UNESCO Gets Chummy With Equatorial Guinea's Dictator

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-05-10 08:29:00 UTC
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You wouldn't expect the United Nations to offer a Robert Mugabe Award for Presidential Distinction, would you? (Motto: "If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold.") Or a World Food Programme Than Shwe Humanitarian Medal?

Of course not. It'd be pretty appalling if the United Nations started handing out awards named for the world's most notorious dictators. Somehow, though, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) missed that particular memo. How else to explain why the Paris-based body is planning to award a UNESCO-Obiang science prize this June?

To be sure, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea doesn't rank well when it comes to general name recognition. On the Top 10 list of the World's Worst Dictators, Teodoro Obiang Nguema clocks in with just a dishonorable mention, following Uzbekistan's torture-happy dictator, Islam Karimov, and Cuba's Raul Castro. Obiang who? But, oh, Obiang's trying. Which is why the dictator has gone ahead and endowed the UNESCO prize with $3 million.

You might not think that Equatorial Guinea is that shabby a place to live. After all, at $36,600, its per capita GDP ranks higher than that of the United Kingdom or Denmark. Unfortunately, for the overwhelming majority of Equatorial Guinea's 600,000 people, that oil-based wealth is purely fictional.

Fully 75% of the country lives in poverty, and most will die before ever reaching their 50th birthday. Meanwhile, Obiang and his family have been siphoning off tens of millions of Equatorial Guinea's wealth for decades (a fact that's sparked multiple U.S. Senate investigations).

Obiang's prize will go to recognize those who have "improv[ed] the quality of human life" through the advancement of science. Ironic, given that state-sponsored radio has a history of calling Obiang the "god of Equatorial Guinea" — a key perk of the status being that the dictator could "decide to kill without having to give anyone an account and without going to hell."

Even as UNESCO is busily expressing its "deep gratitude" to Obiang for his generosity, given how the international body recently extended the deadline for nominations, it seems they've had some trouble finding candidates for the award. And if there's a shortage of distinguished scientists who are hurrying to affiliate with Equatorial Guinea's rapacious dicator, perhaps that's no surprise.

Photo Credit: snapr

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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