This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

United Nations member states have emphatically rejected the US candidate to lead the organisation’s migration agency, despite the risk of financial reprisals from the Trump administration.



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Ken Isaacs finished a distant third in the last round of voting for the position of director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a position that has been held by an American since the 1960s.

The decisive vote appeared to be a response to Donald Trump’s policies on migration as well as the rejection of a candidate who had tweeted Islamophobic comments and cast doubt on climate change science.

António Vitorino, a Portuguese Socialist party member who is close to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, was elected despite a determined and well-resourced campaign by the US mission to the UN.

Welcoming Vitorino to the job, the UK’s ambassador to the UN, Karen Pierce, noted in a tweet: “This is one of the most important jobs for the UN and the world today.”

The loss of such an important UN post reflects the latest in a long series of steps – some unintentional but most deliberate – by which the Trump administration is peeling away from multilateral institutions, agreements and diplomacy. In recent days it has emerged that Donald Trump severely disparaged Nato and the European Union, and reportedly told aides he wants to withdraw from the World Trade Organisation.

The Trump administration could well retaliate by cutting funding for the IOM, for which the US is the biggest donor. Earlier this month it pulled out of the UN human rights council, which it said had ignored its calls for reform. In January, the US cut its funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, by more than half, as a punitive measure aimed at the Palestinian political leadership.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The new head of the IOM, António Vitorino, is close to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, a fellow Portuguese. Photograph: Martial Trezzini/EPA

According to Mark Goldberg, editor of the UN Dispatch website, Isaacs’ campaign was probably lost before it began because of Trump’s policies, but the candidate’s views contributed to the scale of the defeat.

“I would say the biggest blow came before Isaacs entered the race, when the Trump administration said it would leave negotiations on the Global Compact on Migration, which the head of the IOM would be expected to implement,” Goldberg said.

“And there is the Trump position on migration, with the separation of children from their parents, which Isaacs hasn’t repudiated in any public way.”

After he was nominated in February, past tweets came back to haunt Isaacs, who works for a Christian charity, Samaritan’s Purse.

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“Islam is not peaceful,” he wrote in one, and called on Austria and Switzerland to build a wall in the Alps “to control their borders from refugees”. He also shared online conspiracy theories and claimed that climate change was a “hoax”.

Isaacs has apologised for the anti-Islam tweet and insisted he believes in climate change.

Jeremy Konyndyk, a former head of US foreign disaster assistance, said: “The defeat of the United States’ candidate, Ken Isaacs, is a sad statement on US global credibility.”

Konyndyk, now senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, added: “Isaacs was a capable relief expert, but carried significant baggage due to offensive prior statements about refugees and migrants, and apparent climate denialism.

“Putting forward a candidate with this profile was an unwise move by the Trump administration.”