Terms of Use

In the UNESCO General Terms and Conditions of Use of UNESCO Websites and Online Services (the "UNESCO Terms of Use"), the following definitions apply:

"AI Feature" means any Artificial Intelligence System made available to Users on a Site, including conversational assistants, automated translation, search and recommendation, whether operated by UNESCO or by a third party on its behalf.

"AI Materials" means Materials generated, enhanced or assisted by an Artificial intelligence system operated by or for UNESCO. AI Materials are validated by UNESCO before publication, and they are identified as such where an Artificial intelligence system has materially generated their content.

"AI Training" means using Materials, in whole or in part, to train, pre-train, fine-tune, calibrate or develop an Artificial Intelligence System.

"Artificial Intelligence System" means a machine-based system that, from the input it receives, infers how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations or decisions; a "large language model" or "LLM" is such a system trained on text.

"Authorised Access" means access authorized in writing under Section 9.

"Automated System" means any robot, crawler, spider, scraper, bot, script, application programming interface (API) client or other automated means used to access, read, copy or extract Materials.

"Contributed Materials" means Materials generated, created or developed by States Parties, government agencies, national organizations, partners or collaborators ("Contributors"), in which rights are held by the Contributors, or which are otherwise made available to UNESCO under applicable terms or permissions. 

"Materials" means all content accessible through a Site, including publications, data, metadata, information, text, images, maps, 3D models, audio and audiovisual recordings, documents, tools and services; Materials comprise Owner Materials, Contributed Materials and Third-Party Materials.

"Owner Materials" means Materials generated, created or developed by UNESCO.

"Permitted Quotation" means the excerption or quotation of Materials by individuals, including academics, journalists, students or representatives of Member States, for non-commercial purposes such as comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research, as further set out in Section 5.

"Site" or "Sites" means any current or future website, platform, database, portal, mobile application, subdomain, associated site, social media account, or other online service operated by or on behalf of UNESCO.

"Substantial Part" means: (i) in relation to a database, a part of its contents that is substantial in quantitative or qualitative terms, having regard, as appropriate, to the investment in obtaining, verifying, organizing or presenting those contents; or (ii) in relation to an individual Material, a part that is substantial in quantitative or qualitative terms having regard to the nature, extent and significance of the part taken in relation to the Material as a whole.

"Text and Data Mining" or "TDM" means any automated analytical technique applied to Materials to analyse them and generate information, including patterns, trends and correlations.

"Third-Party Materials" means Materials originating from third parties and made available through a Site by link, citation, aggregation or embedding.

"UNESCO" means the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations.

"User" means any person or entity, and any Automated System acting on their behalf, that accesses or uses a Site.

"Web Scraping" means the automated extraction, harvesting or copying of Materials from a Site.

By accessing or using any Site or the Materials accessible through it, whether directly or through an Automated System, the User acknowledges they have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the UNESCO Terms of Use, together with any specific terms applicable to that Site or Materials accessible through it, and any other applicable UNESCO authorization.

Any access to or use of a Site or Material accessible through it by any person or Automated System that is contrary to the UNESCO Terms of Use, any applicable Site-specific terms or any applicable authorization is unauthorized and prohibited.

These Terms apply to all current and future Sites or Materials accessible through it operated by or on behalf of UNESCO, whether or not they are individually listed. In the event of any inconsistency between these Terms and any Site-specific terms, these Terms shall prevail, unless the Site-specific terms, an applicable license or a specific authorization issued by UNESCO expressly provides otherwise in respect of the relevant Site, Material or use.

The UNESCO Terms of Use form part of, and are applied consistently with, UNESCO’s constitutional and regulatory framework, including its regulations, rules and policies, including the UNESCO Access to Information Policy, the UNESCO Principles on Personal Data Protection and Privacy and the Privacy notice.

Nothing in these Terms restricts the right of access to information provided for under the UNESCO Access to Information Policy. That Policy governs whether and how information is made accessible; these Terms govern the conditions under which Materials, once accessed, may be used, reproduced or extracted.

Copyright © UNESCO. Materials accessible through the Sites may comprise: (i) Owner Materials, owned by UNESCO; (ii) Contributed Materials, which remain the property of the Contributors that provide them or are licensed to UNESCO; and (iii) Third-Party Materials, in which rights are held by third parties and which may be subject to separate terms or permissions.

Except as expressly provided in these Terms or under any applicable license or other authorization, Users acquire no ownership or other rights in any Material by accessing or using a Site.

Independently of the rights in individual Materials, UNESCO holds or may assert, as applicable, copyright and other rights in the selection, verification, coordination, arrangement and presentation of its databases and online collections and in their contents. Such rights are independent of, and without prejudice to, any copyright or other rights subsisting in individual Materials contained in those databases or collections.

Except as expressly permitted under these Terms, under an applicable license, or specific authorization by UNESCO, the extraction or reutilization of all or a Substantial Part of the contents of a UNESCO database, or the repeated or systematic extraction or reutilization of insubstantial parts of its contents, is prohibited without prior written authorization, whether or not UNESCO holds rights in the/each individual Material of the database, including where individual Materials are in the public domain.

Permitted Quotation under Section 5 below applies to individual Materials and does not, in itself, authorize the extraction or reutilization of all or a Substantial Part of the contents of a database, or the reproduction of the selection, arrangement or structure of a database or online collection.

Where a Material is made available under an Intergovernmental Organization (IGO) Creative Commons license or other specific license, the User may use that Material in accordance with the terms of that license. Not all Materials are made available under such a license: some Sites may provide Materials for viewing only and grant no license, and Contributed and Third-Party Materials may require the permission of their respective right holders. Nothing in these Terms restricts rights expressly granted by a Creative Commons license, other applicable license or specific authorization issued by UNESCO.

Subject to the foregoing and to any specific conditions applicable to a Material, Users may access and browse the Sites and may consult, cite, translate and reproduce individual Materials, on an occasional and individual basis, for personal use and for non-commercial educational and research purposes, with proper attribution to UNESCO and, where applicable, to any other identified right holder. Ordinary indexing of the Sites by general search engines is permitted, provided that such indexing does not involve bulk or systematic extraction of Materials or the extraction or reutilization of all or a Substantial Part of the contents of a database, and is carried out in a manner that is not misleading and does not imply endorsement by or affiliation with UNESCO.

Where Materials comprise legal instruments, resolutions, decisions or other official texts issued or published by UNESCO, any reproduction, quotation or translation shall preserve the integrity and context of the original text and shall not misrepresent its nature, scope or content. Any translation that has not been officially issued or approved by UNESCO shall be clearly identified as an unofficial translation and shall not be presented or represented as an official UNESCO translation. Users should refer to the relevant UNESCO sources for the official version or versions of the text.

Permitted Quotation of individual Materials is authorized for up to 1,000 words or 25% of the source Material, whichever is less, provided that: (i) the extent of the quotation does not exceed what is justified by its purpose; (ii) the quotation does not substitute or change the meaning of the original Material; and (iii) the quotation is accompanied by a complete citation identifying the source. Permitted quotation does not authorize Web Scraping, bulk or systematic extraction, AI Training, or the extraction or reutilization of all or Substantial Part of the contents of a database, which remain subject to Sections 7, 8, and 9 below.

When reusing Materials, the following citation format should be used: UNESCO (year), Title, URL. Where the medium permits, the citation should include a functional link to the original Material.

The retrieval of individual Materials by an Artificial Intelligence System at the time of, and for the purpose of, answering a specific user query (including retrieval-augmented generation) is permitted, provided that: (i) the output identifies UNESCO as the source and, where the medium reasonably permits, includes a functional link to the original Material on the relevant Site; (ii) the Materials retrieved are not retained beyond what is technically necessary to generate the response, and are not used for AI Training; and (iii) such retrieval does not involve Web Scraping, bulk or systematic extraction, or the extraction or reutilization of all or a Substantial Part of the contents of  a database. 

Except as expressly permitted under this Section, under an applicable license or specific authorization issued by UNESCO, no additional right to reproduce, extract, reutilize, distribute or otherwise use the Materials is granted by these Terms.

Where a Site allows Users to submit content, the User warrants that they hold the necessary rights in it and grants UNESCO a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide right to use, reproduce, translate, adapt, communicate and make available to the public that content for the purposes for which it was submitted and, where relevant, in connection with the operation of the Site and UNESCO's mandated activities. UNESCO may remove any submitted content at its discretion and assumes no obligation to publish or retain it.

Except where expressly permitted under Section 5, under an applicable license or under a specific authorization issued by UNESCO, the User shall not: (a) use the Sites or Materials for commercial purposes; (b) extract or reutilize all or a Substantial Part of the contents of a database, or repeatedly or systematically extract or reutilize insubstantial parts of its contents; (c) access, scrape, crawl, harvest or bulk-download Materials by any Automated System, except for ordinary indexing by general-purpose search engines and real-time retrieval by Artificial Intelligence Systems as expressly permitted under Section 5; (d) use any Materials for AI training, including the training, pre-training, fine-tuning or calibration of Artificial Intelligence Systems or the creation of, or contribution to AI-training datasets incorporating Materials, except under a formal authorization granted pursuant to Section 9; (e) circumvent or interfere with any technical measures or access controls applied to the Sites or Materials, including robots.txt directives, rate limits or authentication, or remove, obscure or alter any legal or copyright notice; or (f) use the Sites or Materials for any unlawful, fraudulent or harmful purpose and activity, in any way that would infringe the rights of UNESCO, Contributors or third parties, or in any manner that could damage, disrupt, disable, impair or overburden the Sites or UNESCO’s systems,  including their performance, availability or accessibility or interfere with their operation or use by others.  

Except to the extent expressly permitted under an applicable license or specific authorization issued by UNESCO, UNESCO expressly reserves all rights it holds in and to the Materials and the Sites' databases with respect to Text and Data Mining, automated extraction, and AI Training, including the training, pre-training, fine-tuning or calibration of Artificial Intelligence Systems. This reservation may be expressed in machine-readable form through appropriate technical means, which may include, without limitation, crawler directives (such as robots.txt files and content signals), dedicated reservation files, HTTP response headers, metadata, or other machine-readable protocols or standards that UNESCO may adopt from time to time. The absence, unavailability, or technical failure of any particular machine-readable means shall not be construed as a waiver of any rights reserved by UNESCO.

Any use of the Materials or the Sites’ databases beyond that expressly permitted under Section 5 or under an applicable license, including bulk or systematic extraction and AI Training requires prior written authorisation from UNESCO.

UNESCO may establish formal partnerships or other arrangements for Authorised Access to the Materials or the Sites’ databases. Such partnerships or arrangements may provide for reciprocal benefits supporting UNESCO’s mandate and may provide access through dedicated application programming interfaces, structured datasets or other technical means determined by UNESCO.

Any authorisation shall be granted at UNESCO's sole discretion and shall be specific, non-exclusive and non-transferable, and subject to the conditions, duration and any suspension or revocation provisions set out in the relevant authorisation or agreement. No authorization shall transfer ownership of any rights held by UNESCO or constitute or be construed as a waiver of UNESCO’s privileges and immunities. No User shall have any entitlement to obtain or renew an authorisation.

Requests may be addressed to digital.com@unesco.org.

The name, acronym and logo of UNESCO, and the names and designs of its Sites and projects, are the intellectual property of UNESCO. Their use is subject to the Directives concerning the Use of the Name, Acronym, Logo and Internet Domain Names of UNESCO. As such, they may not be used, copied, reproduced or incorporated in any work without UNESCO’s prior written authorization. Rules about use of the UNESCO name, acronym and logo can be consulted on the website.

The User shall not use the name, acronym or logo of UNESCO, or the name or visual identity of any Site, programme, project or initiative, in any manner that suggests or could reasonably be understood as suggesting endorsement, sponsorship, approval, affiliation or other association with UNESCO where none exists.

The Materials and information made available through the Sites are provided on an “as is” basis and for information purposes only. In addition to any other disclaimers set out in these Terms, UNESCO makes no representation and gives no warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, usefulness, completeness, quality, currency or fitness for any particular purpose of any Material or contributed Materials or information made available through the Sites. The designations employed and the presentation of Materials do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Where a Site offers an AI Feature, outputs generated by that AI Feature may be incomplete, inaccurate or inappropriate and should not be relied upon without independent or human verification. Unless expressly stated otherwise, such outputs do not constitute official positions, decisions or statements by UNESCO. The processing of User inputs is governed by the UNESCO Privacy Policy. Materials and outputs made available through the Sites do not constitute legal, medical, financial or other professional advice and should not be relied upon as such.

No User may represent or imply that UNESCO participates in, sponsors, approves or endorses any use made of the Materials. UNESCO does not participate in, operate, warrant, endorse, supervise or bear any responsibility for any third-party platform, tool, service or artificial intelligence system that references, relies on, analyses, reproduces or redistributes Materials.

UNESCO does not represent or warrant that it owns or controls all rights in all Materials, in particular as regards Contributed Materials and Third-Party Materials, and accepts no liability for any claim brought against a User by a third party in connection with the use of Materials. UNESCO is not responsible for the correct functioning and availability of Third-Party Materials, including services or tools, and declines any direct and indirect liability in this regard. Display of Third-Party materials does not constitute endorsement or sponsorship by UNESCO of any Third-Party Materials.
 

The use of the Sites is at the User’s sole risk. In no event shall UNESCO, nor any of its officials, agents, employees, suppliers or sub-contractors, be liable to the User or other person or entity for any claim, loss, demand or damages whatsoever (including special, indirect, punitive or consequential damages, or damages for loss of data or profit or business interruption) arising out of or in connection with the access to, use of, inability to use, or reliance on the Sites, the Materials or any AI Feature, whether or not UNESCO has been advised of the possibility of such loss or damage.

UNESCO shall not be responsible for any loss or damage arising from the use of Contributed Materials or Third-Party Materials, or from any Third-Party website, platform, service, or Artificial Intelligence Systems that accesses, references, reproduces, analyses or otherwise uses Materials.

The User shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless UNESCO, its officials, staff, agents and affiliates from and against any claim, demand, suit, loss, liability, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, brought by any third party and arising out of or in connection with the User’s access to or use of the Sites, the User’s acts or omissions, or the User’s breach of these Terms or unlawful or unauthorized use of the Sites or Materials.

Nothing contained in or related to these Terms, and no act performed under them, including any disclosure, grant of access, or response to a request, shall be deemed a waiver, express or implied, of any of the privileges and immunities of UNESCO.

UNESCO reserves the right, at its sole discretion and with or without notice, to modify, suspend or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, any Site or any part thereof or any Materials, and to suspend, restrict or terminate access to any Site or Materials, including where it determines that these Terms have been or may be breached, including by any unauthorized automated access, scraping or AI-training.

UNESCO reserves the right to seek all remedies available to it in respect of any breach or unauthorized access or use, including damages and the recovery of its costs, and to require the deletion of unlawfully extracted Materials and of any dataset containing such Materials. Nothing in these Terms limits any copyright, database rights or other rights or remedies independently held by or available to UNESCO.

No failure or delay by UNESCO in exercising any right or remedy under these Terms shall operate as a waiver of that right or remedy, nor shall any single or partial exercise preclude any further exercise.
 

Any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or in connection with the UNESCO Terms of Use or any specific terms of use applicable to a Site, including any question regarding their existence, validity, interpretation, implementation or termination, shall be settled amicably. Where the parties wish to seek such an amicable settlement through conciliation, the conciliation shall take place in accordance with the UNCITRAL Conciliation Rules then obtaining, or according to such other procedure as may be agreed between the parties.

If any such dispute, claim or controversy is not settled amicably within sixty (60) days of the request for amicable settlement, it shall be finally settled by arbitration in accordance with the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules then in force. The arbitral award shall be final and binding on the parties.

By accessing or using any Site, the User agrees and accepts that the above is the sole and exclusive means of settling disputes between the User and UNESCO.
 

UNESCO may revise these Terms of Use at any time without notice; the current version shall be posted on the Sites and shall apply prospectively from the date of its posting. Continued use of a Site following the posting of revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

These Terms may be made available in different language versions. In the event of any inconsistency or discrepancy between such versions, the English version shall prevail.

Contacts and requests: digital.com@unesco.org.