Migrant Smuggling: Europe Must Make a U-Turn

Posted on by admin

Civil Society, Europe, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, Humanitarian Emergencies, International Justice, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Migration & Refugees, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Picture Alliance / Pacific Press | Geovien So

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Apr 11 2025 (IPS) – Europe must understand that the only reasonable and humane way to tackle migrant smuggling is to open regular routes for people to reach Europe in safety and dignity.

Europe’s approach to migrant ‘smuggling’ is harmful and absurd.

Instead of tackling the lack of regular pathways, thereby forcing people to embark in dangerous migration journeys, European countries are targeting migrants, human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and ordinary citizens — all while injecting billions into the border surveillance industry.

People rely on smuggling because there are no better ways to get to Europe. But cracking down on alleged ‘smugglers’ – often migrants themselves – does not create better options. On the contrary, it pushes more people onto ever more dangerous routes, while threatening those who help them — and the EU’s new Facilitation Directive is likely to make things worse.

Criminalising solidarity

Proposed by the European Commission at the end of 2023, this Directive is meant to update previous rules to counter migrant smuggling (the 2002 Facilitators Package). However, in reality, it follows the same old broken pattern.

The current text, largely validated by the EU Council last December, expands the definition of what can be considered ‘migrant smuggling’ and ups prison sentences across the board.

The European Parliament is set to start debating its own position on the Directive this month, with a final vote expected in the summer, before entering final negotiations with the Commission and Council towards the end of the year.

What’s more, the text fails to clearly protect solidarity with people in an irregular situation from criminalisation. There is no ‘humanitarian clause’ included among the legally binding provisions; member states are simply invited not to criminalise acts of solidarity.

This generates significant legal uncertainty, as recognised by a recent study requested by the European Commission itself. With far-right and other anti-immigration forces in power in several member states and leading in polls in others, it’s easy to see how such a failure leaves the door wide open to the criminalisation and harassment of family members, NGOs, human rights defenders and ordinary citizens who are helping people in need.

This is not a fantasy scenario. At PICUM we have been documenting a steady increase in the criminalisation of solidarity with migrants in recent years. Between January 2021 and March 2022, at least 89 people were criminalised, in 2022 at least 102 and in 2023 at least 117.

Migrants themselves are also increasingly being prosecuted for simply helping fellow travellers through routes made irregular and dangerous by repressive policies.

These figures are most likely an undercount. Statistical and official data on those accused, charged or convicted of smuggling and related offences are often lacking. Many cases go unreported by the media or because people, especially migrants themselves, fear retaliation.

Behind these numbers are people who have saved lives at sea, given a lift or provided shelter, food, water or clothes. In Latvia, two citizens were charged with facilitating irregular entry simply for giving food and water to migrants stranded at the border with Belarus.

In Poland, five people are facing up to five years in prison for providing humanitarian aid to people stranded at the border with Belarus.

Just a few weeks ago, Italian judges in Crotone acquitted Maysoon Majidi, a Kurdish-Iranian activist and filmmaker, who was arrested in 2023 on human trafficking charges following a landing of migrants in Calabria. Majidi faced a sentence of two years and four months in prison.

The prosecutor in Crotone had accused her of being ‘the captain’s assistant’ because, based on the unverified testimonies of two people on board, she distributed water and food on the vessel. The ‘witnesses’ later retracted their statements, but Majidi still spent 300 days in pre-trial detention.

In Greece, an Egyptian fisherman and his 15-year-old child were charged with smuggling, simply because the father reluctantly agreed to pilot their boat in order to afford the journey. The father was placed in pre-trial detention and sentenced to 280 years in prison. Not only has the child been separated from his father, but he is now facing the same charges in a juvenile court.

Who benefits?

Counter-smuggling policies clearly fail to make migration safer. As migration expert Hein De Haas has written: ‘It is the border controls that have forced migrants to take more dangerous routes and that have made them more and more dependent on smugglers to cross borders.

Smuggling is a reaction to border controls rather than a cause of migration in itself.’ So, who actually benefits from these policies — besides politicians chasing short-term electoral gains?

Between 2021 and 2027, the EU’s budget dedicated to the management of borders, visa and customs controls increased by 135 per cent compared to the previous programming period, from €2.8 billion to €6.5 billion.

Europe must understand that the only reasonable and humane way to tackle migrant smuggling is to open regular routes for people to reach Europe in safety and dignity.

Much of this budget increase is driven by private corporations, including major defence companies such as Airbus, Thales, Leonardo and Indra, which have a vested economic interest in border surveillance.

According to research by the foundation porCausa, the Spanish government awarded over €660 million for the control of Spain’s southern border between 2014 and 2019. Most of this money went to 10 large corporations, mainly for border surveillance (€551 million), detention and deportation (€97.8 millions).

In the negotiation phase of the Facilitation Directive, the Council has already adopted a position that would leave the door open to the criminalisation of migrants and the provision of humanitarian aid.

The European Parliament still has the opportunity to adopt an ambitious mandate. MEPs should understand what is at stake if a binding clause to protect migrants and solidarity from criminalisation is not introduced.

Beyond this Directive, Europe must understand that the only reasonable and humane way to tackle migrant smuggling is to open regular routes for people to reach Europe in safety and dignity.

Michele LeVoy is Director, Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), a network of organizations working to ensure social justice and human rights for undocumented migrants.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), Brussels.

IPS UN Bureau

  Source

US Tariffs Threaten to Undermine World Trade Organization

Posted on by admin

Civil Society, Democracy, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

Credit: John Birch Society

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 11 2025 (IPS) – As the Trump administration’s hostility towards the United Nations and other international organizations keeps growing, a New York Times columnist last week proposed what he frivolously described as “something a little incendiary”.

Maybe Trump could follow up on his non-appointment of Elise Stefanik as US Ambassador to the United Nations—who has been virulently anti-UN—by withdrawing the US from the United Nations entirely.

The UN’s 39-storeyed building, the Times columnist remarked, has “amazing views of the East River”—and said, rather sarcastically, it would be a great condo conversion– as a luxury apartment complex.

A White House Executive Order last February was titled “Withdrawing the United States from, and ending funding to certain United Nations organizations, and reviewing United States support to ALL international organizations.”

President Trump, who withdrew the US from the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Climate Treaty, has threatened to pull out of UNESCO and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East– and also to terminate US contracts with the World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome (which was later reversed and described as “a mistake”).

And could Trump reverse his withdrawals from UN agencies –as he did with tariffs? But that seems very unlikely.

Trump’s staggering US tariffs worldwide have not only threatened the longstanding ground rules in world trade but also undermined the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), described as the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations.

Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation, which is focused on trade, was quoted as saying: “I would say the WTO is toast, but what matters now is how other members respond”.

“Do they stand up for the system? Or do they also ignore key principles, provisions and practices?”

In his unpredictable on-again, off-again decision-making, Trump backed down last week on most reciprocal tariffs for a period of 90 days, citing new talks with foreign nations, explaining his reversal. But China, he said, would not be included, and he raised tariffs on its exports to 125 percent.

Perhaps after 90 days, the tariffs will be at play once again, continuing to de-stabilize world trade and the global economy.

The move leaves a universal 10 percent tariff on all other countries except Canada and Mexico, which face separate duties. But it undoes some of the original tariffs — 20 percent on the European Union, 24 percent on Japan, 46 percent on Vietnam.

China has said it will impose reciprocal tariffs on all imports from the United States, escalating a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Interim Co-Secretary-General CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), told IPS: “We are entering a dangerous age of values-free transactional diplomacy which is leading to the breakdown of the rules based international order”.

A lot of it, he pointed out, has to do with the rise of authoritarianism and populism over the past few years which has elevated political leaders who spread disinformation and rule by personality cult rather than established norms.

“Civil society and the independent media serve as important checks on the exercise of arbitrary power in the public interest but are being attacked in unprecedented ways,” he declared.

Sadly, humanity has been here before in the period prior to the start of the first and second world wars in the twentieth century, which caused immeasurable death and destruction.

Autocratic and populist regimes, he said, are deliberately undermining international norms that seek to create peaceful, just, equal and sustainable societies.

Notably, civil society organising and citizen action offer the last line of defence against the relentless assault on cherished ideals enshrined in constitutional and international law,” said Tiwana.

Asked if the rash of tariffs would lead to a global economic recession, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters April 8: “I’ve been clarifying my position about this issue time and time again. Trade wars are extremely negative. Nobody wins with a trade war. Everybody tends to lose”.

“And I’m particularly worried with the most vulnerable developing countries, in which the impact will be more devastating. I sincerely hope that we will have no recession, because a recession will have dramatic consequences, especially for the poorest people in the world,” he warned.

Dr Jim Jennings, president of Conscience International and Executive Director of US Academics for Peace, told IPS the widespread “Hands Off” protests in the US threaten to return the country to the decades of debate over tariffs that took place during the 19th Century. The issue then, as now, was protectionism—believed to enrich the manufacturing class.

Whereas the Whigs (today’s Republicans) wanted high tariffs, the idea of free trade as a way to reach prosperity was the mantra of the Democrats, who favored the working class.

President Lincoln favored tariffs, but by 1860 admitted that arguing for a protective tariff was unwise for political reasons—few people at that time favored it. Most Americans had come to realize that high tariffs were protecting the moneyed class and simply raise taxes for everybody. Lincoln knew he was unlikely to be elected President if tariffs were the key to his campaign.

Today’s bewildering day in-day out bluffs and threats by Mr. Trump means that the market will continue to bounce around. “Wall Street likes certainty, but the only certainty we can see is that the US economy is in the hands of amateurs”.

“While the idea of comparing our globalized economy to that of 1840-60 is problematic, with the world already teetering on the verge of WW III, a Trade War is the last thing we need,” declared Dr Jennings.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS “from the standpoint of democratic checks and balances, it is concerning that the US President apparently can unleash a trade war with most of the world’s countries while the US Congress simply looks on.”

But according to an Associated Press (AP) report April 9, the State Department has rolled back an undisclosed number of sweeping funding cuts to U.N. World Food Program emergency projects in 14 impoverished countries, saying it had terminated some of the contracts for life-saving aid “by mistake”.

“There were a few programs that were cut in other countries that were not meant to be cut, that have been rolled back and put into place,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.

Meanwhile, China has said it will retaliate by imposing reciprocal tariffs on all imports from the United States. “This practice of the U.S. is not in line with international trade rules, undermines China’s legitimate rights and interests, and is a typical unilateral bullying practice,” China’s finance ministry said in a statement.

China has also filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization, saying the U.S. tariffs were “a typical unilateral bullying practice that endangers the stability of the global economic and trade order.”

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the WTO, said the Secretariat is closely monitoring and analysing the measures announced by the United States on April 2, 2025.

“Many members have reached out to us and we are actively engaging with them in response to their questions about the potential impact on their economies and the global trading system.”

The recent announcements, he pointed out, will have substantial implications for global trade and economic growth prospects.

“While the situation is rapidly evolving, our initial estimates suggest that these measures, coupled with those introduced since the beginning of the year, could lead to an overall contraction of around 1% in global merchandise trade volumes this year, representing a downward revision of nearly four percentage points from previous projections”

“I am deeply concerned about this decline and the potential for escalation into a tariff war with a cycle of retaliatory measures that lead to further declines in trade.”

It is important to remember that, despite these new measures, the vast majority of global trade still flows under the WTO’s Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) terms.

“Our estimates now indicate that this share currently stands at 74%, down from around 80% at the beginning of the year. WTO members must stand together to safeguard these gains.”

Trade measures of this magnitude have the potential to create significant trade diversion effects. “I call on Members to manage the resulting pressures responsibly to prevent trade tensions from proliferating,” said Dr Okonjo-Iweala.

IPS UN Bureau Report

  Source

Challenging the Taliban’s Violations of Afghan Women’s Rights

Posted on by admin

Armed Conflicts, Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Gender, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

A 31-year-old woman sits by the window. She used to be an entrepreneur before the Taliban takeover. Credit: UN Women/Sayed Habib Bidell

NEW YORK, Apr 7 2025 (IPS) – The Taliban’s egregious violations of women’s rights in Afghanistan, especially banning women from education and even from speaking in public, are beyond the pale. Imposing economic sanctions alone, however, has not changed in any significant way the Taliban’s treatment of women.

By demonstrating that they understand the Taliban’s cultural heritage and religious beliefs, Western powers, with the support of several Arab states, will be in a better position to persuade the Taliban that respecting women’s rights is consistent with their beliefs and would be greatly beneficial to their country.

Although the Taliban were exposed to democracy, freedom, and equality for both men and women for nearly 20 years during the American presence, they reversed these reforms once they reassumed power following the American withdrawal in August 2021, even though the Afghans embraced such freedoms wholeheartedly. From the Taliban’s perspective, these reforms were contrary to their beliefs and way of life.

The Taliban’s Egregious Women’s Rights Violations

In 2021, the Taliban banned all education for girls beyond the sixth grade, which has deprived a total of 2.2 million girls and women of their right to education. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stated last month that the ban continues to harm the future of millions of Afghan girls, and that over four million girls will have been deprived of an education beyond the primary level if the ban persists for another five years. Accordingly, she said, “The consequences for these girls – and for Afghanistan – are catastrophic.”

Since 2021, Afghan women have faced unimaginable oppression. Beyond education bans, the Taliban forced women to cover themselves completely, with criminal penalties for those who refuse to comply. In December 2024, they announced their plan to shut down all NGOs employing women over so-called dress code violations.

Their voices are literally silenced through an August 2024 law that bans women from speaking outside the home. Their rights are stripped away, and their resistance met with brutality. In the shadows of war and conflict, women and girls endure unimaginable suffering, facing heightened levels of gender-based violence, including arbitrary killings, torture, and forced marriage and sexual violence, leaving deep physical and emotional scars.

The Taliban are not oblivious to these findings, as some officials have publicly argued against some bans, but they nevertheless continue to violate women’s rights under the pretext of their bans being consistent with their religious and traditional role in Afghan society.

The Taliban are predominantly from the Pashtun tribes, which are indigenous to the region and have a strong tribal structure and cultural traditions, which influenced the Taliban’s socio-political orientation.

The Historic Perspective

To better understand the Taliban’s mindset, which reflects their resilience and extremism against foreign domination, it is important to reflect briefly on Afghanistan’s history. The region now known as Afghanistan was a target for invaders as early as the sixth century BCE, facing scores of foreign invaders up through the US-led invasion in 2001, yet has shown great resilience against foreign domination, as invaders repeatedly faced fierce resistance and were ultimately forced to withdraw.

Across centuries, Afghanistan has consistently defied foreign powers, earning its reputation as the “graveyard of empires.” The Taliban’s emergence as a movement was, in large part, a response to the chaos and power vacuum left by the Soviet withdrawal in 1990. They rose to power in 1996 and were ousted by the US-led invasion in 2001.

Afghan religious extremism stems from several factors. The U.S. and its allies funded and armed mujahideen fighters during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, fostering radical ideologies. Saudi-funded schools in Pakistan taught extreme Deobandi and Wahhabi ideologies to Afghan refugees, who returned to Afghanistan to fight in the Afghan Civil War.

Following the departure of the Soviets, the Taliban imposed puritanical Islam rooted in Deobandi ideology and ethnic and political manipulation. Extremism was used to consolidate power, suppress minorities, and resist foreign influence.

Cutting aid alone is not the answer

It is necessary for global powers to hold the Taliban accountable for gender persecution and take punitive actions, including cutting off financial aid; however, thus far, imposing economic sanctions alone has not yielded the desired results.

The Taliban’s harsh treatment of women remains unabated, and to effect a real change, the West must change its strategy.

While the threat of more sanctions should continue to hover over the Taliban’s heads, to effect the necessary changes to improve women’s rights, the West should take systematic measures that align with the group’s cultural and religious teachings.

Working with influential Muslim-majority countries, including Indonesia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, which is the leader of Sunni Islam, is key in order to challenge the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia law while highlighting Quranic principles of equality and historical examples of female scholarship in Islam.

In Afghanistan, the restrictions on women’s rights, including education and dress codes, are based on interpretations of Islamic law and cultural practices rather than direct Quranic edicts. To demonstrate to the Taliban leaders that respecting women’s human rights complements rather than compromises their cultural and religious beliefs, the West’s Arab and Muslim partners should cite Quranic verses to make the case.

The first revelation to Prophet Muhammad begins with the command to “read,” which is seen as a universal call to acquire knowledge. Surah Al-Tawbah (9:71) emphasizes the equal responsibility of men and women in seeking knowledge and upholding moral values. Surah Al-Hadid (57:25) promotes education as a means to establish justice and equity in society.

Moreover, the Quran does not explicitly state that women should be segregated from men, nor that they must wear a hijab. Surah An-Nur (24:30-31) instructs both men and women to be modest and guard their private parts, certainly not their heads or faces, but the Taliban interprets this to support the wearing of a burqa that covers Afghan women from head to toe.

In that regard, the West should provide aid to Afghan clerics who advocate for girls’ education and women’s rights within Islamic teachings, and invoke women’s literacy in Afghanistan before the rise of the Taliban to encourage those clerics.

Additionally, targeted economic support for infrastructure projects and agricultural investments should be offered in exchange for reopening girls’ secondary schools or permitting women’s employment in the health and education sectors while emphasizing the economic cost of excluding women.

In conjunction with that, preferential trade terms for Afghan products produced by women should be provided while highlighting how educated women improve public health outcomes for all.

The West should also support community-based schools and computer and science training for women and girls, which reliable local NGOs should administer, and provide safe channels for women activists to air their grievances. Culturally, the West should invest in programs showcasing women artists, poets, and historians as custodians of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.

In that regard, the media should be used to disseminate success stories of Muslim-majority countries, like Bangladesh and the UAE, where women’s education and employment coexist with cultural and religious values.

By combining religious dialogue, economic pragmatism, and grassroots movements to empower women, the West should pursue incremental progress, which will be more sustainable than seeking instantaneous change.

Recalling the way the Afghan people were treated by foreign powers over the centuries, the Taliban have developed an instinctive adversarial reaction to anything proposed by any foreign power.

This certainly does not justify their treatment of women, but they need to be persuaded, however, that the proposed changes can only benefit their country’s socio-economic conditions while respecting women’s rights, without compromising their cultural and religious beliefs.

IPS UN Bureau

  Source

Collapse of Gaza Ceasefire and its Devastating Impact on Women and Girls

Posted on by admin

Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Gender, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, Humanitarian Emergencies, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Middle East & North Africa, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Women walk along destroyed streets in Gaza. Credit: UNDP/Abed Zagout

JERUSALEM, Apr 2 2025 (IPS) – The end of the tenuous ceasefire in Gaza is having disastrous consequences for women and girls. From 18 to 25 March—in just those 8 days, 830 people were killed—174 women, 322 children, with 1,787 more injured.

Let me break that down because these are not just numbers, they are people: every single day from the 18 to 25 March, an average of 21 women and over 40 children are killed.

This is not collateral damage; this is a war where women and children bear the highest burden. They comprise nearly 60 per cent of the recent casualties, a harrowing testament to the indiscriminate nature of this violence.

What we are hearing from our partners and the women and girls we serve is a call to end this war, to let them live. It is a situation of pure survival and survival of their families. Because as they say, there is simply nowhere to go. They are telling us they will not move again, since no safe places anyway.

As a woman recently said to us from Deir Al Balah, “My mother says, ‘Death is the same, whether in Gaza City or Deir al-Balah… We just want to return to Gaza.” This is a feeling that is shared by many other women I had an opportunity to meet with during my last visit in January and February.

How is the UN helping civilians in Gaza?. Credit: UNICEF/Abed Zagout

The UN says Gaza is facing a food crisis.

Another woman from Al-Mirak tells us “We’re glued to the news. Life has stopped. We didn’t sleep all night, paralyzed. We can’t leave. My area is cut off. I’m terrified of being hit – every possible nightmare races through my mind.” This is simply no way of living.

Since March 2nd, humanitarian aid has been halted by the Israelis. And people’s lives are again at risk since the Israeli bombardments resumed on March 18.

The ceasefire, while brief, had provided some breathing. During that time, I had the opportunity to visit some of our partner organizations who were repairing their offices in Gaza City with what material was available. I saw neighbours coming together to clean some of the rubble on their streets, heard children playing. Met with women who expressed their fragile hope for peace and for rebuilding their lives. I saw thousands of people on the roads back to Gaza City.

And now that hope is gone. For now, 539 days, the relentless war has ravaged Gaza, obliterating lives, homes, and futures. This is not merely a conflict; it is a war on women—on their dignity, their bodies, their very survival.

Women have been stripped of their fundamental rights, forced to exist in a reality where loss is their only constant. Cumulatively, over 50,000 people have been killed and more than 110,000 injured.

It is crucial to protect the rights and dignity of the people of Gaza, especially women and girls, who have borne the brunt of this war. Women are desperate for this nightmare to cease. But the horror persists, the atrocities escalate, and the world seems to be standing by, normalizing what should never be normalized.

As we have seen in these 18 months of war, women play a crucial role during times of crisis. However, after all this time, they speak of being trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

This war must end. I, and others, have echoed this plea countless times, amplifying the voices of the women inside Gaza. Yet the devastation deepens.

What will we tell future generations when they ask? That we did not know? That we did not see?

International humanitarian law must be upheld. The systems we established to protect humanity must be respected. All humans must be treated equally. This war is shattering core values and principles.

As UN Women, we join the UN Secretary-General in his strong appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian access to be restored, and for the remaining hostages and all those arbitrarily detained to be released immediately and unconditionally.

Maryse Guimond, UN Women Special Representative in Palestine, speaking at the Palais des Nations from Jerusalem, on the disastrous consequences for women and girls following the end of a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza.

IPS UN Bureau

  Source

Will UN be a Possible Target as US Goes on a Rampage?

Posted on by admin

Civil Society, Democracy, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 2025 (IPS) – The Trump administration, spearheaded by senior adviser Elon Musk, has been on a wild rampage: mass layoffs of government employees, gutting federal agencies, dismantling the Department of Education and USAID, defying a federal judge and threatening universities with drastic cuts in grants and contracts—decisions mostly engineered by the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Perhaps with more to come.

The cuts were best symbolized with an image of Musk wielding a heavy chainsaw aimed at slashing “wasteful spending”

But the layoffs and subsequent reversals– the on-again, off-again decisions– have triggered chaos in the nation’s capital.

And political outrage is fast becoming the norm.

Musk, the tech billionaire, who acts as a virtual Prime Minister to President Trump, has called on the U.S. to exit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations.

“I agree,” he wrote in response to a post from a right-wing political commentator, saying “it’s time” for the U.S. to leave NATO and the UN.”

The threat against the UN has been reinforced following a move by several Republican lawmakers who have submitted a bill on the U.S. exit from the U.N., claiming that the organization does not align with the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/no-sane-country-would-stand-this-lawmakers-launch-effort-withdraw-u-s-from-united-nations

What’s next?

The abrogation of the 1947 US-UN Headquarters Agreement?

That 78-year-old agreement helped establish the world body in a former decrepit slaughter house in Turtle Bay New York.

The Agreement is an international treaty, and under international law, treaties are generally binding on the parties that sign them. However, the U.S. has a constitutional process for withdrawing from treaties.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal March 14, titled “The U.N. Is Ripping America Off in New York”, Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a professor at George Mason University School of Law, points out the U.S. offered to host the newly-created U.N. after World War II, amid a wave of optimism about the organization’s ability to prevent future wars.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land, and the headquarters was given an interstate-free loan from Washington that would be worth billions today.

The United Nations shall not be moved unless the headquarters district ceases to be used for that purpose, the agreement says. Some U.N. officials have taken this to mean the U.N. can’t be evicted.

“But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that treaties, unless they say otherwise, last as long as the parties wish. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears, nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits withdrawal. Indeed, had an irrevocable agreement been intended, (the US) Congress, which is needed to approve treaties, would not have allowed the agreement to pass without making it explicit”.

While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable.” Many international treaties use “permanent” in this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922-46.

“Trump should reopen the 1947 agreement locating its headquarters. It was a terrible real-estate deal”, declared Kontorovich

Dr. Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States has long been advocated by the far right and generally dismissed as a fringe idea not to be taken seriously.

However, as the Trump administration has already demonstrated, even the most extreme ideologically-driven proposals can indeed end up being implemented as policy, he said.

“The United States has not always upheld its obligations under the treaty, such as in 1988 when the Reagan administration refused to allow PLO chairman Yasir Arafat to address the world body, resulting in the entire General Assembly relocating to Geneva to hear his speech”.

Removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States, he argued, “would symbolize the end of the global leadership we have had since the end of World War II when the victorious allies established the world body.”

Along with the Trump administration’s decision to disestablish the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Fulbright Program, and other symbols of American leadership internationally, it would end any semblance of the United States remaining a preeminent force in international cooperation.

At the same time, the United States has increasingly become an outlier when it comes to the international community rather than a leader or partner.

“This is true even under Democratic administrations, as indicated by Biden’s rogue positions in regard to Israel’s war on Gaza, Palestinian statehood, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other UN institutions.”

Having the UN headquarters in a more neutral location may end up being for the best, said Dr Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations.

So far, the US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), while it has warned that two other UN organizations “deserve renewed scrutiny”– the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—a warning seen as a veiled threat of US withdrawal from the two UN agencies.

Meanwhile, the United States has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA.

Giving an indication of UN agencies moving some of their functions out of the US, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters at a briefing last month: “We have been investing in Nairobi, creating the conditions for Nairobi to receive services that are now in more expensive locations”.

“And UNICEF will be transferring soon some of the functions to Nairobi. And UNFPA will be essentially moving to Nairobi. And I can give you many other examples of things that are being done and correspond to the idea that we must be effective and cost-effective,” he said.

Asked about the possible withdrawal of the US from the world body, Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS it would not be clear what the intent of this move would be.

In fact, what is certain, he pointed out, is that it would be a mistake of gigantic proportions. The Trump administration, solely to curry favor with some small fraction of its base, would be handing a huge diplomatic victory to China, who would not hesitate to jump at the chance to host the UN.

“And even this White House has to see that, so I don’t see this as advancing US interests in any form. On the contrary, had the White House thought the UN as unimportant, they wouldn’t have designated Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador,” he declared.

A report in the Washington Examiner last January said Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, and the US Ambassador-elect to the UN, has vowed to utilize her skills as a lawmaker to scrutinize the funding provided to the U.N. and cut the budget provided if necessary.

“As a member of Congress, I also understand deeply that we must be good stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” Stefanik said. “The U.S. is the largest contributor to the U.N. by far. Our tax dollars should not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests, antisemitic, or engaging in fraud, corruption, or terrorism.”

As the largest single contributor, the US currently pays 22% of the United Nations’ regular budget and 27% of the peacekeeping budget. Still, the US owes $1.5 billion to the UN’s regular budget.

And, between the regular budget, the peacekeeping budget, and international tribunals, the total amount the US owes is $2.8 billion.

IPS UN Bureau Report

  Source

‘What’s Next?’ Women-led Movements Fear for the Future

Posted on by admin

Civil Society, Democracy, Featured, Gender, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69)—March 10-21, 2025

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 2025 (IPS) – Women rights advocates who gathered at UN Headquarters for the world’s biggest meeting (10 -21 March) on gender equality have been sharing their concerns about the growing backlash against feminism, and how major funding cuts from donor countries could threaten programmes aimed at improving the lives of women and girls.

They came from all over the world for the Commission on the Status of Women, two weeks of discussions, talks and networking. At the opening session, Sima Bahous, the head of UN Women (the United Nations agency for gender equality), told them that “misogyny is on the rise” and, at a townhall convened by António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General said that a “furious backlash” threatens to “push progress into reverse.

UN News met some of the delegates to gauge the mood and find out how they are they are feeling about the backlash against feminism flagged by UN Women, and what the threat of massive funding cuts from some major donor countries could mean for their organisations, and the people they support.

‘We’re going to move backwards before we move go forward’

Grace Forrest is the founding director of Walk Free, Walk Free, an international human rights group focused on the eradication of modern slavery, which produces the Global Slavery Index, considered to be the world’s leading data set on measuring and understanding modern slavery. Credit: UN News/Conor Lennon

“We’re here because women and girls are disproportionately impacted by nearly every form of modern slavery, from forced marriage to forced labour, debt bondage and human trafficking.

Their vulnerability to modern slavery is rising and their rights risk being rolled back throughout the world, so we wanted to come to here to put modern slavery on the agenda, in the context of an authoritarian government in the United States which is trying to ban words such as race, gender and feminism. We won’t be silenced or erased.

Today, we’re seeing misogyny on full display, through social media and through world leaders not mincing their words and people electing leaders who disregard safety and the value of women in the public forum.

We’re extremely concerned by funding cuts from major donors. We’re hearing about frontline organisations, run by people who have survived debt bondage and forced labour, having to take loans to try and keep their organisations afloat. Some of the most effective frontline organisations are being hit hardest and fastest.

Advancing the rights of women and girls is actually quite a tall order right now and it’s a scary fact to face, that we’re actually just going to be hoping to not move backwards. And I think we are going to go backwards before we go forward.

This is a time for systems to step up and directly call out the need for funding on issues like modern slavery.”

Soundcloud

‘We are highly affected by budget cuts’

Moufeeda Haidar from youth NGO Restless Development, speaks in the GA Hall during CSW69. She is the Senior Regional Programme Coordinator at Restless Development, a non-profit global agency that supports the collective power of young leaders. She was a Global Youth Fellow for Gender Equality in 2024. Credit: UN News

“I’m based in Lebanon, and I mainly work on a programme which tackles sexual and reproductive health and rights for young woman living with disabilities, women living with HIV, those who identify as LGBTQ, and displaced woman across nine countries, between Africa, Central America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The backlash against feminism has always been there. Sometimes it’s very politicised and it’s used to the advantage of the patriarchy, so that women’s rights and gender rights attacked. There’s definitely a rising backlash in Lebanon and the MENA region.

The current political environment is not a surprise for us. We are already highly affected by budget cuts in the MENA region. Funds for youth programmes have been cut for years. In our latest State of Youth Civil Society report, 72 per cent of respondents said that they barely receive any funds for climate action projects.

We are very worried about how to plan. We work with grassroots organisations, women-led organisations and feminist movements and we have created networks in these countries and seen the amazing work that they have done throughout the years. We are wondering what’s next. How are we going to support this network?”

Linda Sestock is the president of the Canadian Federation of University Women, which awards universiCredit: ty scholarships to women and promotes the participation of women in all aspects of emerging technology and leadership. Credit: UN News

“We’re extremely concerned, especially after seeing what happened with our neighbours to the south of us: we have noticed how alliances have shifted in the United States and we’re very fearful. We want to make sure that it doesn’t happen in Canada as well.

Most Canadians believe in the rights of our fellow women and that we’re going to be able to continue on the same trajectory that we’re on, but we need to be careful and we need to make sure that we don’t backslide.

We need to be hyper focused about ensuring that women are educated and that they’re entering the fields of technology, engineering, science and mathematics, because right now algorithms are slanted towards men and can be used against women.

We’re worried when we see that some words are not allowed anymore, such as diversity, equity and inclusion [a list of words banned or discouraged by the US administration has reportedly been drawn up and circulated].

We have a lot of professors in our organisation, and people are losing grants because they are being asked to remove words like female and gender. They are refusing and so they are losing funding, and we need to make sure that we continue to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.

It boggles the mind and leaves me speechless.”

These interviews have been edited for clarity and length

Source: UN News

IPS UN Bureau

  Source