Responding to the Trump administration’s announcement that the United States is withdrawing from 66 international organisations, conventions, and treaties, Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, said: 

“This is a vindictive and reckless assault on the legitimacy and integrity of the United Nations and the rules-based international order that has been the bedrock of global cooperation for the past 80 years. With this latest in a series of damaging attacks, President Trump is shamefully doubling down on his efforts to destroy the multilateral system that the United States helped to build from the ashes of World War Two to guarantee the universal human rights and protection of all people.

“This was a deceptive announcement, given the United States had already disengaged from many of these bodies and chosen to defund key UN agencies. It is yet another troubling example of the Trump administration’s callous disregard for international law and global commitments in crucial areas such as promoting development, addressing the climate crisis, ending violence against children, and achieving gender equality.

“Further, in publicly withdrawing from organisations it already had disengaged from, the administration used the occasion to broadcast its overt anti-Black racism. With Secretary of State Marco Rubio citing ‘DEI mandates’ as justification for the withdrawals, the administration’s announcement that it was leaving the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, a body of the UN Human Rights Council, from which the United States had already withdrawn, was nothing more than a deliberate act of racism and institutional sabotage.

“These decisions are not just cruel, racist and discriminatory, they will also no doubt prove to be devastatingly short-sighted by undermining the interests of people in the United States and around the world.

“Withdrawing from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in particular is unprecedented, and the United States will be the only country to have done so. Along with its withdrawal from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other climate-related bodies, this will actively undermine climate action both domestically and globally. It will inhibit efforts to protect the US population from the impacts of the climate crisis and could drive more climate displacement from other countries. Still, other states should seize this as an opportunity to now do the important work of fairly phasing out fossil fuels and funding a just transition, then call on the US to rejoin later.

“Withdrawing from peacebuilding mechanisms and bodies directly contradicts the US government’s stated calls for the UN to prioritise ‘peace and security’. This is particularly alarming at a time when President Trump is threatening several countries with military action and on the same day he called for a $1.5 trillion military budget. The consequences of these withdrawals risk triggering global destabilisation, further endangering human rights everywhere, and disproportionately harming the most marginalized communities.

“UN member states and implicated international organisations must act immediately to shore up the multilateral and international legal architecture essential to universal human rights, including by engaging in robust defense of these systems and meaningful reforms to preserve accountability, prevent erosion of standards and protect people all over the world.”