 Qandil was appointed manager of the Department of the Free Flow of Information and Communication Policies for UNESCO in 1974.In an interview with "Al-Ahram Weekly", Qandil stated that while at UNESCO he "specialised in satellite communications and published several books and studies" dealing with global media and broadcasting.During this time he strongly pushed to include Palestine as a member and attempted to remove the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore from the organization.