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(CFP) The Obama administration formally announced its intention this week to ask Congress to waive a ban on American funding of 22% of UNESCO’s budget following UNESCO’s decision to admit “Palestine” as its 195th member state on 31 October 2011.
The announcement did not come in a White House press release from President Obama.
Rather it was surreptitiously tucked away in an innocuous footnote to the budget that the White House presented to Congress - which contained the following statement:
“The Department of State intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO,”
That this is a forlorn hope was signalled by Rep.Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - the Chairperson of the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee - who stated:
“Any effort to walk back this funding cutoff will pave the way for the Palestinian leadership’s unilateral statehood scheme to drive on, and sends a disastrous message that the U.S. will fund UN bodies no matter what irresponsible decisions they make,”
American funding of UNESCO was cut off automatically under U.S. legislation dating back to the 1990s, which mandated the spending freeze for any UN agency granting full membership to Palestine before the conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. This law recognized that any such unilateral decisions would work against - rather than assist - any such agreement ever being concluded.
This loss of American funding will result in a black hole of $260 million in UNESCO’s budget to 2013.
UNESCO’s Director General - Ms Irina Bokova - has already signalled she is looking at achieving an overall cut of 29% in UNESCO programs for 2012 -2013 - which will adversely impact on UNESCO’s proposed global programs for the benefit of scores of millions of people over the next two years.
Ms Bokova intends to reveal where she will be making her proposed cuts at the next meeting of UNESCO’s Executive Board commencing on 27 February.
Desperate to replace this lost American funding Ms Bokova has been accepting “donations” from some countries such as Turkey, Gabon and Timor Leste - which are conditional on being spent in those countries or neighbouring States - irrespective of where they rank in UNESCO’s scheme of priorities.
This will lead to even greater curtailment or abandonment of other programs - as UNESCO’s decision making power is subordinated to the demands of these individual states.
The US State Department needs to rethink its view that only an explicit waiver of the law can now free up American funding to avert the humanitarian crisis staring UNESCO in the face.
There is an alternative option that has been with UNESCO for almost three months - an alternative which UNESCO has refused to even discuss.
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