The Trump administration will pull out dozens of international agencies, such as the U.N. population agency and the U.N. treaty that establishes international climate negotiations. It is another step of the U.S. in the direction of international withdrawal.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that the United States would withdraw all its affiliation with 66 organizations, agencies, and commissions in response to the order of his administration to examine all his participation and funding of all international organizations, including those that are members of the United Nations.
The majority of the targets are U.N.-associated agencies, commissions, and advisory panels dealing with climate, labor, and other topics that this administration has labelled as catering to diversity and “woke” efforts.
In a statement, the State Department said, “The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”
Trump’s decision to withdraw from organizations that foster collaboration with nations to address global issues. This move comes as his administration launched military efforts or issued threats that have rattled allies and adversaries alike, including capturing autocratic Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and indicating an intention to take over Greenland.
The administration has already suspended its assistance to such organizations as the World Health Organization, the U.N. with Palestinian refugees called UNRWA, the U.N. human rights council, and the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO because it has adopted a more à la carte approach to its payments to the world organization, selecting which areas and agencies better fit its agenda and which no longer serve its interests.
It has made a significant break with how past administrations, in both the Republican and Democratic forms, have treated the U.N., and has made the world body, already in the midst of its own internal repercussions, to retaliate with a wave of staffing and program cuts.
A number of independent nongovernmental agencies, including those that collaborate with the United Nations, have cited numerous project terminations due to the decision made by the U.S. administration last year to cut foreign aid under the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID.
Although the massive change has taken place, the U.S. officials, including Trump himself, claim that they have recognized the potential of the U.N. and would rather commit taxpayer funds to increase the American presence on most of the standards-setting U.N. initiatives, which compete with China, such as the International Telecommunications Union, the International Maritime Organization, and the International Labor Organization.
The most recent move by Trump and his supporters to place the U.S. out of reach of international bodies concerned with climate and climate change is the withdrawal out of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC.
The landmark Paris climate agreement was a sequel to the UNFCC, which is a financial support agreement between 198 countries to fund activities related to climate change in the developing countries, signed in 1992.
Trump, who has referred to climate change as a hoax, pulled out of such an agreement shortly after returning to the White House.
Science mainstreamers attribute the growing number of fatal and expensive extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, wildfires, heavy rainfall, and dangerous heat, to climate change.
The U.S. withdrawal could hinder global efforts to curb greenhouse gases because it “gives other nations the excuse to delay their own actions and commitments,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries’ carbon dioxide emissions.
Experts reported that without the involvement of the U.S., one of the largest emitters and economies in the world, it will also be hard to realize meaningful progress on climate change.
The U.N. population agency, which offers sexual and reproductive health to the global population, has long been a target of Republican criticism, and Trump himself defunded the agency in his first term in office.
He and other GOP officials have further charged the agency with involvement in “coercive abortion practices” in such countries as China. When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he intended to restore funding for the agency. A State Department review was conducted after a year with no evidence to support these claims.
The U.S. will also abandon other organizations and agencies like the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies, and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
