Foreign
Trump Withdraws U.S. From UN Human Rights Council, Prohibits Funding For UNRWA
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the top U.N. human rights body and will not resume funding for the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees.
The U.S. left the Geneva-based Human Rights Council last year, and it stopped funding the agency assisting Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, after Israel accused it of harboring Hamas militants who participated in the surprise Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel, which UNRWA denies.
Trump’s announcement came on the day he met with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country has long accused both the rights body and UNRWA of bias against Israel and antisemitism.
Trump’s executive orders also call for a review of American involvement in the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known as UNESCO, and a review of U.S. funding for the United Nations in light of “the wild disparities in levels of funding among different countries.”
The United States, with the world’s largest economy, pays 22% of the U.N.’s regular operating budget, with China the second-largest contributor.
“I’ve always felt that the U.N. has tremendous potential,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s not living up to that potential right now. … They’ve got to get their act together.”
He said the U.N. needs “to be fair to countries that deserve fairness,” adding that there are some countries, which he didn’t name, that are “outliers, that are very bad and they’re being almost preferred.”
Before Trump’s announcement, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated the Human Rights Council’s importance and UNRWA’s work in delivering “critical services to Palestinians.”
Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the Human Rights Council in June 2018. His ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Nikki Haley, accused the council of “chronic bias against Israel” and pointed to what she said were human rights abusers among its members.
President Joe Biden renewed support for the Human Rights Council, and the U.S. won a seat on the 47-nation body in October 2021. But the Biden administration announced in late September that the United States would not seek a second consecutive term.
Trump’s order on Tuesday has little concrete effect because the United States is already not a council member, said council spokesperson Pascal Sim. But like all other U.N. member countries, the U.S. automatically has informal observer status and will still have a seat in the council’s ornate round chamber at the U.N. complex in Geneva.
UNRWA was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949 to provide assistance for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment, as well as for their descendants. It provides aid, education, health care and other services to some 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, UNRWA ran schools for Gaza’s 650,000 children as well as health facilities, and helped deliver humanitarian aid. It has continued to provide health care and been key to the delivery of food and other aid to Palestinians during the war.
The first Trump administration suspended funding to UNRWA in 2018, but Biden restored it. The U.S. had been the biggest donor to the agency, providing it with $343 million in 2022 and $422 million in 2023.
For years, Israel has accused UNRWA of anti-Israeli bias in its education materials, which the agency denies.
Israel alleged that 19 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza participated in the Hamas attacks. They were terminated pending a U.N. investigation, which found nine may have been involved.
In response, 18 governments froze funding to the agency, but all have since restored support except the United States. Legislation ratifying the U.S. decision halted any American funding to UNRWA until March 2025, and Trump’s action Tuesday means it will not be restored.
The United States banned former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner and one of her ministers from entering the US on Friday, accusing them of corruption.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Kirchner and former planning minister Julio Miguel De Vido of receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from public works contracts.
Kirchner was president of Argentina between 2007 and 2016 and has since been sentenced in her home country to six years in prison for corruption and barred from public office, a ruling she has appealed.
In a statement, Rubio said “CFK”, De Vido and their close relatives had been designated under US law as credibly involved in “significant corruption.”
“This action renders CFK, De Vido, and their immediate family members generally ineligible for entry into the United States,” he said.
Since leaving the presidency and while awaiting the result of her appeal, Kirchner has continued to pursue political activities and seek elected office under the banner of Argentina’s Peronist opposition.
This has made her a high-profile opponent of Argentina’s current leader, President Javier Milei, a right-wing populist and an ally of US President Donald Trump.
AFP
Russia announced on Wednesday that it has suspended its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure following a phone call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
The Kremlin also stated that it had shot down its own Ukraine-bound drones while they were in the air.
During their call on Tuesday, Putin agreed to temporarily halt attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities but declined to approve a full 30-day ceasefire, as proposed by the US president.
“They were just lining up in combat order—six of them were shot down by ‘Pantsirs’ (a surface-to-air missile system), and another one was destroyed by a (Russian) military aircraft,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Peskov accused Ukraine of failing to honour the proposed 30-day moratorium on strikes against each other’s energy infrastructure, claiming that Kyiv had attempted to attack Russian energy facilities overnight.
Meanwhile, the Russian military earlier on Wednesday accused Ukraine of deliberately attempting to sabotage the temporary moratorium by launching a drone attack on an oil depot in southern Russia.
A coalition of African groups filed fraud complaints Wednesday against French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, accusing him of illegally obtaining the rights to run ports and money laundering. French investigators have in the past looked into allegations the Bolloré Group illegally backed political campaigns in exchange for port concessions.
Groups from five African countries filed fraud and corruption complaints Wednesday accusing French billionaire Vincent Bolloré and one of his sons of illegally obtaining and benefitting from port concessions.
A collective made up of non-governmental organisations in Togo, Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon called Restitution for Africa are accusing the Bolloré Group, Bolloré and his son of unlawfully receiving the rights to run ports and then “laundering” money in those countries through the sale of its Africa logistics business.
Bolloré Group’s African ports and logistics business, which the tycoon sold off in 2022, employed more than 20,000 people in 20 African countries, running 16 ports as well as warehouses and transport hubs across the continent.
Cyrille Bolloré, his youngest son, became head of Bolloré Africa Logistics in 2019, taking over from his father.
French investigators have already looked into allegations that the Bolloré Group had, through its consulting business, illegally backed the 2010 presidential campaigns of Faure Gnassingbe in Togo and Alpha Conde in Guinea, in exchange for port concessions in Lome and Conakry.
The group’s lawyers managed to negotiate a settlement, but French financial prosecutors in 2024 requested Vincent Bolloré be tried on charges of corruption and complicity in breach of trust.
Wednesday’s complaint now accuses Bolloré of corruption, benefitting from influence peddling and unlawfully accepting favours from local officials in Cameroon, Ghana and Ivory Coast.
It charges that this is how the group obtained concessions to run the ports of Douala and Kribi in Cameroon, Tema in Ghana, and Abidjan in Ivory Coast.
The collective alleges that the 2022 sale of Bolloré Africa Logistics, whose profits came from these allegedly illegally obtained port concessions, amounted to money laundering.
Bolloré’s holding company sold Bolloré Africa Logistics to the MSC shipping group for €5.7 billion ($6.05 billion) in 2022.
It was thought at the time to be the mainstay of the tycoon’s fortune. Bolloré and his family are estimated to be worth $9.9 billion, according to Forbes.
Bolloré owns several right-wing media outlets in France.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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