President Donald Trump has signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
According to Trump, the U.N. has tremendous potential but not living up to that potential right now.
Trump also severed connections with the UNHRC during his first term as president, a body that has long been accused of bias against Israel by U.S. politicians of both parties.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinians, will no longer receive future financing as a result of the ruling.
Following allegations from Israel that certain UNRWA employees had connections to Hamas, the Biden administration suspended financing for the organisation during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
However, an independent assessment concluded that there was no supporting evidence. The primary organization helping Palestinians in Gaza is UNRWA.
The new executive order comes the same day that Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House, marking Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since being sworn in last month.
Trump’s executive orders also call for a review of American involvement in the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, known as UNESCO, and a review of U.S. funding for the United Nations in light of “the wild disparities in levels of funding among different countries.”
The United States, with the world’s largest economy, pays 22% of the U.N.’s regular operating budget, with China the second-largest contributor.
He said the U.N. needs “to be fair to countries that deserve fairness,” adding that there are some countries, which he didn’t name, that are “outliers, that are very bad and they’re being almost preferred.”
Before Trump’s announcement, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated the Human Rights Council’s importance and UNRWA’s work in delivering “critical services to Palestinians.”
Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the Human Rights Council in June 2018.
His ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Nikki Haley, accused the council of “chronic bias against Israel” and pointed to what she said were human rights abusers among its members.
Trump’s order on Tuesday has little concrete effect because the United States is already not a council member, said council spokesperson Pascal Sim. But like all other U.N. member countries, the U.S. automatically has informal observer status and will still have a seat in the council’s ornate round chamber at the U.N. complex in Geneva.
UNRWA was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949 to provide assistance for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment, as well as for their descendants. It provides aid, education, health care and other services to some 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, UNRWA ran schools for Gaza’s 650,000 children as well as health facilities, and helped deliver humanitarian aid.
It has continued to provide health care and been key to the delivery of food and other aid to Palestinians during the war.
The first Trump administration suspended funding to UNRWA in 2018, but Biden restored it. The U.S. had been the biggest donor to the agency, providing it with $343 million in 2022 and $422 million in 2023.
For years, Israel has accused UNRWA of anti-Israeli bias in its education materials, which the agency denies.
Israel alleged that 19 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza participated in the Hamas attacks. They were terminated pending a U.N. investigation, which found nine may have been involved.
