Republican senators are seeking to undermine the US role in international efforts to address climate change due to a United Nations body’s recognition of Palestine.
The lawmakers pointed to a 1994 law prohibiting federal money from going to any UN affiliate that recognizes groups without “internationally recognized attributes of statehood”–a clause that has effectively targeted UN organizations that admit Palestine.
In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry sent earlier this week, the 28 senators said the March 17 recognition of “the State of Palestine” by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) should trigger the cessation of US contributions to the organization and its subsidiaries
“The inability of the US government to block the Palestinians from being admitted for membership as a state by the UNFCCC and other UN affiliated organizations is extremely troublesome,” they wrote.
As part of the historic climate deal reached in Paris last December, the US pledged $3 billion to the UNFCCC-created Green Climate Fund. World leaders are headed to New York on Friday to sign the agreement.
President Obama is also asking Congress this year to directly give $750 million to the UNFCCC.
Despite conservative furor over the UN body’s recognition of Palestinian independence, the UN Security Council has for decades called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
With enthusiastic US government support in the intervening time, Israel has expanded its control over both territories, subjecting its Palestinian residents to increasing amounts of violence and deprivation. Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed by the Israeli military since 2008, in three major incursions into Gaza. Last year, a UN development arm issued a report saying Gaza would be “uninhabitable” by 2020 due to Israel’s longstanding blockade on the coastal territory and its occasionally-indiscriminate military action.
The charge to defund the UNFCCC has been led by Sen. Tom Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
“It’s part of their strategy,” Barrasso said Wednesday on the senate floor, of “the Palestinians.”
“They think that if they can get the rest of the world to recognize the ‘State of Palestine,’ then it strengthens their hand in negotiations with Israel,” he added.
The law being cited by Republican lawmakers was used in 2011 to invoke with the withholding of aid from UNESCO, after the world heritage body admitted Palestine as a member state. The Obama administration has since tried to get Congress to restore the roughly $80 million in annual US funds to the organization.
