President Donald J. Trump will withdraw the United States from UNESCO, the United Nations cultural body tasked with the preservation and defense of world heritage, amid the nation’s deepening isolation from international institutions that promote human rights.
The decision was announced by the State Department on Tuesday and will take effect at the end of 2026.
“Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
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Bruce accused the organization of platforming “divisive social and cultural causes” and of furthering its “outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”
Through a slew of executive orders, President Trump has displayed a disdain for organizations that rely on multilateral action to address global concerns such as climate change, infectious diseases, and cultural safekeeping, particularly those that cooperate with the United Nations. He withdrew the US from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2018, during his first presidential term, and on the first day of his second term, withdrew the country from the World Health Organization.
The decision to leave UNESCO could represent an inevitability for the United States, which had developed a fraught dynamic with its parent body before Trump took office. The United States, under the Obama administration, stopped funding for UNESCO as a direct response to its decision to grant full membership to Palestine, and had severed relations with the organization in 2017 during Trump’s first term. The Biden administration rolled back the breakup in 2023, rejoining the UN with the argument that a power vacuum left by America would be filled its geopolitical rivals, particularly China.
Among UNESCO’s notable responsibilities is monitoring the 1,200 World Heritage Sites scattered across the globe, especially those at risk of damage or destruction due to conflict, as well as designating new cultural properties worthy of protection. UNESCO has designated 26 World Heritage Sites within the US.
UNESCO’s affiliates have worked extensively to preserve, or where that is deemed insufficient, rebuild cultural sites. In June, UNESCO verified damage to 501 cultural sites in Ukraine caused by Russian forces since February 2022, including 151 religious sites and 34 museums. Also among the body’s powers is granting “provisional enhanced protection” to endangered heritage sites, which promises the highest level of immunity from attack and use for military purposes.
“Non-compliance with these clauses would constitute a ‘serious violation’ of the 1999 Second Protocol to the Hague Convention, opening the possibility of prosecution,” according to UNESCO. The organization has leads reconstruction campaigns funded in part by its member states. Mosul, in Iraq, and several sites in Ukraine has benefited from the initiative. UNESCO has also been outspoken with its concern for the loss of cultural heritage in Palestine due to Israel’s war on Gaza, and the growth of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which have threatened archaeological properties deemed as part of Palestine. In July 2024, the organization courted controversy from Israel and its allies by adding the ancient Saint Hilarion Monastery, also known as Tell Umm Amer, in Gaza to its endangered sites list as a result of the ongoing war with Israel.
Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, cited “the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization” as another reason for the United States’ decision.
“However regrettable, this announcement was anticipated, and UNESCO has prepared for it,” UNESCO director genderal Audrey Azoulay said in a statement. Azoulay added that the financial impact of the withdrawal will be minimal, as UNESCO has over recent years turned toward voluntary contributions from member states and private donors. US financial contributions account for just 8 percent of UNESCO’s overall budget, a fraction of its previous contributions, which in 2011 amounted to nearly a fifth of its operating costs.
In her statement, Azoulay added, “The reasons put forward by the United States to withdraw from the organization are the same as seven years ago, even though the situation has changed profoundly, political tensions have receded and UNESCO today constitutes a rare forum for consensus on concrete and action-oriented multilateralism.”