By Simon Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration on Thursday formally notified Congress of its plans for a major overhaul of the State Department, which will cut thousands of jobs, refocus the agency’s human rights bureau on “Western values” and have the bureau previously responsible for refugees pivot to preventing illegal migration.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio first announced the reorganization in April, ordering officials to assess how many jobs would be cut in the closure of 132 bureaus and offices and merger of others.
Rubio said in a statement that the State Department had taken into account lawmakers’ feedback on the plan, designed to scale back a department he said had grown in terms of bureaucracy and costs without delivering results.
“The reorganization plan will result in a more agile Department, better equipped to promote America’s interests and keep Americans safe across the world,” Rubio said.
An executive summary of the proposal, seen by Reuters, said nearly 45% of State’s domestic offices would be merged, eliminated, consolidated or streamlined in the reorganization.
The department plans to cut thousands of U.S.-based workers, reducing its civil service and foreign service domestic workforce by 3,448 people, according to the congressional notification, out of the 18,780 people as of May 4. Nearly 2,000 of those will be subject to job cuts while more than 1,500 will be deferred resignations.
No job cuts are planned for locally-employed staff or U.S. personnel posted overseas.
A new organisation chart published on Thursday showed that a new under secretary of state position would be created to oversee foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, which will include much of the work previously done by the U.S. Agency for International Development that has been dismantled by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The Department’s humanitarian affairs components will be refocused on the Administration’s prospective civil society agenda and will ensure efficiency and oversight in the delivery of foreign assistance in a post-USAID era,” the executive summary said.
The new under secretary, known as F, would need to be confirmed by the senate, it said.
The official will oversee the bureau for democracy, human rights and labor, which the proposal says will be reorganized to “ground the Department’s values-based diplomacy in traditional Western conceptions of core freedoms” and headed by a deputy assistant secretary for “Democracy and Western Values.”
The bureau for population, refugees and migration will also be reorganized to focus on “the orderly return of unlawfully present migrants to their place of origin,” the summary said.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Jonathan Landay, Simon Lewis, Daphne Psaledakis and Caitlin Webber; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Philippa Fletcher)
