WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday formally rejoined the UN’s scientific, educational and cultural organization after a five-year absence.
The US return to the Paris-based UNESCO was based mainly on concerns that China has filled a leadership gap since the US withdrew during the Trump administration. UNESCO’s governing board voted last week to approve the Biden administration’s proposal for the US to rejoin.
On Monday, the US delivered a document certifying it would accept the invitation. On Tuesday, UNESCO’s Director General Audrey Azoulay said it was official. A welcome ceremony with a flag-raising and VIP guests is expected in late July.
“This is excellent news for UNESCO. The momentum we have regained in recent years will now continue to grow. Our initiatives will be stronger throughout the world,” Azoulay said.
The Biden administration had announced last month that it would apply to rejoin the 193-member organization that plays a major role in setting international standards for artificial intelligence and technology education.
The US is now the 194th member of UNESCO.
“Our organization is once again moving toward universality,” Azoulay said. She called the return of the United States “excellent news for multilateralism as a whole. If we want to meet the challenges of our century, there can only be a collective response.”
The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the US would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision that took effect a year later.
The US and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The Biden administration has 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 US contributed 22 percent of the agency’s overall funding.
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 during George W. Bush’s presidency.
US formally rejoins UNESCO after five-year absence
https://arab.news/67a8j
US formally rejoins UNESCO after five-year absence
- Return was based on concerns that China has filled a leadership gap in UNESCO since the US withdrew during the Trump administration
Western Libya forces kill notorious migrant smuggler, security agency says
- The Security Threats Combating Agency raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi
- Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018
BENGHAZI: Western Libyan security forces said on Friday they had killed a notorious migrant smuggler in the coastal city of Sabratha after “criminal gangs” affiliated with him attacked one of their checkpoints overnight.
The Security Threats Combating Agency, a security agency under western Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah, said they raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi, also known as “Al-Amu.”
Dabbashi’s brother was arrested and six members of the force were wounded in the fighting, the agency said in the statement on its Facebook page.
Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018. Washington described him as the “leader of one of two powerful migrant smuggling organizations” based in Sabratha and said he had “used his organization to rob and enslave migrants before allowing them to leave for Italy.”
Human trafficking is rife in Libya, which has been divided between rival armed factions since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
The proliferation of smuggling gangs and the absence of a strong central authority have made the country one of the main staging points for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
Dbeibah was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021, but significant parts of western Libya remain outside his control. Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, or GNU, is not recognized by rival authorities in the east.
An armed alliance affiliated with an earlier UN-backed government in Tripoli – the Government of National Accord – had taken on Dabbashi’s forces in a three-week battle in 2017 that killed and wounded dozens and damaged residential areas and Sabratha’s Roman ruins.
