US embassy cable - 05PARIS7574

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 
 
SIPDIS 
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