Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marco Rubio announced that for the first time since the WHO’s founding in 1948, the United States is no longer a member.
U.S. Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio jointly announced that the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) is “complete.”
Thursday’s announcement marks the first time the United States has not joined the WHO since it joined as a founding member in 1948, although President Donald Trump had indicated his intention to withdraw from the organization in 2020, during his first term in office.
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A joint statement from Rubio and vaccine skeptic Kennedy primarily blamed the WHO’s “failures during the coronavirus pandemic” as the reason for the withdrawal.
Rubio and Kennedy noted that all U.S. funding for the WHO has been suspended, and said, “Going forward, U.S. involvement with the WHO will be strictly limited to effectuate the withdrawal and protect the health and safety of the American people.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters earlier this month that the organization had responded to funding shortfalls following the U.S. withdrawal by making cuts.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Thursday that “for all intents and purposes” the United States “no longer participates in the activities of the World Health Organization,” but “legal details will probably need to be worked out.”
“It’s clear that we want the United States to participate fully in the work of the World Health Organization, just as we would want any country to do,” Dujarric said.
“If there is an issue that clearly does not have borders, that does not respect territorial integrity, then it is a health issue,” he said.
“Viruses, non-communicable diseases, all these problems need to be and should be solved through international cooperation. The World Health Organization is the place to do that,” he added.
“Withdrawal is reckless and leaves us all even more vulnerable.”
President Trump, who has faced criticism from his own top health officials for his response to the coronavirus, announced plans to withdraw the United States from the Geneva-based WHO on January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term in the White House. However, a clause put in place by the US meant that the withdrawal would not take effect until this week.
WHO’s chief legal officer, Stephen Solomon, told reporters earlier this month that the organization’s founders did not include an exit clause because they saw the organization as a “truly universal organization that would make the world safer.”
But Solomon said there was a provision that would allow the U.S. to withdraw if it met two conditions: giving one year’s notice and meeting “its financial obligations in full for this year,” and also noting that the U.S. is “in arrears on payments” for 2024 and 2025.
Following the US withdrawal, public health advocate Lucky Tran wrote on social media: “The WHO has played a huge role in bringing countries together to reduce death and disease on an unprecedented scale.”
“We are by no means perfect, but we can only get better by continuing to participate. Withdrawing is reckless and makes us all even more vulnerable,” Tran added.
The WHO, which had 194 member states before the U.S. withdrawal and represents all United Nations members except Liechtenstein, which has a population of less than 50,000, often plays a coordinating role on cross-border health issues.
This includes actively deploying doctors and other medical professionals to assist in humanitarian disasters, such as Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, and responding to a wide range of communicable and non-communicable diseases, including Ebola and tuberculosis.
