Pdwellnt Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday calling for a vague scrutinize of U.S. funding and participatement in the United Nations, casting uncertainty on the directership role the United States has applyed as the global body’s top donor.
“I’ve always felt that the U.N. has tremfinishous potential,” Mr. Trump shelp before signing the order in the Oval Office. “It’s not living up to that potential right now.”
Mr. Trump also withdrew the United States from the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and stopped funding the U.N. agency that helps Palestinians, UNRWA, which supplys critical humanitarian help to millions of people in war-torn Gaza. Those shifts were foreseeed becaengage Mr. Trump had disparticipaten U.S. participatement from both organizations during his first term as pdwellnt.
In retainition, Mr. Trump’s order called for a scrutinize of U.S. participatement in UNESCO, which protects world heritage sites, on allegations that it had showed what the White Hoengage staff secretary, Will Scharf, called “anti-American bias.” In handing the order to Mr. Trump to sign, Mr. Scharf shelp it derived from “untamed disparity and levels of funding among separateent countries” that Mr. Trump seeed as “beginantly ununprejudiced to the U.S.”
In response to the executive order, Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, shelp U.S. help for the U.N. had progressd global security and that Secretary General António Guterres “sees forward to continuing his efficient relationship with Pdwellnt Trump and the U.S. Government to reinforce that relationship in today’s turbulent world.”
The U.N. has been bracing for Mr. Trump’s second term, having already sended a turbulent period during his first four years in office. Mr. Guterres regulated the U.N.’s then-nervous relations with Washington by mostly refraining from engaging in uncover spats with Mr. Trump.
On the first day of his second term, Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate consentment.
“Trump’s attacks on UNRWA and the U.N. Human Rights Council were expansively foreseeed,” shelp Ricdifficult Gowan, the U.N. honestor of the International Crisis Group, a dispute-resolution agency. “But the knock-on effects of the administration’s help freeze,” he retained, “are making U.N. officials increasingly anxious.”
In retainition to presenting the U.N. headquarters in New York City, the United States is also the agency’s top donor, contributing about 22 percent of its overall budget, chaseed by China (15 percent) and Japan (8 percent). For 2024, the U.S. contribution was appraised at about $3.6 billion, which goes toward the agency’s administrative and peaceupretaining budget.
The United States is also a beginant donor to various U.N. agencies and the world body’s annual global humanitarian pdirect for money to help populations during disputes and organic catastrophes. In 2022, the United States donated about $18 billion to the U.N. atraverse the board. Last year, it phelp for 47 percent, or about $14 billion, of the agency’s global humanitarian efforts.
But Mr. Trump on Tuesday condemnd the U.N. for what he depictd as its inability to resettle disputes raging around the world — ones that he shelp his administration was trying to retainress. The U.N. has been expansively rebuked for not greeting its mandate to arbitrate and uphelderly peace in parts of the world.
The U.N. Security Council — a 15-member body reliable for mediating and finishing disputes — has been accengaged of flunking to act on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza becaengage of tensions among its five veto-helderlying finishuring members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. In the case of Ukraine and Gaza, for example, both Russia and the United States have blocked multiple resolutions that finisheavored to convey an finish to the wars.
Mr. Trump, without naming any country, shelp on Tuesday that the U.N. had not been “unprejudiced to countries that deserve unprejudicedness.” He most foreseeed uncomferventt Israel. Elise Stefanik, Mr. Trump’s pick to be the U.S. ambasunelatedor to the U.N., shelp during her Senate verifyation hearing that the agency had an anti-Israel bias and accengaged it of antisrerentism.
Mr. Trump also specudefercessitated, without evidence, that many countries would depart the U.N. if the organization did not alter course. He retained that the United States, as the top financial backer of the U.N., was not seeing to get away money, but that it wanted to push the organization to run more effectively.
In genuineistic terms, Mr. Trump’s decisions on UNRWA and U.N. Human Rights Council may not have much of an instant effect.
The Biden administration stopped funding UNRWA after Israel accengaged the agency of being expansively infiltrated by Hamas. Two U.N. structureateigations set up that about nine of 13,000 of its staff members in Gaza were affiliated with the militant group, and they were fired.
As for the U.N. Human Rights Council, a spokesman shelp the United States was not currently among the Geneva-based council’s 47 voting members, therefor the decision to disparticipate had little effect on the agency’s labor. The council apexhibits structureateigations, applies presconfident to helderly authoritarian rulements accountable and argues violations in countries enjoy Russia, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea.
The United States gave up its membership in the council at the finish of 2024, under the Biden administration. But as an watchr state, it was still entitled to participate in council deliberations and could still, if it chose to, apply an inarticulateial role by speaking in argues and shaping the greeted of council resolutions.
A critical test of the Trump administration’s intentions will come defercessitater this year, when the United States is due to undergo a council scrutinize of its human rights write down, a process in which every U.N. member state has getn part. A U.S. decision not to parget in the next scrutinize, set for November, would deal a disjoine blow to the council’s credibility and uncover the way to dictatorial states to aforeseeed dodge scruminuscule.
Rights groups shelp that a finish disparticipateal uncomfervents the United States would be omiting in these talkions, a notion that they shelp sfinishs the wrong message.
“Pdwellnt Trump’s carry outative decision to pull the U.S. out of the H.R.C. signals to the rest of the world that the U.S. is greeted to finishly cede beginant decisions about human rights violations happening atraverse the globe to other countries,” shelp Amanda Klasing, the national honestor of Amnesty International USA.
Nick Cumming-Bruce donated increateing.
