US checks out of WHO, leaving its bill unsettled
A year after President Trump signed an executive order for the US to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO), the exit is formally taking place today, leaving global defences against health threats weakened.
According to Reuters, the WHO has said the US has not paid fees it owes for 2024 and 2025, amounting to around $260 million, and WHO member states are scheduled to discuss the exit and how it should be handled during an executive board meeting next month. At the moment, there is no word from the White House on its willingness to honour its final financial commitments to the agency.
Trump started the process of withdrawing the US from the WHO in his first term in office, and also slashed funding to the agency, but was unable to get the exit across the line before he lost the 2020 election, and the move was abandoned by the Biden administration.
The WHO has been working over the past year to try to get the Trump administration to change course, and Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this month that the withdrawal "is a lose for the US, and […] a lose for the rest of the world."
Now, the WHO is facing a budget deficit that looks likely to stall progress in pandemic preparedness, health equity, and prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, with vaccination campaigns and maternal and child health programmes already under stress after Trump dismantled the USAID aid agency early in his second term.
Critics of the withdrawal say that, aside from the deep impact on humanitarian initiatives around the world, it leaves the US more exposed to health threats, as health emergency preparedness efforts will likely be scaled down.
Trump was critical of the WHO's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic during his first term, and has also been vocal about the amount of financial support that the US provides to the organisation compared to other countries like China, although its approximately 18% share of the budget has been reasonably proportionate to the country's share of global GDP.
He has accused the agency of failing to push through reforms, bureaucratic bloat, and succumbing to "inappropriate political influence of WHO member states."
The WHO is just one United Nations organisation among more than 30 that Trump is divorcing, as he sets up a 'Board of Peace' in Gaza that some have interpreted as an attempt to replace the functions of the UN. The US is also planning to leave UN programmes for action on democracy, climate change, deforestation, oceans, energy, violence against women and children, and many more.
