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Can your nationality help you to secure a job at UNESCO?

Author photo

by Henrik Rydén
COO and Co-founder of Impactpool

Can your nationality help you to secure a job at UNESCO?

The short answer is yes.

A little longer answer is that you need more than a citizenship.

But the true answer is that if you meet all the job requirements and if your country is under-represented. Your nationality can be UNESCO's final reason to select you.

In this article, I will explain the geographic quota of UNESCO. Similar to other United Nations Specialized agencies like ILO and FAO, also UNESCO applies quotas strictly.

When applying to an organization that uses geographic quotas, it is imperative that you know how your country is represented.

At UNESCO you can learn if your country is over-represented, represented in balance, under-represented, and non-represented. 

Similar to other UN Specialized agencies, UNESCO bases its quota calculation on the member states core contribution to the regular budget and the member states population; the ratio weight is (70/30), 70% contribution, and 30% population.

In this article, we will not go further into detail about how the quota is technically calculated, if that interests you, I suggest you read our article about quota calculation

Further down in the article, I will present a list of all the over-represented, represented in balance, under-represented, and non-represented member states of UNESCO.

I will also explain how it works if you have two or more nationalities and what the consequences are for your next job application if your country is over-represented

Remember that geographic quota applies only to core staff positions! The quota does not apply to project posts, consultancies, or temporary or local positions (so-called non-staff contracts).

Photo of UNESCO HQ by Jerome Bon (licensed under Creative Commons at Flickr). If your country is under or non-represented at UNESCO, take any chance you can to apply for all professional jobs you are eligible for.

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