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Late in the week, UNESCO voted 132-10 to readmit the United States, which left the organization in 2017.
“This is a wonderful day for UNESCO and for multilateralism,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement. “Building on the momentum gained in recent years, our organization is once again moving toward universalism with the return of the United States. . “
The United States announced its departure from the Trump administration, but had already stopped investing in the organization in 2011, the year UNESCO granted a full club to Palestine. Laws passed in the ’90s prohibited U. S. participation in any United Nations organization that identified Palestine as a full member. As Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare of The New York Times reported in 2011, U. S. contributions at the time represented 22% of UNESCO’s annual budget.
The United States left and joined UNESCO once before. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan claimed that the organization was corrupt and biased and opposed to the Soviet Union. It was nearly two decades before the United States returned under President George W. Bush in 2003.
A few months ago, U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pleaded with Congress to rejoin. Biden’s leadership allocated $150 million to the organization and agreed to bill the more than $600 million of debt it accumulated between 2011 and 2017.
Blinken told a Senate committee that the United States would sign up “not as a gift to UNESCO, but because the things that happen at UNESCO matter,” according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). For example, he added, the organization “operates on rules, norms and criteria for synthetic intelligence. We have to be there. “
While an overwhelming majority of members voted in favor of U. S. restitution. In the U. S. , the ten dissenting voices came from Russia, North Korea, Palestine, Belarus, China, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua and Syria, reports Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.
“The United States has already withdrawn twice. We don’t know how many times we will have to take them back in,” an unidentified North Korean diplomat told AFP.
Founded by UNESCO together with its parent organization, the United Nations, in 1945. Based in France, the company is known for its list of World Heritage sites and its projects to maintain cultural heritage and historic sites around the world. He also works on a multitude of other projects similar to education, climate replacement and other issues.
Across the federal government, U. S. officials have expressed reinstatement.
“It’s very important for us to unite, to be part of this very, very multilateral organization,” Denise Bauer, the U. S. ambassador to France, told AFP. “We are incredibly grateful for the leadership shown through key members. “
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