Coly Seck (at microphone), Chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Senegal to the United Nations, briefs reporters with Members of the newly-elected Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP Bureau). At fourth from right is Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations. Credit: UN Photo: Manuel Elías

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 2025 (IPS)

A new executive order from the United States White House calls for withdrawing support from major UN entities and a review of all international intergovernmental organizations which the United States is a member of. The U.S.’s orders against the UN Palestine Refugee Agency also do not bode well for ongoing ceasefire negotiations in Gaza.

President Donald Trumps comments that the “US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it,” have also been widely criticized.

On Tuesday, the White House issued an executive order, where they announced that they will pull out from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) effective immediately and called for a review of its membership in UN and other intergovernmental organizations. The executive order singles out other UN entities that needed “further scrutiny”—the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The executive order suspended all funding to these organizations.

The executive order also cites that UNESCO has failed to address “mounting arrears” and reform, also noting that it has demonstrated anti-Israeli sentiments over the last decade. A review of the U.S.’s membership in UNESCO would assess whether it supports the country’s interests, and would include an analysis of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiment within the organization.

The United States announced that no funds or grants would go towards the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), citing corruption within the organization and the infiltration of terrorist groups such as Hamas.

UN Secretary-General Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday that in light of the United States’ decision, this would not change the UN’s “commitment to supporting UNRWA in its work”, or the HRC’s importance as a part of the “overall human rights architecture within the United Nations”.

“It has been clear for us that U.S. support for the United Nations has saved countless lives and global security,” said Dujarric. “The Secretary-General is looking forward to speaking with President (Donald) Trump, he looks forward to continuing what was a very, I think, frank and productive relationship during the first term. He looks to strengthening the relationship in the turbulent times that we live in.”

On Wednesday the newly-elected chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Ambassador Coly Seck, Permanent Representative of Senegal, told a told a press conference that it condemned the ban by Israel on UNWRA .

“We strongly condemn Israel’s ban UNWRA which obstructs vital humanitarian cooperation in direct violation of the UN mandate and General Assembly resolutions in stabilizing the ceasefire and supporting Gaza’s recovery. This ban imposed immediately after the ceasefire, deal will deepen Gaza suffering.”

The suspension of aid funding from the United States is already impacting humanitarian operations across different agencies. Dujarric said that the U.S. had committed 15 million USD to the trust fund, of which 1.7 million has already been spent. This leaves 13.3 million frozen and unusable at this time.

Pio Smith, Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) told reporters in Geneva that they had to suspend the programs funded by US grants, which included funds that were already committed to the agency. Smith warned that the lack of funding would impact programs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Worldwide, more than half of UNFPA’s facilities, 596 out of 982, would be impacted by this funding pause.

Vivian van de Perre, the Deputy Head of its UN Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told reporters in New York on Wednesday that the recent pause in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has forced humanitarian partners on the ground to suspend their work. “…Many of the partners, including IOM (the International Organization for Migration), which is a key partner for us, need to stop their work due to the USAID stop-work order,” she said.

The executive order, along with Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would move into and claim Gaza cast a shadow of doubt over ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk said that the priority now must be to move to the next phase of the ceasefire, which calls for the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained prisoners, an end to the war, and the reconstruction of Gaza.

“The suffering of people in the [occupied Palestinian territories] and Israel has been unbearable. Palestinians and Israelis need peace and security, on the basis of full dignity and equality,” Türk said in a statement. “International law is very clear. The right to self-determination is a fundamental principle of international law and must be protected by all States, as the International Court of Justice recently underlined afresh. Any forcible transfer in or deportation of people from occupied territory is strictly prohibited.”

The forcible removal of 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza that Trump is calling for has been decried and been called a violation of international humanitarian law.

“Any forced displacement of people is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” said Dujarric when asked about Trump’s remarks. “…In our search for solutions, we must not make the problem worse. Whatever solutions we find need to be rooted in the bedrock of international law.”

Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, briefing reporters after the opening session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, added his condemnation of Trump’s plan.

Mansour said with regard to the idea of “kicking the Palestinian people out from the Gaza Strip, I just want to tell you that during the last 24 hours, statements from heads of states, of Egypt, of Jordan, of the State of Palestine, of Saudi Arabia and many countries, including countries who spoke in the debate in the room behind us during the meeting of the committee, condemn these efforts.”

He said Trump’s plan has been met with a “global consensus on not allowing forced transfer to take place, ethnic cleansing to take place. We Palestinians love every part of the State of Palestine. We love the Gaza Strip. It is part of our DNA.”

The march of Palestinians from the south to the north of the Gaza Strip following the ceasefire was proof of the people’s committment to rebuild their own homes, Mansour said.

“More than 400,000 of them to go to the rubbles in the northern Gaza in order to start cleaning around their destroyed homes.”

At the White House, Trump’s aids attempted a row back on his comments. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told journalists that it Trump was proposing to rebuil Gaza, and his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, said “the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa (right) with Ravinatha Ariyasinha, Sri Lanka’s top diplomat at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Sri Lanka faces a tough resolution at the ongoing council sessions. Credit: Presidential Media Unit.

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Mar 24 2014 (IPS)

As Sri Lanka steadfastly refuses any external inquiry into human rights abuses allegedly committed when the government pushed a military victory over Tamil rebels in its decades-long sectarian conflict, right groups say the global community is left with no option but to push for an international investigation.

The South Asian island nation faces a critical U.S.-backed resolution this week at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).“It’s likely just another delaying tactic on the government’s part, trying to give the impression that it is doing the right thing." -- Polly Truscott, deputy Asia Pacific director at Amnesty International

This will be the third such resolution at the UNHRC since 2012, but the first that is widely expected to call for an international probe into abuses committed during the last stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka that ended in May 2009.

The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa views any external intervention as undermining the sovereignty of the country.

“We have reached the point where it is too late to hope that Sri Lanka will actually investigate its own alleged human rights violations,” Polly Truscott, deputy Asia Pacific director at Amnesty International (AI), told IPS.

“After years of empty promises by the government, it is now up to the international community to establish an independent war crimes investigation into the Sri Lankan conflict,” she said.

Other groups that have called for an international probe include Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group and the International Commission of Jurists.

“We believe there is a strong chance that the UNHRC will institute an international inquiry at this session,” Sheila Varadan, international legal advisor with the South Asia programme at the International Commission of Jurists, told IPS.

“It may not immediately affect the behaviour of the Sri Lankan government, but it will send a strong message that the international community is not willing to give up on accountability.”

The country’s sectarian war, which began in the early 1980s, saw the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fight government forces for over two-and-a-half decades. The LTTE was demanding a separate state for minority Tamils in the north. The war ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the LTTE, but not before more than 70,000 people had been killed.

Ahead of the UNHRC sessions, Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the Sri Lankan President, said countries critical of Sri Lanka preferred to turn a blind eye to the good work done by the government in the north.

Talking to a select group of correspondents at the President’s Colombo residence, he said the government had spent over 4.5 billion dollars on development work in the north, building highways and large infrastructure projects. He said over 94 percent of mined areas had been cleared in less than five years.

“Where on earth would you get this kind of work?” Weeratunga asked, arguing that the government needed more time on delicate issues like power-sharing and reconciliation.

The government has begun working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on surveying the needs of missing people’s families, ICRC officials in Colombo told IPS. Weeratunga said the government was awaiting the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on missing persons later this year.

Critics of the Rajapaksa administration, however, say such action is too little too late, and merely cosmetic.

Truscott said, “It is difficult not to conclude that the commission on disappearances is little more than window dressing for the international community. Sri Lanka has a long history of setting up similar commissions at politically opportune moments, only to accomplish very little.

“It’s likely just another delaying tactic on the government’s part, trying to give the impression that it is doing the right thing, while actually just attempting to avoid genuine accountability.”

Varadan spoke along similar lines. “National processes cannot be relied upon to produce any credible investigations. Independence of the judiciary has been significantly undermined.

“The only real option for fact-finding is international investigations,” she said.

The government says such opinions are the creation of pressure groups and aggressive lobbying by international supporters of the LTTE.

Rajapaksa said earlier this month that domestic pressures had influenced the anti-Sri Lanka stance taken by the United Kingdom and Canada. “It is because of the Tamil diaspora voters. They have to satisfy their voters,” he said.

He said the government in neighbouring India, which is facing a general election, could also be swayed to support the resolution due to pressure from its southern state Tamil Nadu.

There is also fear that due to an impending trip by U.S. President Barack Obama later in April, Sri Lanka could lose the support of another traditional backer, Japan.

Weeratunga said some of those who were aggressively criticising Sri Lanka could not even locate the island on a map. “If they move a resolution on a country which they do not know, that is unfair,” he said.

Sri Lanka is assured of at least some heavyweight support at the UNHRC – that of China and Russia – and government diplomats tell IPS that a large bloc of African and Latin American countries are also likely to come out in support.