Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that the United States has a “legal obligation” to continue paying dues that fund United Nations agencies after the White House announced it is withdrawing support from more than 30 UN-related initiatives.
Guterres regretted President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from 31 UN-related agencies, including the UN’s population agency and the UN treaty that underpins international climate negotiations. Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Guterres, said assessed contributions to the UN regular budget and peacekeeping budget, as approved by the General Assembly, are a legal obligation under the UN Charter for all Member States, including the United States.
Dujarric added that despite the announcement, the targeted UN entities will keep operating. “The United Nations has a responsibility to deliver for those who depend on us,” he said in a statement.
The new dispute comes amid what the AP described as a difficult stretch for U.N.-U.S. relations after Trump took office again. Over the past year, U.N. officials and Trump administration officials carried out public and private appeals, and the U.N. had cited a $2 billion agreement for humanitarian assistance announced last month as part of efforts to prevent a complete retreat.
The AP reported that Wednesday’s withdrawal announcement surprised diplomats at the highest levels of the U.N., who said they learned about it through news reports and White House social media. Dujarric told reporters there had been no formal communication from the Trump administration outlining the decision, and many U.N. officials did not comment on potential impacts because they said they had not been given details or official word from the U.S. government.
The broader context is a Trump executive order suspending American support for 66 groups, agencies and commissions after a yearlong review of U.S. participation and funding for international organizations. Many targets are U.N.-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels focusing on climate, labor, migration and other issues the administration has characterized as catering to diversity and “woke” initiatives.
The AP said the administration had previously suspended support for the World Health Organization, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, the UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO. It also described the U.N. Population Fund as one of several long-scrutinized organizations targeted earlier in Trump’s first term.
The withdrawal from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, came after the administration had already pulled back from other climate initiatives. The AP said the 1992 agreement between 198 countries to finance climate activities in developing countries is the underlying treaty for the Paris climate agreement, and reported that Trump withdrew from that underlying agreement soon after returning to the White House.
In remarks carried by the AP, Simon Stiell, the UNFCCC executive secretary, warned that the U.S. decision to pull back would harm “the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse.” Stiell also said, “The doors remain open for the U.S. to reenter in the future, as it has in the past with the Paris Agreement,” and that the “size of the commercial opportunity in clean energy, climate resilience, and advanced electrotech remains too big for American investors and businesses to ignore.”
U.N. officials also pointed to the structure of UN budgeting. The regular budget, which finances day-to-day operations, is funded by 193 member nations paying shares based on the size of their economies, while a separate budget funds UN peacekeeping. According to the AP, U.N. officials said the United States did not pay its annual contributions to the regular budget last year, an obligation outlined in the UN Charter, and said a member that is in arrears for two full years loses its vote in the General Assembly.
Dujarric said the arrangement cannot be treated as negotiable on demand, telling reporters, “The charter is not à la carte.” “We’re not going to renegotiate the charter,” he said.
The AP reported that all four other veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — China, France, Russia and the U.K. — have paid in full, and that China paid over $685 million.