US Wants UNESCO Membership Again After Exiting During the Trump Years: NPR

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay delivers a speech on Monday at the group’s headquarters in Paris to announce the United States’ request to resume membership in the organization.

Alain Joquard/AFP via Getty Images

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Alain Joquard/AFP via Getty Images

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay delivers a speech on Monday at the group’s headquarters in Paris to announce the United States’ request to resume membership in the organization.

Alain Joquard/AFP via Getty Images

The United States may soon join UNESCO after several years out of the organization, in part because of what the Trump administration has called anti-Israel bias.

UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – said In a press release On Monday, the US State Department sent a letter to the Paris-based organization announcing its decision to rejoin the educational and cultural body widely recognized as a World Heritage site.

“This is a powerful act of confidence in UNESCO and in pluralism,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement. “Not only in the centrality of the organization’s mandate – culture, education, science and media – but also in the way that mandate is being carried out today.”

Congress agreed last year that the United States could make financial contributions to UNESCO, and the group said in December that the country could return as a member, though the proposed plan must be approved by member states.

The State Department did not immediately respond to National Public Radio’s request for comment.

In late 2017, the State Department announced that it would leave UNESCO the following year due to perceived anti-Israel bias, financial problems and other concerns. Nikki Haley, who was the US ambassador to the United Nations at the time, praised UNESCO’s aim but claimed that the group’s “extreme politicization had become a source of chronic embarrassment”.

United State Funding cut under former President Obama in 2011 After the vote of the member states of UNESCO to accept Palestine.

The US State Department said the move had led to “longstanding legislative constraints”. The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, passed in 1990, forces the United States to cut off support to any UN group that would give the PLO the same status as other member states.

This is not the first time that the United States has withdrawn from UNESCO only to rejoin later.

The country exited UNESCO in 1984 under President Ronald Reagan, citing “mismanagement and values ​​contrary to ours,” including calling for restrictions on press freedom, According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The United States would not join the body again for nearly two decades.

In 2002, President George W. Bush announced a return to UNESCO, praising reforms to the management structure and the group’s renewed commitment to the values ​​of press freedom and inclusive education.