This corrupt agency, dominated by communists and anti-American extremists, is at the forefront of sexualizing and indoctrinating children around the world. Trump just ordered a review of U.S. involvement. It’s time to end all American support immediately.
UNESCO was ostensibly founded for advancing peace and development through “education,” science and culture. When 37 governments created UNESCO as a “human rights”-oriented organization in November 1945, it was essentially a western entity, dominated by western funding. All initial plans had to be reviewed with the increasing number of countries dominated by the Soviet Union joining UNESCO.
Thus, the original UNESCO alliance of Western States working on establishing a post-fascist, liberal order in Nazi-destroyed Europe, gradually lost its predominant influence when membership of Third World regimes surged amid “decolonization.” The U.S. found that it was losing money to an organization over which it had limited influence and which had little positive impact.
Appalled by its politicization, financial mismanagement and unfair treatment of Israel, the American government twice ended its membership. The administration of President Ronald Reagan formally announced on December 30, 1983 its intention to withdraw from the UN Agency. Twenty years later, the United States rejoined the organization in October 2003. The announcement by President George W. Bush came around the one-year anniversary of 9/11, and was part of Washington’s efforts to rally the international community around its global war on terrorism.
It was the Obama administration that paved the way for President Trump’s decision to withdraw for the second time. Bound by U.S. law, Obama froze U.S. contributions to UNESCO in 2011 after the UNESCO General Conference voted to admit Palestine as a member state of the organization, with the support of Bulgarian Director-General Irina Bokova, a proud communist finger-puppet product of the KGB University in Moscow.
Hence, in October 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would leave UNESCO, citing mounting arrears, the need for fundamental reform of the organization, and the persistent anti-Israel bias at UNESCO as key reasons for the decision.
Under the financial and political influence of Communist China, UNESCO was never an accountable partner organization for America to rely on, and there was no room for the Biden administration to consider returning to it. Still, in his crusade against President Trump’s decisions, President Biden overruled this decision to withdraw and moved towards rejoining UNESCO and restoring U.S. funding to the globalist body. This was one of the many unfortunate decisions by President Biden.
Today UNESCO is a politicized bureaucracy seeking to centralize control over all “education” — really indoctrination, sexualization, and more, as this publication has documented over many years. It has no impact on contemporary challenges and works hand in hand with the mass-murdering Communist Chinese regime to limit freedom of expression, among other precious rights.
President Trump is rightly skeptical of globalist international organizations such as World Health Organization and UNESCO, which he sees as potential threats to national sovereignty. Managing international affairs outside the UN must be therefore at the top of the international agenda for his administration.
On January 22, 2025, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO. For obvious reasons, not least of which is its outrageous handling of COVID, Trump has long been critical of the U.N. health agency, and his administration officially began withdrawing from the WHO in July 2020.
Unfortunately for Americans and the world, four years ago, then-President Joe Biden halted the U.S. exit from the WHO. The text of Monday’s January 22 executive order cites the “organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states,” as reasons for the U.S. withdrawal.
America should therefore keep marginalizing and withdrawing from organizations that have become a playground for political opponents to the United States, no longer capable of delivering any real value, such as UNESCO. In fact, withdrawing from UNESCO is just as important, if not more so, than withdrawing from WHO, because UNESCO is indoctrinating the next generation of children to replace Western values with progressivism and globalism.
The newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio stated unambiguously on X : “The direction the President has given for the conduct of our foreign policy is clear. Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, every policy we pursue must be justified by the answer to one of three questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Or does it make America more prosperous?”
The U.S. taxpayer money squandered on UNESCO in no way offers a positive answer to any of those questions, and it is expected that President Trump will once again make the right decision by keeping the United States out of this organization.
Western diplomats have regularly complained about UNESCO’s weak leadership and the politicization of its activities and have expected structural reforms and major efforts to depoliticize the U.N. body. This proved to be an insurmountable task for former French socialist minister of culture, Audrey Azoulay, and current head of the UN agency. Since the election of Azoulay, the crisis in management led to a crisis of visibility and subsequently to a crisis of credibility. Seven years after her election, UNESCO suffers from an inflated bureaucracy, damaging decision-making and colossal financial failures.
Over time, UNESCO has been stripped of the substance of its programs. It also dismantled most of its expertise hubs, some of which had been created with American assistance. This process of weakening the agency was complemented by the total lack of accountability by senior UNESCO officials.
In a recent interview with a French newspaper, the French Director General, Audrey Azoulay, boldly bragged that if Trump left UNESCO again as he did in 2018, it would not jeopardize the organization. According to UNESCO’s Director General, the potential U.S. withdrawal would make little difference to the Agency’s finances. Curiously, the U.S. Permanent Representative to UNESCO, who had been appointed by President Biden, Ambassador Courtney Diesel O’Donnell, did not react to this statement. She has since resigned as ambassador and left the French capital shortly after President Trump’s election.
Last December, I wrote to the President of the General Conference of UNESCO copying the Bureau of the Executive board – the two governing bodies – with a request for comments on the following three issues:
– firstly, senior internal officials who are potential candidates using taxpayer money to campaign for the position of the next Director General?
– secondly, what is your position regarding Director General Audrey Azoulay’s statement to the French press that the USA only contributes 8% of UNESCO’s total budget?
– finally, what steps are you considering to clarify and investigate the recent official trip to Morocco by UNESCO’s Director General as part of the French delegation led by President Macron during his state visit to that country?
My written request for comment remained unanswered until publication of this editorial. Neither the President of the General Conference, Ms. Simona Mirela Miculescu, the Romanian Ambassador to UNESCO, nor the Chairperson or the members of the Bureau of the Executive Board, which includes the Permanent Representative of the United States, bothered to reply.
This says a lot about the status of governance at UNESCO, and the way in which high-level diplomats deal with journalists’ reasonable requests. UNESCO is the only UN agency supposedly concerned with the promotion of freedom of expression and the protection of journalists. And yet, this priority seems to have been lost under the CCP control of UNESCO and appears only on paper. In fact, UNESCO under Azoulay has doubled down on its outlandish attacks on free speech, as I documented for The Epoch Times more than a year ago.
Clearly, all 194 Member States and 12 Associate Members accept that UNESCO’s Director General, Audrey Azoulay of France, allows members of her staff to campaign with taxpayers’ money. Nor do they have a problem with the Director General ostensibly violating the Constitution.
It is deeply concerning for UNESCO’s governance that neither the President of the General Conference, nor of the Executive Board, nor even one of the 194 ambassadors accredited to UNESCO have bothered to ask the Director General to clarify the situation and be held to account. This sheds further light on the many reasons why the United States should withdraw from the UN outfit without further delay.
Whatever the causes of its moral failure and chronic political and financial deficiencies, there can be no doubt that this is an organization in a state of irreversible crisis. Unable to meet basic standards of accountability, with governing bodies in limbo and a President of the General Conference heading for irrelevance, UNESCO today is not an asset for America. In fact, it is flagrantly working against precious American values at every level.
Therefore, UNESCO must not be part of the current administration’s international agenda to increase its global influence and protect and expand fundamental freedoms around the world. All eyes are now on President Donald Trump to succeed in withdrawing from UNESCO in 2025 as he did in 2018.
Under the financial and political influence of Communist China,” — What? Didn’t you JUST SAY the US was paying for it, then not, then yes again, then it got frozen during Obama. WHICH IS IT? And if we don’t pay our dues, how can we expect a seat at the table? Why? Because we’re the United States? And obviously pro Zionist Jew. Genocide is our hobby.