Paris, June 12 (Hindustan). America will once again join UNESCO after 10 years and with this it has also agreed to pay the outstanding US $ 600 million. The announcement was made by the United Nations cultural and scientific agency UNESCO on Monday.
The US move comes after nearly a decade of controversy over the inclusion of Palestine as a member of UNESCO. US officials say the decision to withdraw was motivated by concerns that China was filling the void left by the US absence in UNESCO policy-making. Especially in terms of setting standards for artificial intelligence and technology education around the world.
The move will face a vote by UNESCO’s member states in the coming weeks. But approval seems to be a formality after the announcement erupted into applause at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters on Monday. Not a single country objected to the return of the country that was once the agency’s largest financier.
The US and Israel stopped funding UNESCO after a 2011 vote to admit Palestine as a member state. The Trump administration decided in 2017 to completely split from the agency the following year, citing anti-Israel bias and management problems.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay has worked to address those concerns since her election in 2017, and her efforts seem to have paid off. This is a historic moment for UNESCO, he said on Monday. It is also an important day for multilateralism.
Richard Verma, the US Department of State’s Under Secretary for Management and Resource Affairs, last week sent a letter to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay to formalize the plan to rejoin.
As Azoulay announced this to the ambassadors at a special meeting on Monday, applause broke out in UNESCO’s auditorium and one by one delegates stood up to welcome the decision and the news of fresh funding.
