Trump announces US exit from dozens of UN, international groups

Since the start of his second term in January last year, Trump has withdrawn the United States from other U.N. bodies, including the World Health Organization and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw Washington from 66 United Nations and international organizations, agencies, commissions, and conventions.

Trump signed and published a presidential memorandum on Wednesday, which, he said, followed a review of which “organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States.”

The withdrawals will come with full U.S. funding cuts for all of the entities.

“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,” stated Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state.

Washington will exit the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which serves as the central international agreement on climate crisis solutions, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other assorted environmental organizations.

America joined the convention via Senate ratification. It was not immediately clear if Trump had the authority alone to order a unilateral withdrawal. Trump announced last year that the United States would exit the Paris climate deal as well.

The memo on Wednesday also calls for withdrawals from the U.N. Population Fund, which focuses on maternal and child health, and the U.N. offices of the special representative of the secretary-general for children in armed conflict and sexual violence in conflict.

The children in armed conflict office has accused Israel for two years in a row of being a mass violator of children’s rights, despite wildly inconsistent, internal U.N. data and standards.

António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, warned Israel it was in danger of appearing on this year’s sexual violence in conflict blacklist as well.

“President Trump is clear: It is no longer acceptable to be sending these institutions the blood, sweat, and treasure of the American people, with little to nothing to show for it,” Rubio stated. “The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over.”

Since the start of his second term in January last year, Trump has withdrawn the United States from other U.N. bodies, including the World Health Organization and the U.N. Human Rights Council, and he has called for dismantling UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinians, which Washington, Jerusalem, and others have said has extensive ties to Palestinian terror organizations.

A U.N. spokesman said the organization would comment soon.

According to Trump’s memo, the United States intends to exit other entities, such as the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the United Nations University, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.

Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and executive director of its Middle East and international law center, stated that the Trump administration’s action is “beginning to dismantle the opaque web of globalist institutions—including numerous organizations whose exit I have called for over the years.”

“Some of these are minor niche organizations that do no harm but cannot be justified from the point of taxpayer expense,” wrote Kontorovich, who is also a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

“Others, like the Vienna Commission, seek to manufacture and lay down astroturfed international ‘soft law’ that overwhelmingly aligns with progressive values. U.N. Women neglected mass rape by Hamas but remembered Amal Clooney’s birthday.”

To Kontorovich, the biggest thing was the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, “because it was joined via a Senate-ratified treaty, making reentry by a subsequent president almost impossible.”

“UNFCCC violated federal law by admitting the PA as a ‘state,’ and will now reap the consequences,” he stated.

“There has never been such a broad shakeout of America’s position in international organizations, and it is much overdue. Needless to say, a Democratic president will undo much of this, because these organizations embody their globalist worldview,” he added.

“But for decades Republican presidents played along. The Left had normalized their preferences as ‘good global citizenship.’ Trump’s action puts an end to all that.”