For the first time since 1951, an American won't lead the United Nations' migration agency

The Trump administration's candidate to head the United Nations' migration agency has been rejected in a blow to the United States, which has held the post since 1951. "The American is out," Senegalese diplomat Youssoupha Ndiaye told The Associated Press after voting in Geneva.

The American candidate, Ken Isaacs, is the vice president of an evangelical charity, with his only relevant experience being a short stint as a political appointee in charge of overseas disaster relief under former President George W. Bush. Isaacs' candidacy was called into question after his old tweets surfaced, containing messages calling Muslims violent and insisting that "Christians" be the "first priority" when it came to the Syrian refugee crisis.

The race to lead the migration agency is now between Portuguese Socialist Party member Antonio Vitorino and Costa Rica's Laura Thompson, the deputy director-general of the International Organization for Migration.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"The person who leads this needs to be a symbol of the international community's support for humanity," the president of Refugees International, Eric Schwartz, told The Washington Post. "And that means that dark-skin people and Muslim people have the same inherent worth as any other people."