US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order withdrawing Washington from a number of United Nations bodies, including its Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and setting up a broader review of US funding for the multilateral organization.
The executive order said it withdrew Washington from UNHRC and the main UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), and would review involvement in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The moves were made in protest against what White House staff secretary Will Scharf described as "anti-American bias" at the UN agencies.
The 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council are elected by the General Assembly to three-year terms, with the United States ending its latest term on December 31. It currently has observer status at the body.
Tuesday's order would appear to end all US participation in the council's activities, which include reviews of countries' human rights records and specific allegations of rights abuses.
"More generally, the executive order calls for review of American involvement and funding in the UN in light of the wild disparities and levels of funding among different countries," said Scharf.
Trump highlighted the "tremendous potential" of the UN but said it is "not being well run."
"It should be funded by everybody, but we're disproportionate, as we always seem to be," he said.
Trump has long railed against Washington's levels of funding of multilateral bodies, calling for other countries to increase their contributions, notably at military alliance NATO.
UNRWA is the chief aid agency for Palestinians, with many of the 1.9 million people displaced by the war in Gaza dependent on its deliveries for survival.
Under Trump, Washington has backed a move by Israel to ban the agency, after the US ally accused UNRWA of spreading hate material.
US funding of UNRWA was halted in January 2024 by the administration of then-president Joe Biden after Israel accused 12 of its employees of involvement in Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack.
A series of probes found some "neutrality related issues" at UNRWA, but found no evidence for Israel's chief allegations, and most other donors that had similarly suspended funding resumed their financial support.
Earlier in his latest term, Trump also withdrew from the Paris climate accord and began withdrawing from the World Health Organization, of which it is the largest donor.
Each of the withdrawals has been a repeat of the Republican billionaire's first term in office, which ended in 2021.
US freezes funds to Haiti force
The United States has frozen its financial contributions to a United Nations fund for a multinational security support mission in Haiti, a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday, a move that would stop $13.3 million in pending aid.
"We received an official notification from the US asking for an immediate stop work order on their contribution" to the trust fund for the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, said Stephane Dujarric, the UN secretary-general's spokesperson, referring to the already underfunded Kenya-led force.
The UN Security Council gave the green light in October 2023 to the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission designed to support Haiti's authorities in their fight against criminal gangs, which control swaths of the country.
Washington's funding freeze comes as part of newly elected President Donald Trump's push to slash US overseas aid, a drive that has included an effort to shutter the operations of the government's main aid agency, USAID.
In late January, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that Haiti's capital could become overrun by gangs if the international community does not step up aid to the security mission.
More money, equipment and personnel are needed for the international force, Guterres said, adding that any further delays risk the "catastrophic" collapse of Haiti's security institutions and "could allow gangs to overrun the entire metropolitan area" of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's Foreign Minister Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste, speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council, has said that the country faced "major difficulties" that threaten not just the population but also "the very survival of the state."
The MSS is not a UN force, but the UN has set up a voluntary fund to finance it, which has raised $110 million to date, an amount that has been deemed largely insufficient.
Just under 800 of the 2,500 security personnel hoped for have been deployed.
The United States had transferred $15 million to the fund -- the second-largest contribution, after Canada's $63 million -- with $1.7 million already disbursed.
In parallel with the UN-hosted fund, the United States, then headed by Joe Biden, had contributed over $300 million in funds and equipment directly to the MSS, including dozens of armored vehicles.
Haiti currently has no president or parliament and is ruled by a transitional body, which is struggling to manage extreme violence linked to criminal gangs, poverty and other challenges.
More than 5,626 people were killed in Haiti last year as a result of gang violence, about a thousand more than in 2023, the UN said.
More than a million Haitians have been forced to flee their homes, three times as many as a year ago.
US aid agency
The US government's giant humanitarian agency USAID on Tuesday announced it was placing its staff in the United States and around the world on administrative leave as it moved to recall employees from overseas postings.
The agency said in a statement on its website that the staff leave will begin shortly before midnight on February 7 and will concern "all USAID direct hire personnel... with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs."
"Thank you for your service," the statement read.
The move is part of Trump's -- and his billionaire ally Elon Musk's -- radical drive to shrink the US government, which has shocked Washington and caused angry protests from Democrats and the human rights community.
The aid arm of US foreign policy, USAID funds health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including the world's poorest regions.
It is seen as a vital source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China, where Musk has extensive business interests.
Musk has called USAID "a viper's nest of radical-left marxists who hate America" and has vowed to shut it down.
Among other criticisms, which Musk has not substantiated, he claims USAID does "rogue CIA work" and even "funded bioweapon research, including Covid-19, that killed millions of people."
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO -- who has massive contracts with the US government and was the biggest financial backer of Trump's campaign -- said he had personally cleared the unprecedented move with the president.
The assault on USAID comes in the context of long-running narratives on the hard-line conservative and libertarian wings of the Republican Party that the United States wastes money on foreigners while ignoring Americans.
The agency describes itself as working "to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity."
Its budget of more than $40 billion is a small drop in the US government's overall annual spending of nearly $7 trillion.