Trump withdraws US from 66 global bodies, including 31 UN organisations

US President Donald Trump has ordered the United States government to pull out of 66 international organisations that the White House said “no longer serve American interests.”

That includes 31 United Nations 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 issued Wednesday. Trump directed US agencies to cease participating and funding the entities in a presidential memo.

Trump and his allies have long expressed disdain for the United Nations, other international organisations and accords. The decision extends the Trump administration’s retreat from international climate diplomacy by pulling back from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty that lays out a goal of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and compels member countries to provide a yearly inventory of that planet-warming pollution.

The framework also undergirds the Paris Agreement, the carbon-cutting pact from which Trump has already directed a US withdrawal set to take effect later this month.

Trump’s move is consistent with his domestic policy shifts, as regulatory agencies rewrite rules that clamped down on pollution tied to producing and consuming fossil fuels. Environmentalists warned Trump’s departure would leave the US outside of key decisions on how to address the world’s warming.

“It is not only self-defeating to let other countries write the global rules of the road for the inevitable transition to clean energy, but also to skip out on trillions of dollars in investment, jobs, lower energy costs, and new markets for American clean technologies,” said Manish Bapna, president of the US Natural Resources Defense Council.

A UN spokesperson said the organisation would not comment until it had additional details.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the groups were working to undermine US sovereignty. “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,” he said in a press release Wednesday. “The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over.”

The fact sheet also did not specify how much money was involved in the withdrawal, but the decision unfolded about a week after the UN approved a seven percent reduction in its budget as it grapples with a financial crisis driven largely by the refusal of the US to pay what it owes.

The reduction, which includes cutting 2,900 positions, comes as the UN tries to cut costs wherever it can. Last year, the organization announced that it would no longer provide paper towels at the restrooms in its New York headquarters.