
The Trump administration is withdrawing from dozens of international organizations and treaties addressing gender equity, climate change, and sexual violence that the White House describes as “captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own.”
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They’re also “woke”, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The U.S. set the pullout in motion with one of the 225 executive orders Trump has issued in his second term, entitled “Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States,” announced on January 7.
Those include multiple United Nations organizations addressing the advancement of women’s rights, family planning, maternal and child health, and preventing sexual violence in conflict.
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The administration turned its back on the climate “hoax”, as Trump describes it, withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the basis for the Paris climate agreement (abandoned twice by Trump in his two terms), and signed by 197 nations in 1992.
Other non-U.N. organizations were dropped as well, including the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the Global Counterterrorism Forum.
A total of 66 organizations, conventions, and treaties made up the list included in the executive order. The State Department said review of additional international organizations is ongoing.
In now typically bellicose fashion, Rubio took the lead explaining the administration’s “America First” reasoning.
The United Nations has “morphed into a sprawling architecture of global governance, often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests,” Rubio claimed. “From DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] mandates to ‘gender equity’ campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project rooted in the discredited fantasy of the ‘End of History.'”
Rubio failed to describe that theory of world governance, but said it actively seeks “to constrain American sovereignty.”
He could have added it’s a roadblock to Trump’s — and his own — imperialist ambitions.
“President Trump is clear: 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,” Rubio added. “The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over.”
The Trump administration has already isolated the U.S. at the U.N.
In December, two Trump administration representatives denounced U.N. policies and programs associated with abortion rights, “transgender ideology,” and “sexual autonomy for children” in meetings and back-to-back votes that left the United States standing alone among all the world’s nations.
“I think what we’re seeing is the crystallization of the U.S. approach to multilateralism, which is ‘my way or the highway,'” said Daniel Forti, head of U.N. affairs at the International Crisis Group, to PBS Newshour about the administration’s latest assault on “woke.”
“It’s a very clear vision of wanting international cooperation on Washington’s own terms,” Forti added.
“It is unconscionable for the U.S. to undercut programs that promote gender equality through the empowerment of women and girls, improve the safety and quality of life of people of African descent, and combat the disastrous impact of climate change,” Desirée Cormier Smith, a former U.S. Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice and Co-President of The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, said in a statement. “This is a political move meant to enforce an extreme anti-human rights agenda.”
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