Rubio, Kirk Lead Successful Effort To Stop U.S. Funding For Anti-Israel Unesco

Press Release

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) issued the following statement after Senate and House negotiators rejected the Obama Administration's request to create a back-door mechanism in the 2016 omnibus spending bill to fund the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). On December 11, 2015, Rubio and Kirk urged Senate and House Republican leadership to reject the administration's request.

"We thank Republican leaders in Congress for working with us to uphold longstanding U.S. laws that forbid funding to UNESCO, the U.N. organization whose anti-Israel member states granted membership to the non-state actor of "Palestine' in 2011 and more recently tried to designate the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a Muslim holy site," Rubio and Kirk said.

UNESCO lost U.S. funding after the U.N. body's member states voted to grant membership to the non-state actor of "Palestine" in October 2011. U.S. laws passed in 1990 and 1994 require the U.S. to withhold funding to any U.N. organization that grants membership to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or "any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood."

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