The Unite States (US) will pull out of the United Nations’ culture and education agency (UNESCO), the US State Department has disclosed, as President Donald Trump continues to pull out of international institutions.
Tammy Bruce, State Department Spox, said, “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN’s sustainable development goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”
The decision is a blow to the global organisation which is base in Paris, France, founded after the second world war to promote peace through international cooperation in education, science and culture.
The move is part of the President Trump’s second-term drive to pull the US out of a series of global organizations, including leaving the World Health Organization (WHO), halting funding to the Palestinian relief agency (UNRWA) and withdrawing from the UN human rights council, as part of a review of US participation in UN bodies.
An America withdrawal, to take effect in December 2026, will be a huge knock to UNESCO’s work on education, culture and combating hate speech.
However, officials at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris had been braced for a potential US departure during Trump’s second term.
The US makes available around 8% of the body’s total budget, making the financial impact of Washington’s departure less severe than for other organisations, such as the WHO, for which the US is by far the biggest financial backer.
Anna Kelly, White House Deputy Spox, told the New York Post: “President Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from Unesco – which supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out of step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November.”
