President Donald Trump refused to renominate an Obama-era United Nations official allegedly due to not having time to find a replacement.
According to a report from Politico, state department officials assumed the White House would renominate Gay McDougall, the current U.S. member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
The 18-member treaty body was created in the 1960s to end racism and discrimination on a global scale. It reportedly meets three times a year in Geneva. In a statement, White House officials suggest the president may have run out of time to find a replacement before a deadline.
The state department official reportedly told Politico the Trump administration missed the deadline "[cementing] the narrative that the Americans just don’t care about these kinds of things anymore.”
However, conflicting reports are coming from the administration. An unnamed senior Trump administration official suggested there was no intention to nominate a person for the committee this year.
“Although the United States did not nominate a candidate this year for election to the committee, that in no way diminishes our global leadership on efforts to eliminate racial discrimination,” the official said.
McDougall is an esteemed human rights lawyer. She held the role since 2015, The Hill reports.
The 71-year-old Atlanta native held several positions in the past, making her suitable for the CERD Committee. She was the first UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues, a Scholar-in-Residence at the Leitner Center on International Law and also served a four-year term as a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in the late 1990s.
According to The Hill, state department officials allegedly assured McDougall she would be renominated. The reports coming from the White House neither deny or confirm whether that is true. Critics believe the Trump administration is intentionally targeting Obama-era policies as a form of retaliation and deep-seated racial animus.
The latest development, however, indicates the administration's criticism of international governing bodies. Last June, the United States removed itself from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
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