USUNESCO: 33rd GENERAL CONFERENCE ADOPTS

UNCLAS PARIS 007574

SIPDIS

FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SCUL FR UNESCO
SUBJECT: USUNESCO: 33rd GENERAL CONFERENCE ADOPTS
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION AGAINST DOPING IN SPORT



1. SUMMARY: UNESCO's 33rd General Conference adopted
by consensus the Convention Against Doping in Sport,
designed to strengthen efforts to keep sport fair and
drug-free. The convention places particular emphasis
on the education of amateur athletes and the fight
against doping in sport by athletes that participate in
the Olympics. The US helped draft the document and
joined consensus. END SUMMARY


2. Attendees at the first intergovernmental drafting
meeting for this convention in January 2004 were
presented with a draft that had been prepared by a
group of non-governmental experts at UNESCO, based
largely on the Council of Europe's Anti-Doping
Convention. This early draft was problematic from a
USG because it encouraged direct regulation of doping
in sports and provided for the establishment of a heavy
institutional structure to oversee the operation and
implementation of the convention.


3. After the first meeting, the US delegation, with
support from Japan, Australia and Canada, substantially
revised the text so that it is now consistent with US
law and practice in this area. Furthermore the US
delegation worked successfully to reduce the
institutional structure contemplated by the convention
to a bare minimum. Nevertheless, the funding of the
administration and monitoring of the convention
remained unresolved until the General Conference (GC).



4. The Director General's report, issued just before
the GC, strongly advocated that the Secretariat be
funded from UNESCO's regular budget. Despite this,
USDel worked with other delegations to obtain a
position on funding in line with USG basic policy that
every UNESCO convention should be funded by those
States that are a party to that convention, rather than
having every convention funded through the general
budget and thereby requiring states to pay for a
convention, regardless of whether they are a party.
Along these lines, we found a workable solution, which
provides that all monitoring mechanisms developed by
the Conference of Parties under Article 30 must come
exclusively out of the Voluntary Fund and that funding
for the administration of the convention (the
Secretariat and the Conference of Parties),and the

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self-reporting mechanism be assessed out of the general
budget "within existing resources," with the option
that it can be taken out of the voluntary fund. As a
result, the United States was able to join consensus in
adopting the final draft of the anti-doping convention
at the General Conference.


5. Much of the success of this negotiation can be
attributed to L/T lawyer Avril Haines and the other
members of the negotiating team.

International Charter on Traditional Games and Sports


6. Ms. Haines' team also successfully turned back
efforts during the GC to begin elaborating an
international charter for traditional games and sports
that had all the earmarks of a convention-in-the-
making. It was proposed by the same ministers of
education and sport (MINEPS) who were originally behind
the UNESCO anti-doping convention. Despite late
efforts by Cameroon to revive the issue, the measure
was soundly defeated in Commission II and stayed that
way in Plenary.

KOSS