WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has withdrawn the US from over 60 international organisations, including UN bodies and the India-France-led International Solar Alliance, calling the institutions "redundant" and "contrary" to America's interests.
Trump on Wednesday signed a memorandum titled ‘Withdrawing the United States from International Organisations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States'.
After signing, Trump said he has determined that it is “contrary” to the interests of the US to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to the 66 UN and Non-United Nations organisations.
This includes 31 UN entities, as well as 35 non-UN organisations “that operate contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty,” according to a White House fact sheet.
Trump directed all executive departments and agencies to take immediate steps to put into effect the withdrawal of the US from the organisations “as soon as possible”.
He added that for UN entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law.
The list of organisations includes the International Solar Alliance, a collaborative initiative between India and France aimed at uniting efforts to combat climate change by implementing solar energy solutions.
Headquartered in India, the ISA was launched at COP21 in Paris in 2015 and has expanded its membership scope to include all UN member states.
Currently, over 100 countries are signatories to the ISA, with more than 90 countries having ratified to become full members. Its mission is to unlock USD 1 trillion in solar investments by 2030 while reducing technology and financing costs.
A UN spokesperson said they have seen the full list of organisations from which the Trump administration is withdrawing the US and will provide a comment later.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said his country "will no longer fund or participate in international organisations that do not serve, or in many cases work counter to, American interests."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump Administration has found the 66 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.”
"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. The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over,” Rubio said.
He said the list of institutions from which the US is withdrawing demonstrates that what started as a pragmatic framework of international organisations for peace and cooperation has morphed into a sprawling architecture of global governance, often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests.
"From DEI mandates to 'gender equity' campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organisations now serve a globalist project rooted in the discredited fantasy of the 'End of History'," he said.
These organisations actively seek to constrain American sovereignty. Their work is advanced by the same elite networks -- the multilateral “NGO-plex” -- that we have begun dismantling through the closure of USAID, he added.
"We will not continue expending resources, diplomatic capital, and the legitimising weight of our participation in institutions that are irrelevant to or in conflict with our interests. We reject inertia and ideology in favour of prudence and purpose. We seek cooperation where it serves our people and will stand firm where it does not," he said.
"Today, President Trump announced the US is leaving 66 anti-American, useless, or wasteful international organisations. Review of additional international organisations remains ongoing," Rubio said.
"These withdrawals keep a key promise President Trump made to Americans - we will stop subsidising globalist bureaucrats who act against our interests. The Trump Administration will always put America and Americans first," he added.
The list includes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The UN Economic and Social Council -- Economic Commission for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific and Western Asia Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict are in the list.
It also includes the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Peacebuilding Commission, Peacebuilding Fund, UN Conference on Trade and Development, UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UN Population Fund.
Trump has been extremely critical of the UN and its agencies, and within hours of his swearing-in on January 20 last year, he signed an executive order directing the US to withdraw, again, from the Paris climate agreement, echoing a similar directive from his first term.
Within weeks of his second term, Trump issued an order directing that the US will not participate in the UN Human Rights Council, will conduct a review of its membership in the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and suspend funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
When Trump arrived at the UN Headquarters for the 80th General Assembly session in September last year to address world leaders for the first time in his second term as President, he did not hold back and delivered one of his harshest rebukes of the world body.
"...what is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential. I've always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words and empty words don't solve war,” Trump had said.