PARIS (AP) — U.S. officials have told The Associated Press that the United States is pulling out of UNESCO, after repeated criticism of resolutions by the U.N. cultural agency that Washington sees as anti-Israel.
While the U.S. stopped funding UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member in 2011, the State Department has maintained a UNESCO office at its Paris headquarters and sought to weigh in on policy behind the scenes. The withdrawal was confirmed Thursday by U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to be publicly named discussing the decision. It was not clear when the move would be formally announced.
The decision comes as the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is voting to choose a new director this week, in tense balloting overshadowed by the agency’s funding troubles and divisions over Palestinian membership.
Many saw the vote to include Palestine as evidence of long-running, ingrained anti-Israel bias within the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters.
UNESCO is best known for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and traditions around the world. The agency also works to improve education for girls in desperately poor countries and in scientific fields, to promote better understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust and to defend media freedom, among other activities.
The Trump administration has been preparing for a likely withdrawal for months, and a decision was expected before the end of the year, according to U.S. officials. Several diplomats who were to have been posted to the mission this summer were told that their positions were on hold and advised to seek other jobs.
In addition, the Trump administration’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year contains no provision for the possibility that UNESCO funding restrictions might be lifted.
The lack of staffing and funding plans for UNESCO by the U.S. have been accompanied by repeated denunciations of UNESCO by senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
The U.S. pulled out of UNESCO in the 1980s because Washington viewed it as mismanaged and used for political reasons, then rejoined it in 2003.
UNESCO the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Promoting Education.
Promoting Science,
Promoting Culture.
Runs the World Heritage program.
Works to improve education for girls in desperately poor countries.
Works to promote dialogue and understanding across national borders.
Defends media freedoms.
So yeah, lets take are ball and go home because of the 195 member states, there is one we don’t like.
Fuck you Trump. Fuck you Nikki Haley.
If he keeps this up we will end up more isolated than North Korea.
President Obama:
• Got 190 countries — including China — to reach a historic agreement to address climate change;
• Coordinated with Russia to get Syria to stop using outlawed chemical weapons, a prohibition that lasted more than three years — until Trump took office;
• Broke Republican opposition to extensions in unemployment insurance and payroll tax cuts, clean energy grants, and $313 billion in new spending, as well as START II, emergency assistance for 9–11 first responders, and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” in exchange for nothing more than a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for upper-bracket income — in effect, an $858 billion stimulus package;
• Convinced an energy-dependent Europe to join in imposing economic sanctions on Russia in the aftermath of its incursion into Ukraine;
• Urged European allies in 2014 to pledge to meet their funding commitments to NATO after years of funding shortfalls;
• Assembled a 65-nation coalition of allies — and adversaries — to combat the ISIS terrorist group;
• Eased travel restrictions with Cuba and started talks on normalizing relations — marking the end of the Cold War in the West;
• Initiated negotiations with adversaries Russia, China and the other P5+1 world powers and Iran on a landmark agreement to block Iran’s nuclear weapons program;
• Got powerful hospital groups, healthcare providers, and private insurers to accept reduced levels of reimbursement and payment as part of healthcare reform;
• Got insurance companies to stop denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and eliminate annual and lifetime caps;
• Got insurance companies to cover contraception;
• Capped profits for health insurance companies;
• Got Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, to commit to getting half of its energy from renewable sources;
• Engineered the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler – overcoming objections from bondholders, retirees, and unionized workers – after President Bush failed despite spending much of 2008 trying;
• Got automakers to voluntarily boost fuel standards for cars and trucks;
• Got Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA in exchange for increased access to the fastest-growing region in the world;
• Persuaded protectionist economies to open up their agricultural, automotive, professional services, and financial sectors to foreign competition in order to provide American workers and exporters a level playing field;
• Convinced moderately authoritarian regimes to agree to liberalize their societies and “globalize” human and labor rights by outlawing human trafficking, forced and child labor and other human rights violations in exchange for favorable trade conditions, by raising environmental and labor standards; and by allowing labor unions and a free, open and unrestricted Internet — all as part of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“We are stronger not when we are alone, but when we bring the world together.” –President Barack Obama
President Trump: “I hate everyone in the White House!”