The United Nations migration agency voted to reject President Trump’s nominee for director-general Friday, choosing instead António Vitorino, former deputy prime minister of Portugal, to lead the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This is only the second time in the agency’s 67-year history that it will not be led by an American.

Ken Isaacs, the American nominee, has experience with aiding humanitarian crises through his role as vice president of the evangelical Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse. He made it to the third round of voting before being eliminated.

Whereas Vitorino hails from the European Union, which has made migration reform a key issue, the United States — the IOM’s biggest donor — has been criticized for its anti-immigration policies, including the recently approved travel ban and separating families at the boarder.

The IOM aims to promote “humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all” through services and advice to nations around the world.

Isaacs has also made anti-Islam remarks in the past, retweeted Islamophobic posts, and denied the human causes of climate change. After his nomination for IOM head in February, Isaacs made his Twitter account private and apologized for his comments, but his reputation lingered.

Vitorino defeated runner-up Laura Thompson of Costa Rica to become director-general; Thompson will continue in her role as deputy director-general. </s> June 29 (UPI) -- Ken Isaacs, President Donald Trump's nominee to head the United Nations migration agency, was bypassed for the job Friday in a secret ballot vote.

Isaacs finished last among three candidates Thursday at the International Organization for Migration's Geneva headquarters.

Portuguese diplomat and former deputy prime minister Antonio Vitorino won the vote instead. He will start in October.

The vote marks the first time since 1951 the leader of the 169-nation agency will not be a U.S. representative. Vitorino will replace American William Lacy Swing, who was elected near the end of President George W. Bush's administration.

The rejection of Isaacs, who now works for the Christian non-profit group Samaritan's Purse, can be seen as a global rebuke to Trump's migration policies -- and a possible sign of falling U.S. influence in multilateral agencies after Trump recently pulled the United States from the U.N. Humans Rights Council.

Since his nomination in February, Isaacs has also dealt with prior social media posts in which he was critical of Islam, calling it a violent religion, and expressed doubts about climate change. He later apologized.

Isaacs' defeat at the IOM is "a sad statement on U.S. global credibility," said Jeremy Konyndyk, former disaster assistance director of the U.S. Agency for International Development. "The world was unlikely to support a U.S. candidate to lead the global migration body under those circumstances." </s> The U.N.'s migration agency snubbed the Trump administration's candidate to lead it on Friday, a major blow to U.S. leadership of a body addressing one of the world's most pressing issues — and only the second time that it won't be run by an American since 1951.

Portuguese Socialist and former European Union commissioner Antonio Vitorino won an election to be the next director-general of the International Organization for Migration, edging out both a top IOM official and U.S. candidate Ken Isaacs, the body said in a statement.

Vitorino, 61, will become the group's second director-general not from the U.S. since the intergovernmental organization was founded. He is a former EU commissioner for Home and Justice Affairs who has been President of the "Notre Europe" think tank for the last seven years, and is considered very close to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, also a Portuguese Socialist early in his political career.

Isaacs was eliminated in early rounds of voting, and Vitorino won by acclimation over runner-up Laura Thompson of Costa Rica, currently an IOM deputy director-general who was vying to become the agency's first woman chief.

The move marks a searing rejection of the U.S. candidate just as the Trump administration has been retreating from or rebuffing international institutions — including two others based in Geneva: Earlier this month, the United States pulled out of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, and Trump has recently criticized the World Trade Organization as "unfair" to the U.S.

"Yet another sign that US power, authority and prestige has been so dramatically diminished," tweeted Keith Harper, who was the Obama administration's ambassador to the rights council. The "IOM Director is seen as an 'American seat' and Trump was unable to place an American in it."

Isaacs' candidacy had been clouded by U.S. policies like travel bans and migrant family separations — and his own comments that critics have called anti-Muslim. But few diplomats streaming out of a Geneva conference center dared to offer an explanation about how an American was stripped of a post that the U.S. has held a lock-hold on for decades.

One, Senegalese diplomat Youssoupha Ndiaye, simply spoke of the early result: "The American is out." Two other diplomats confirmed that, as well as the two-person race remaining between Vitorino and Thompson, as delegates broke for lunch. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information publicly.

The winner, who will be determined by dues-paying, ballot-casting members among the 172 countries in the IOM, will succeed longtime U.S. diplomat William Lacy Swing, who leaves in September. IOM officials declined to confirm the result until voting was finished.

An intergovernmental body that became a U.N.-related agency in 2016, IOM has had only one director-general who wasn't American since its creation 67 years ago.

But Mark Hetfield, a self-described friend of Isaacs who heads the humanitarian group HIAS, which works with IOM, put the blame on policies and invective from the man in the White House — not the candidate for the U.N. migration agency job.

"This IOM election really was not about Ken Isaacs, for whom I have a lot of respect as a humanitarian," Hetfield said. "The election was an international referendum rejecting President Trump and his xenophobic, Islamophobic and isolationist policies. Let's face it, Isaacs' tweets were no worse than the ones coming out of the White House."

The administration is fresh off major international scorn over the separation of migrant families coming across the Mexico border. The U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld his ban on U.S. travel for citizens of a number of countries, most of them predominantly Muslim. Trump has also yanked the United States out of the Global Compact for Migration.

Even before that, Isaacs was on the defensive over retweets and other comments that some critics viewed as anti-Muslim, so much so that he shut down his Twitter account. After that Isaacs carefully stage-managed his media appearances and kept to script — with State Department handlers advising him or in tow.

Isaacs, a vice president at the evangelical Christian humanitarian organization Samaritan's Purse led by Pastor Franklin Graham, met with dozens of government officials during his months-long bid — working diligently to put to rest suspicions and pointing to his track record in the field and as a manager. Meeting with reporters in March, he said IOM's work was "in my wheelhouse."

Playing in Isaacs' favor along with tradition, was money: The United States is traditionally the single biggest donor to the IOM, followed closely by the European Union.

IOM has over 10,000 staffers in offices in more than 150 countries. Its work has been pivotal in providing humanitarian aid to migrants, and helping track deaths of migrants across often deadly Mediterranean waters between northern Africa. It also helps to resettle migrants accepted by foreign countries — and at times return them home. </s> António Manuel de Carvalho Ferreira Vitorino elected as new Director General of UN Migration Agency

GENEVA, Jun 29 2018 (IOM) - On Friday 29 June 2018, the member states of the IOM, the United Nations Migration Agency, elected Portugal’s António Manuel de Carvalho Ferreira Vitorino as the International Organization for Migration’s next Director General.



Mr. Vitorino, 61 (DOB 12 January 1957), succeeds the United States’ William Lacy Swing, who is leaving IOM after serving two five-year terms as Director General. Mr. Vitorino’s directorship begins on 1 October 2018.

The latest IOM director general is a former European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs (1999-2004) and former Minister of the Presidency and National Defence (1995-1997). He has also enjoyed a distinguished career in Portugal as a lawyer as well as in electoral politics.

Mr. Vitorino was elected to Portugal’s Parliament in 1980. In 1983 he became Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs. He later served as Deputy Secretary for the Governor of Macau until 1989, when he returned to Lisbon to become a judge of the Constitutional Court, a term that ended in 1994. He subsequently served as Minister for National Defence and Deputy Prime Minister within the government of António Guterres, now the United Nations’ Secretary General.

From 1999 to 2004 António Vitorino served as the European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs. During his tenure, Mr. Vitorino participated in conversations that led to the drawing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Convention on the Future of Europe.

Since exiting politics in 2005, Mr. Vitorino has returned to law, serving as a partner with the firm of Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira & Associados. Vitorino has been President of the think tank Notre Europe since June 2011 and for many years enjoyed an ongoing role as commentator for the leading Portuguese television channel RTP 1.

António Vitorino earned a degree from the University of Lisbon’s School of Law in 1981, as well as a Master’s Degree in Legal and Political Science. Mr. Vitorino has authored works on Constitutional Law, Political Science, European Community Law, and was also a member of the Drafting Committee of the Portuguese White Book on Corporate Governance.

Established in 1951, International Organization for Migration has over 10,000 staff and over 400 offices in more than 150 countries. IOM is the UN Migration Agency and is the leading inter-governmental organisation in the field of migration. It is committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society.

IOM works with its partners in the international community to assist in meeting operational challenges of migration, advance understanding of migration issues and to encourage social and economic development through migration while upholding the well-being and human rights of all migrants.

IOM provides services and advice to governments and migrants to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.

IOM was granted permanent observer status to the UN General Assembly in 1992. A cooperation agreement between IOM and the UN was signed in 1996. IOM joined the UN system as a related organization in September 2016, when the agreement outlined in GA res.70/296 (2016) was signed during the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants.

 

 For further information please contact Leonard Doyle at IOM HQ, Tel: +41 792857123, Email: ldoyle@iom.int

You can view this statement online here. </s> For the first time in 67 years, the United States will not lead the United Nations migration agency. Isaacs is considered to hold opinions which run counter to the purpose of the agency, including his perspectives on Islam and climate change, which both happen to be major factors impacting the migration of peoples around the globe.

In addition, the vote is taking place at a time when Trump has been making waves by imprisoning entire families for crossing the Mexico border after splitting up families at the border, many of whom remain parted at the writing of this article. Therefore, the US is lacking a positive humanitarian like image, which is of at least a little bit of significance when a humanitarian body’s leadership is in question. In his place, a Portuguese diplomat won the vote in Isaacs’s stead, beginning his term in October.

June 29 (UPI) — Ken Isaacs, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the United Nations migration agency, was bypassed for the job Friday in a secret ballot vote. Isaacs finished last among three candidates Thursday at the International Organization for Migration’s Geneva headquarters. Portuguese diplomat and former deputy prime minister Antonio Vitorino won the vote instead. He will start in October. The vote marks the first time since 1951 the leader of the 169-nation agency will not be a U.S. representative. Vitorino will replace American William Lacy Swing, who was elected near the end of President George W. Bush’s administration. The rejection of Isaacs, who now works for the Christian non-profit group Samaritan’s Purse, can be seen as a global rebuke to Trump’s migration policies — and a possible sign of falling U.S. influence in multilateral agencies after Trump recently pulled the United States from the U.N. Humans Rights Council. Since his nomination in February, Isaacs has also dealt with prior social media posts in which he was critical of Islam, calling it a violent religion, and expressed doubts about climate change. He later apologized. Isaacs’ defeat at the IOM is “a sad statement on U.S. global credibility,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, former disaster assistance director of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “The world was unlikely to support a U.S. candidate to lead the global migration body under those circumstances.”

Another nail has found itself in the coffin of American international influence, hammered in there by President Donald Trump. Last week, US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, withdrew the US from the United Nations Human Rights Council, just days before a report was to be issued on the growing poverty crisis in America, allegedly over the Council’s bias against Israel. Trump has withdrawn the US from multiple multilateral accords, including the TPP, the Paris Climate Accord, the JCPOA, a G7 declaration, threatened NAFTA on multiple occasions, threatened sanctions against America’s trade partners for not abiding by America’s foreign policy interests, and initiated what is rapidly turning into a global trade war.

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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.” </s> UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres has been sworn in as Secretary-General of the United Nations, taking over from Ban Ki-moon at the end of the month.

The former U.N. refugee chief was elected by acclamation in the General Assembly in October and takes over from Ban on Jan. 1.

The 67-year-old Guterres becomes the ninth U.N. chief in the world body’s 71-year history.

Guterres performed well in answering questions before the General Assembly while campaigning for the job. His executive experience as prime minister and as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005-2015 propelled him to first place among the 13 candidates vying for the job in informal polls in the Security Council.

Monday’s swearing-in came after the 193 members paid tribute to Ban. </s> GENEVA: Member states of the United Nations migration agency on Friday rejected President Donald Trump’s nominee for director general, repudiating historic American control of the organisation.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) had been led by an American throughout the agency’s 67-year history with one exception from 1961 to 1969. But Trump’s pick Ken Isaacs, an executive with the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse who faced serious charges of anti-Muslim bigotry, proved to be an untenable choice.

Isaacs was eliminated after three rounds of voting, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the vote. Portuguese politician and former commissioner EU Antonio Vitorino has emerged as the front-runner and will face off against and current IOM deputy chief Laura Thompson in the upcoming ballot.

Diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity said that Vitorino’s bid has been helped by the European Union’s painstaking effort to forge a common response to migration challenges and the strategic advantage of having one of their own as the IOM chief.

Trump’s hardline stance on migration — from the so-called Muslim ban to his “zero tolerance” policy on the southern US border that led to separating parents and children — undermined Washington’s traditional right to choose the world’s top migration official.

Trump’s “America First” administration has also levelled ferocious attacks against multilateral bodies and undermined IOM’s core global function — refugee resettlement. Analysts had warned that voters might stick with Isaacs to avoid punishing US fundings cuts, but Trump’s posture on migration and Isaacs’s personal history appeared to sway the room. Isaacs published numerous tweets describing Islam as an inherently violent religion, including one after the 2016 attack in the French city of Nice that said “Islam is not peaceful”.

He has also retweeted xenophobic material, such as a post last year from Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, which argued “peaceful Muslims” and “Jihadis” were indistinguishable. Isaacs made his Twitter account private amid the uproar that followed his nomination in February, but he has not denied responsibility for any of his inflammatory comments. </s> Ban Ki-moon, left, hugs the new U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after Guterres was sworn in at U.N. headquarters. | Photo Credit: AP

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres was sworn in Monday as Secretary-General of the United Nations, becoming the ninth U.N. chief in the body’s 71-year history.

The former U.N. refugee chief was elected to the top job by acclamation in the General Assembly in October. He will take over duties from Ban Ki-moon on Jan. 1.

Guterres, 67, performed well in answering questions before assembly members and his executive experience as prime minister and as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005-2015 propelled him to first place among 13 candidates vying for the job in informal polls in the Security Council. After the sixth poll, the council nominated him by acclamation and his name was sent to the assembly for final approval.

After being sworn in by General Assembly President John William Ashe, Guterres addressed the 193 member nations, saying the world body must work to simplify, decentralise and make more flexible its sprawling bureaucracy.

“It benefits no one if takes nine months to deploy a staff member to the field,” he said. “The United Nations needs to be nimble, efficient and effective. It must focus more on delivery and less on process, more on people and less on bureaucracy.”

The swearing-in came after the 193 General Assembly members paid tribute to Ban, ending with a standing ovation for the native South Korean.

The swearing-in ceremony included the U.N.’s top leaders and was attended by dignitaries including Myanmar politician and Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power lauded Ban’s accomplishments while in office and said she was confident Guterres is the right person to replace him. “He is the man for the job in such challenging times,” she said.

The selection of a new secretary-general had traditionally been decided behind closed doors by a few powerful countries. But this year, the process involved public discussions with each candidate who was campaigning for the job.

U.N. chiefs are charged with promoting sustainable development, working for peace around the globe, protecting human rights and dealing with humanitarian catastrophes.
United Nations member states elect António Vitorino as the director general of the International Organization for Migration, becoming the first non-American to hold this position since the 1960s.