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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

US decides to rejoin UNESCO and pay back dues, to counter Chinese influence

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624 days ago
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The Eiffel Tower, country flags and the Dome are seen from the garden of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) headquarters building during the 39th session of the General Conference at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

The Eiffel Tower, country flags and the Dome are seen from the garden of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) headquarters building during the 39th session of the General Conference at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

U.N. cul­tur­al and sci­en­tif­ic agency UN­ESCO an­nounced Mon­day that the Unit­ed States plans to re­join — and pay more than $600 mil­lion in back dues — af­ter a decade-long dis­pute sparked by the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s move to in­clude Pales­tine as a mem­ber.

U.S. of­fi­cials say the de­ci­sion to re­turn was mo­ti­vat­ed by con­cern that Chi­na is fill­ing the gap left by the U.S. in UN­ESCO pol­i­cy­mak­ing, no­tably in set­ting stan­dards for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion around the world.

The U.S. and Is­rael stopped fund­ing UN­ESCO af­ter it vot­ed to in­clude Pales­tine as a mem­ber state in 2011, and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion de­cid­ed in 2017 to with­draw from the agency al­to­geth­er the fol­low­ing year, cit­ing long-run­ning an­ti-Is­rael bias and man­age­ment prob­lems.

U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State for Man­age­ment and Re­sources Richard Ver­ma sub­mit­ted a let­ter last week to UN­ESCO Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Au­drey Azoulay for­mal­iz­ing the plan to re­join. Ver­ma not­ed progress in de­politi­ciz­ing de­bate about the Mid­dle East at UN­ESCO and re­form­ing the agency’s man­age­ment, ac­cord­ing to the hand-de­liv­ered let­ter, ob­tained by AP.

Ap­plause rang out in the solemn UN­ESCO au­di­to­ri­um as Azoulay an­nounced the plan to am­bas­sadors at a spe­cial meet­ing Mon­day, and del­e­gate af­ter del­e­gate stood up to wel­come the news. The re­turn of the U.S., once the agency’s biggest fun­der, is ex­pect­ed to face a vote by its 193 mem­ber states next month, ac­cord­ing to a UN­ESCO diplo­mat.

The de­ci­sion is a big fi­nan­cial boost to the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion, known for its World Her­itage pro­gram as well as projects to fight cli­mate change and teach girls to read.

Chi­na’s am­bas­sador to UN­ESCO, Jin Yang, said his coun­try “ap­pre­ci­ates” UN­ESCO’s ef­forts to bring the U.S. back, say­ing its ab­sence had a “neg­a­tive im­pact” on the agency’s work.

“Be­ing a mem­ber of an in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion is a se­ri­ous is­sue, and we hope that the re­turn of the U.S. this time means it ac­knowl­edges the mis­sion and the goals of the or­ga­ni­za­tion,” the am­bas­sador said.

Since her elec­tion in 2017, Azoulay has worked to ad­dress the rea­sons the U.S. left, through bud­get re­forms and build­ing con­sen­sus among Jor­dan­ian, Pales­tin­ian and Is­raeli diplo­mats around sen­si­tive UN­ESCO res­o­lu­tions. Azoulay — who is Jew­ish — won broad praise by UN­ESCO am­bas­sadors for her per­son­al ef­forts to ad­dress U.S. con­cerns around Is­rael in par­tic­u­lar.

The U.S. de­ci­sion to come back “is the re­sult of five years of work, dur­ing which we calmed ten­sions, no­tably in the Mid­dle East, im­proved our re­sponse to con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges, re­sumed ma­jor ini­tia­tives on the ground and mod­ern­ized the func­tion­ing of the or­ga­ni­za­tion,” Azoulay told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

She met with De­moc­rats and Re­pub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton to ex­plain those ef­forts, ac­cord­ing to a UN­ESCO diplo­mat. Thanks to those bi­par­ti­san ne­go­ti­a­tions, UN­ESCO diplo­mats ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the U.S. de­ci­sion to re­turn is for the long term, re­gard­less of who wins next year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

The diplo­mats were not au­tho­rized to be pub­licly named dis­cussing the be­hind-the-scenes work that led to the U.S. de­ci­sion.

Un­der the plan, the U.S. gov­ern­ment would pay its 2023 dues plus $10 mil­lion in bonus con­tri­bu­tions this year ear­marked for Holo­caust ed­u­ca­tion, pre­serv­ing cul­tur­al her­itage in Ukraine, jour­nal­ist safe­ty, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion in Africa, Ver­ma’s let­ter says.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­ready re­quest­ed $150 mil­lion for the 2024 bud­get to go to­ward UN­ESCO dues and ar­rears. The plan fore­sees sim­i­lar re­quests for the en­su­ing years un­til the full debt of $619 mil­lion is paid off.

That makes up a big chunk of UN­ESCO’s $534 mil­lion an­nu­al op­er­at­ing bud­get. Be­fore leav­ing, the U.S. con­tributed 22% of the agency’s over­all fund­ing.

Un­der­sec­re­tary of State for Man­age­ment John Bass said in March that the U.S. ab­sence from UN­ESCO has strength­ened Chi­na, and ”un­der­cuts our abil­i­ty to be as ef­fec­tive in pro­mot­ing our vi­sion of a free world.”

He said UN­ESCO is key in set­ting and shap­ing stan­dards for tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence teach­ing around the world, “so if we’re re­al­ly se­ri­ous about the dig­i­tal-age com­pe­ti­tion with Chi­na … we can’t af­ford to be ab­sent any longer.”

The U.S. ab­sence plunged the agency in­to fi­nan­cial un­cer­tain­ty. UN­ESCO diplo­mats de­scribed belt-squeez­ing across agency pro­grams and ag­gres­sive ef­forts by Azoulay to boost vol­un­tary fi­nanc­ing from oth­er coun­tries to fill gaps.

One diplo­mat ex­pressed hope that the re­turn of the U.S. would bring “more am­bi­tion, and more seren­i­ty” — and en­er­gize pro­grams to reg­u­late ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, ed­u­cate girls in Afghanistan and chron­i­cle vic­tims of slav­ery in the Caribbean.

The diplo­mat said that the agency would al­so “wel­come” Is­rael back if it want­ed to re­join. There was no im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment.

Is­rael has long ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tions of an­ti-Is­rael bias. In 2012, over Is­raeli ob­jec­tions, the state of Pales­tine was rec­og­nized as a non­mem­ber ob­serv­er state by the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly. The Pales­tini­ans claim the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip — ter­ri­to­ries cap­tured by Is­rael in the 1967 Mideast war — for an in­de­pen­dent state. Is­rael says the Pales­tini­ans’ ef­forts to win recog­ni­tion at the U.N. are aimed at cir­cum­vent­ing a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment and meant to pres­sure Is­rael in­to con­ces­sions.

The Unit­ed States pre­vi­ous­ly pulled out of UN­ESCO un­der the Rea­gan ad­min­is­tra­tion in 1984 be­cause it viewed the agency as mis­man­aged, cor­rupt and used to ad­vance So­vi­et in­ter­ests. It re­joined in 2003.

___

Matthew Lee in Wash­ing­ton and Lau­rie Kell­man in Tel Aviv con­tributed.

PARIS (AP) —

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