UN warns maternal deaths in Afghanistan may rise after US funding pause

PARIS: The Paris prosecutor said Tuesday it cannot investigate allegations by several women who said they were sexually assaulted or harassed by Abbé Pierre, a nationally revered priest and humanitarian crusader who died in 2007.
The allegations against him first surfaced last year and were detailed in an internal report by Abbé Pierre’s foundations. The French Catholic Church last month asked prosecutors to initiate an investigation, saying it wanted to uncover the full extent of the abuse, any other victims and any systemic cover-up.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that it looked into legal options, but that Abbé Pierre’s death makes it impossible to open an investigation into his past actions.
It also studied whether to investigate those who covered up or failed to report the abuse allegations, but because of statute of limitations, no investigation is possible.
Abbé Pierre was a French Catholic priest renowned for his dedication to aiding the poor and homeless, and was long seen as the conscience of France. In 1949, he founded the Emmaüs movement, an international organization focused on combating poverty and homelessness.
The allegations against him were an important step in France’s broader reckoning with clerical abuse.
In July 2024, Emmaüs International and the Fondation Abbé Pierre released a report detailing accusations from seven women, including one who was a minor at the time, alleging sexual assault and harassment by Abbé Pierre between the late 1970s and 2005. A dedicated channel for victims led to 17 additional accusations, with incidents reportedly occurring from the 1950s to the 2000s across various countries, including France, the United States, Morocco and Switzerland.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order withdrawing Washington from a number of United Nations bodies, including its Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and setting up a broader review of US funding for the multilateral organization.
The executive order said it withdrew Washington from UNHRC and the main UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), and would review involvement in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The moves were made in protest against what White House staff secretary Will Scharf described as “anti-American bias” at the UN agencies.
The 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council are elected by the General Assembly to three-year terms, with the United States ending its latest term on December 31. It currently has observer status at the body.
Tuesday’s order would appear to end all US participation in the council’s activities, which include reviews of countries’ human rights records and specific allegations of rights abuses.
“More generally, the executive order calls for review of American involvement and funding in the UN in light of the wild disparities and levels of funding among different countries,” said Scharf.
Trump highlighted the “tremendous potential” of the UN but said it is “not being well run.”
“It should be funded by everybody, but we’re disproportionate, as we always seem to be,” he said.
Trump has long railed against Washington’s levels of funding of multilateral bodies, calling for other countries to increase their contributions, notably at military alliance NATO.
UNRWA is the chief aid agency for Palestinians, with many of the 1.9 million people displaced by the war in Gaza dependent on its deliveries for survival.
Under Trump, Washington has backed a move by Israel to ban the agency, after the US ally accused UNRWA of spreading hate material.
US funding of UNRWA was halted in January 2024 by the administration of then-president Joe Biden after Israel accused 12 of its employees of involvement in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA, but found no evidence for Israel’s chief allegations, and most other donors that had similarly suspended funding resumed their financial support.
Earlier in his latest term, Trump also withdrew from the Paris climate accord and began withdrawing from the World Health Organization, of which it is the largest donor.
Each of the withdrawals has been a repeat of the Republican billionaire’s first term in office, which ended in 2021.