Trump withdraws US from 66 international organisations

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he will withdraw the United States from dozens of international organizations and bodies associated with the United Nations as Washington retrenches from global cooperation on everything from climate change to cotton.

According to the White House, the United States will withdraw from 66 organizations or bodies out of which 31 are entities associated with the United Nations.

In a statement, the White House said the US will withdraw from the bodies and halt any funding because they operate contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.

“Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength,” the White House said in the statement.

UN Director for the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan, said the US seems to be walking away from entities that promote international law, economic development, environmental cooperation and gender rights

Gowan said that since Trump returned to power last year, his administration had treated development and environmental cooperation as quasi-socialist agendas, and it has been hypercritical of any and all efforts to promote gender equality.

Among the notable organizations that the United States will leave is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, a scientific body for global climate research and policy guidance.

It will also withdraw from the Global Forum on Migration and Development, an organization that helped develop a 2018 United Nations compact on migration that Trump administration officials rejected as an infringement on sovereignty during his first term.

The UN Population Fund, the main agency supporting worldwide reproductive health and rights, also appeared on the new list of withdrawals.

The President had cut all funding to the agency, which critics say promotes abortion, during his first term.

Some of the bodies the United States is withdrawing from are lesser known, such as the International Cotton Advisory Committee, a body for cotton-producing nations that was founded in Washington almost 90 years ago.

In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the move, stating that many international organizations served a globalist project rooted in the discredited fantasy of the end of History and that their real aim was to constrain American sovereignty.