Artificial intelligence as a site of global educational governance: the case of UNESCO

This article critically examines UNESCO’s engagement in the global governance of artificial intelligence in education (AIED). Through a structured website mapping and a qualitative document analysis of key documents published between 2019 and 2025, the paper shows how UNESCO constructs AI as an object of educational policy, articulates normative frameworks, and positions itself as the leading actor in shaping the governance of AI in educational systems. Drawing from interdisciplinary debates on legitimacy, norm diffusion, AI ethics and global governance, this paper analyses the ways in which UNESCO negotiates internal and external dilemmas and challenges. The analysis shows that while UNESCO’s discourse champions human rights, ethics, and inclusion, it also reveals underlying tensions, discrepancies as well as oscillating discourses of slow ‘ethics’ vs rapid ‘transformation’. We argue that the ambivalences and tensions that emerge are not only by-products of ‘bureaucratic pathologies’ but also strategies that UNESCO adopts in order to reassert its legitimacy in the global governance of education and respond to contradictory demands among normative commitments, the national priorities of Member States, and agendas of Big Tech.