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Press release on the United States' plan to rejoin UNESCO

16 June 2023 17:58
1184-16-06-2023

The US State Department has sent an official notice to the UNESCO Secretariat stating that the United States intends to rejoin UNESCO, which the Americans withdrew from in 2018. The advocates of this plan have initiated an extraordinary session of the UNESCO General Assembly to be held on June 29 and 30. The agenda for the extraordinary session is expected to include the issue of settling financial aspects in the context of the outstanding debt of $612 million that the United States owes to the agency.

The plan submitted to the UNESCO member countries for consideration is practically an ultimatum by Washington as it provides for reinstating the voting right and the passive electoral right of UNESCO's biggest debtor. In exchange for this, as a gesture of goodwill, the Americans have promised to pay regular contributions to the agency and reaffirmed their intention to submit the issue of rescheduling the accumulated debt to Congress. In so doing and ignoring UNESCO's constitution, the United States is asking for no less than preferential treatment at UNESCO.

It is also important that in addition to the practical task of "zeroing out" the accumulated debt, the Americans are not making a secret of the political motive that underlies their decision. In particular, the State Department says that its objective is to counter China's influence in UNESCO and promote other national interests of the United States.

As a responsible member country of UNESCO, which is strongly committed to the agency's principles and goals, Russia supports the efforts to strengthen universal intergovernmental cooperation in culture, science and education and believes UNESCO has nothing to do with confrontation. According to its constitution, UNESCO "is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion."

The Russian Federation is ready to welcome the reintegration of the United States, a country that as a permanent member of the UN Security Council bears a special responsibility in the world arena, into UNESCO. However, as it moves towards achieving this objective, the US should not act in the spirit of the notorious rules-based order and violate UNESCO's constitution or other standards, and primarily the US should pay off its astronomical debt unconditionally and in full.

We would like to remind the UNESCO executive authorities that all of the agency's current and future member countries need to strictly observe the agency's constitution. There should be no exceptions from the rules set for everyone.