UNITED NATIONS: In a year where the Trump administration is pulling out of UN accords, from climate change to Unesco on Israeli pressure, the United States notified the world body that it would no longer take part in the Global Compact on Migration, saying it undermines the nation’s sovereignty.

The Trump administration’s top advisers met early last week to determine whether the United States should participate in the talks.

A report said White House’s chief of staff John Kelly, who previously led the Department of Homeland Security’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions strongly backed a pullout, according to diplomatic sources familiar with the deliberations, Foreign Policy magazine said.

The State Department initially opposed the withdrawal, but its policy planning chief, Brian Hook, who represented Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the principals’ meeting, reversed course and recommended ditching the negotiations, the FP said.

The meeting ended in deadlock, with Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, expressing the lone dissent. Haley had argued that the United States would have a better shot at influencing the outcome of the negotiations if it participated in the process.

She was ultimately overruled by the president, according to diplomatic sources.

Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon hosted an international summit on migration and refugees in Sept 2016 in the hope of establishing a set of guidelines for the international effort.

The so-called New York declaration, which came out of that meeting, was endorsed by the Obama administration.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2017