SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The rescission package just approved by Congress includes about a billion dollars meant for the United Nations. This will pull money from U.N. peacekeeping operations and the U.N. Children's Fund, among other things. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports on what this clawback of money could mean around the world.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: President Trump often talks about his peacemaking prowess, and he points to a deal that he says will end 30 years of conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But that deal depends in part on a United Nations peacekeeping operation, the same one that's cited in the recission package.
PETER YEO: The U.N. peacekeeping mission is incredibly important to implementation of this deal.
KELEMEN: Peter Yeo is president of the Better World Campaign, which advocates on behalf of the U.N.
YEO: The recissions package will really undermine a core way that President Trump's peace deal is going to be implemented. So I think the administration and Congress are going to have to sort their way through on that one.
KELEMEN: The U.S. covers about a quarter of all U.N. peacekeeping operations around the globe, with more than a billion dollars a year. Now the U.S. is clawing back $361 million at a time when U.N. mandates remain the same. One U.N. peacekeeping official told NPR that this could mean sending some peacekeeping units home. Another U.N. agency facing cutbacks is the U.N.'s Children's Fund - or UNICEF - which is led by an American and has traditionally had bipartisan support. Democrats tried to remove these cuts from the recission package, but Eric Schmitt, a Republican senator from Missouri, successfully led opposition to that amendment on the floor of the Senate this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ERIC SCHMITT: UNICEF's mission, although admirable, is not immune from waste, fraud and abuse. That's why this recission package includes $142 million for UNICEF's overhead.
KELEMEN: UNICEF says the canceled funding was not used for overhead expenses but was instead what it calls critical and flexible funding. Peter Yeo says flexible funds allow the agency to move quickly to help children caught up in conflicts or natural disasters.
YEO: I wouldn't be surprised if this is not the last word as it relates to American funding to UNICEF, but it's a pretty devastating blow.
KELEMEN: The U.N.'s refugee agency says it's still too early to tell how these cuts might affect its work. Rema Jamous, the Middle East regional director for UNHCR, came to Washington this past week to tell U.S. officials there's a rare chance to resolve a refugee crisis in Syria, as that country emerges from a civil war.
REMA JAMOUS: This is incredibly unique for UNHCR to see a solution on the horizon. And for people to be able to go from being refugees to repatriated back in their home countries is quite a unique, once-in-a-generation type of opportunity, and we intend to make full use of it.
KELEMEN: But she says UNHCR has faced cutbacks, not just from the U.S., but also from other big donors who are following America's lead and scaling back humanitarian aid in favor of defense.
JAMOUS: And unfortunately, we've had to reduce our workforce in the order of about 30%. So right when we need to be scaling up, mobilizing support to help people realize this critical solution, we've had to dramatically cut our own staff.
KELEMEN: Trump's recission package does not single out UNHCR, but it pulls $800 million from a more than $3 billion State Department fund that supports groups helping refugees overseas.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
