NATO member states of Greece, Turkey and Non-Aligned Yugoslavia when in 1963 in Bucharest they established International Association of South-East European Studies.[4]