First lady Jill Biden is making her first trip to France to highlight the U.S. rejoining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and honor Americans who died in northern France during World War II.
Mrs. Biden will arrive Monday in Paris to greet U.S. Embassy staff before joining the French president’s wife, Brigitte Macron, for a UNESCO flag-raising ceremony.
UNESCO is a cultural wing of the U.N. that facilitates international exchange through education, arts, sciences and culture, though it has been a point of contention over the past decade.
The U.S. and Israel stopped supplying money for the body after UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member in 2011, and the Trump administration withdrew altogether.
Biden officials determined that not having a seat at the table was risky. They cited the influence of China over the body as it debated emerging technologies and other matters.
Member states are not expected to object to U.S. membership in a vote later this week, The Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday, Mrs. Biden will head north to visit the Brittany American Cemetery.
The cemetery consists of 28 acres of farm country near the eastern edge of Brittany. It contains the remains of 4,404 U.S. soldiers, most of whom died in the Normandy and Brittany campaigns of 1944, according to the American Battle Monuments Commission.
