Ending The Charade Of Wasteful International Organizations

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

January 14,
2026

The United States has played a central role in
shaping the international order. From the Monroe Doctrine
which allowed nations in our region to flourish free from
interference outside of our hemisphere, to our pivotal role
in the establishment of the United Nations, to serving as
the primary security guarantor under the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization and as the world’s largest
humanitarian donor, America’s leadership has been
unquestionable. Leadership requires difficult choices, and
the ability to recognize when the institutions created to
promote peace, prosperity and liberty have become obstacles
to those goals.

What we term the “international
system” is now overrun with hundreds of opaque
international organizations, many with overlapping mandates,
duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial
and ethical governance. Even those that once performed
useful functions have increasingly become inefficient
bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism or
instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests. Not
only do these institutions not deliver results, they
obstruct action by those who wish to address these problems.
The era of writing blank checks to international
bureaucracies is over.

This week, in accordance with
the findings of Executive Order 14199, President Trump
announced our withdrawal from 66 international organizations
identified as part of the Trump Administration’s ongoing
review of wasteful, ineffective, and harmful international
organizations. The Presidential Memorandum targets
institutions that are redundant in their scope, mismanaged,
unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests
of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own,
or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and
general prosperity.

It is no longer acceptable to
invest the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars in
institutions that cannot demonstrate results, accountability
or respect for our national interests. It is an abdication
of America’s global leadership to continue funding and
promoting organizations that obstruct solutions to the
problems facing the world today such as affordable energy,
economic growth, and national sovereignty. Continued U.S.
participation in them only legitimizes their existence and a
model that has failed billions around the world.

From
the UN Population Fund’s long history of ethical
violations including funding coerced abortions; to UN
Women’s failure to define what a woman even is; to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change squandering millions
of dollars on funding for climate-alarmist, anti-energy
investment in the West Bank and Gaza; to the UN Permanent
Forum on People of African Descent espousing openly racist
policies in support of global reparations—these
organizations boast a consistent record of dysfunction if
not outright malice. The American people, our partners and
the billions around the world who look to the United States
for leadership deserve better. Our continued participation
in organizations that do not reflect our values or serve our
interests would be an abandonment of our national
duty.

The organizations that we have chosen to
withdraw from have been selected after a lengthy review of
their purpose, actions, efficiency, effectiveness,
necessity, and most importantly, their ability to help us
achieve U.S. national interests. Those we are withdrawing
from are by no means the only offenders. Our review of
United States participation in international organizations
remains ongoing.

This does not mean America is turning
its back on the world. We are simply rejecting an outdated
model of multilateralism- one that treats the American
taxpayer as the world’s underwriter for a sprawling
architecture of global governance.

The Trump
Administration is demanding real results from the
institutions we fund and participate in, and we stand ready
to lead a campaign for reform. President Trump has been
clear, including through this week’s Presidential
Memorandum that he will not allow international
organizations to undermine the United States and limit our
national sovereignty, our energy independence, our economic
prosperity, our democracy, and our constitutional freedoms.
He will not allow the United States to continue funding a
failed model that refuses or proves impossible to reform.
This week’s Presidential Memorandum demonstrated that
America is no longer accepting the broken status quo, that
this nation is prepared to lead, as it always has, and that
sometimes true leadership means knowing when to walk
away.

Marco Rubio was sworn in as the 72nd Secretary
of State on January 21, 2025. The Secretary is creating a
Department of State that puts America First.

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