The United States (US) has announced its withdrawal from 66 international organisations.

In many parts of the United Nations (UN) system including the UN Women, the International Law Commission, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Peacebuilding Commission among others.

Thirty-one UN entities are affected in the broad cull that further confirms the US’s retreat from multilateral institutions, that it views as not aligning with its national interests.

This follows earlier withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accord, the World Health Organisation, UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council among others.

The UN is expected to respond later this Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the withdrawal was part of a process to identify wasteful, ineffective and harmful international organisations, with the US President Donald Trump’s administration finding them to be redundant in scope, mismanaged, unnecessary or captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas.

Rubio said the organisations they were leaving were often dominated by progressive ideologies and detached from US. national interests, citing gender equity, climate orthodoxy and DEI mandates serving a globalist project.

He said Washington would no longer continue expanding resources and the legitimizing weight of participating in institutions that were irrelevant.

–SABC–