President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the top UN human rights body and will not resume funding for the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees.
The US left the Geneva-based Human Rights Council last year, and it stopped funding the agency assisting Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, after Israel accused it of harbouring Hamas militants who participated in the surprise October 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel, which UNRWA denies.
Trump’s announcement came on the day he met with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country has long accused both the rights body and UNRWA of bias against Israel and antisemitism.
Trump's executive orders also call for a review of American involvement in the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known as UNESCO, and a review of US 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 UN's regular operating budget, with China the second-largest contributor.
“I’ve always felt that the UN has tremendous potential,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s not living up to that potential right now. ... They've got to get their act together.”
He said the UN 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, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated the Human Rights Council's importance and UNRWA's work in delivering “critical services to Palestinians.”
Trump also pulled the US out of the Human Rights Council in June 2018. His ambassador to the UN 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.
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President Joe Biden renewed support for the Human Rights Council, and the US won a seat on the 47-nation body in October 2021. But the Biden administration announced in late September that the United States would not seek a second consecutive term.
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 UN member countries, the US 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 UN 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 October 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.
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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 UN investigation, which found nine may have been involved.
In response, 18 governments froze funding to the agency, but all have since restored support except the United States. Legislation ratifying the US decision halted any American funding to UNRWA until March 2025, and Trump’s action Tuesday means it will not be restored.