2023-06-29 19:01:30
The extraordinary general conference of Unesco dedicated to the reintegration of the United States within this UN institution started Thursday in Paris in a very slow way. Russia and Palestine have notably increased their interventions to slow down the debates.
The director general of Unesco Audrey Azoulay immediately called for an answer to “a question that is both simple and eminently strategic”: While the United States is “finally” mobilized for “a full return within our organization in July 2023, what response does the community of 193 Member States that compose it wish to give them?”
Although 139 countries belonging to Unesco supported the holding of an extraordinary general conference, which started Thursday at 3:00 p.m. and will end Friday at 6:00 p.m., several States – considered diplomatically distant from the United States – intervened from the beginning of this meeting on points of procedure.
Conference too hasty, without respect for the rules of the institution for some, documents received too late for others, not in the right languages, indebtedness of certain States with Unesco preventing them from participating in the vote…: such were the criticisms raised by Palestine, Russia, China, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan or South Africa.
“It’s ridiculous”
“We’re stuck. It’s ridiculous,” said a Japanese diplomat, addressing the conference. “We are going around in circles with technical questions to which we have received extremely precise and professional answers,” replied a Swiss diplomat.
A Russian diplomat, denouncing “an impasse”, called for “suspending the session”, without success. “The Russian Federation is ready to welcome the return of the United States, he said. But this must be done by the rules”.
The first point of the conference, concerning the vote on the reintegration of the United States by countries which are not up to date in their contributions to UNESCO, took 02:15, much more than expected. Finally adopted by a show of hands, Russia insisted on disassociating itself from it.
“Obstruction Strategy”
Moscow, in frontal opposition with Washington since its invasion of Ukraine, is “on a very clear strategy of obstruction, but which only highlights its isolation”, only a dozen states seem to stand on the line Russian, observes a UNESCO diplomat.
Conversely, China, whose relations with the United States are experiencing a slight improvement and which has affirmed that it would not oppose their return to the UN organization, “has a much softer strategy”, he notes. Its representatives made little intervention on Thursday.
Resumption “on the merits” scheduled for Friday
The extraordinary conference finally broke off around 6:15 p.m., following making very little progress. It will resume Friday at 10:00 a.m. and will focus “at the bottom”, ie American membership, according to the president of the assembly, the Brazilian Santiago Irazabal Mourao.
The United States in early June, in a letter to Audrey Azoulay, “proposed a plan” for their return to the United Nations organization for education, culture and science, which they left under the presidency of Donald Trump.
This American decision is part of the general context of the growing rivalry with China, while Beijing wishes to transform the international multilateral order put in place following the Second World War, of which UNESCO is an emanation.
“Persistent Anti-Israel Bias”
Washington had denounced in October 2017 the “persistent anti-Israeli biases” of Unesco to justify this decision. This withdrawal, accompanied by that of Israel, had been effective since December 2018.
Since 2011, and the admission of Palestine into UNESCO, the United States, then led by Barack Obama, had stopped all funding for the UN organization, a huge setback for it, then that US contributions represented 22% of its budget.
The American debt to Unesco, contracted between 2011 and 2018, is today 619 million dollars, more than the annual budget of Unesco, estimated at 534 million dollars.
The United States has indicated that it has asked the American Congress to disburse 150 million dollars for the fiscal year 2024, an equivalent amount to be disbursed in the following years “until the absorption” of the arrears at Unesco.
ats, afp
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