Researchers are horrified when the United States is leaving the world scientific body of UNESCO again...

The Trump administration plans to leave at the end of 2026 and criticizes the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The United States is once again withdrawing from the United Nations scientific and cultural organization, UNESCO, halting its short two-year return to the agency. The decision of the U.S. Department of State, announced on July 22, will come into force on December 31, 2026.

Researchers say that the U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO is a failure for global cooperation in science and education. The agency, headquartered in Paris and has offices in more than 50 countries, supports programs in the field of biodiversity, girls' education, closing the gender gap in science and protecting the natural heritage. His work is particularly important in low- and middle-income countries, where it also helps to train teachers and restore universities in war-to-war countries such as Lebanon and Ukraine.

UNESCO also supports open science, and in 2023 issued global guidelines on the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education and research.

Daniel Wagner, head of the UNESCO Department of Education and Literacy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says: "It has never been wise to leave UNESCO, and now is a particularly unfortunate time."

Biomedical scientist Peter Gluckman, president of the International Scientific Council, which works closely with UNESCO and is also based in Paris, agrees. At the end of this year, UNESCO member states will elect a new Director-General, who will replace Audrey Azoulet, the former Minister of Culture of France. The United States will lose the opportunity to work with the new leader of the organization, says Gluckman.

Barbara Finlayson-Pitts, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Irvine, says: "The United States will be at a significant disadvantage with this conclusion." She adds that this step weakens the position of the United States in global discussions on critical issues such as climate change.

Wagner adds: "For generational challenges and opportunities, such as the introduction of artificial intelligence in education or literacy in low-income countries - areas where the United States has good leadership opportunities - we are essentially cutting off our noses to make our faces angry."

Unexpected

This decision was not a surprise. The White House announced in February that it was reviewing U.S. membership in international agencies - in the case of UNESCO, it cited concerns about the organization's inability to reform itself and its rhetoric against Israel.

In a statement dated July 22, the U.S. administration also added the UN Sustainable Development Goals to its list of criticisms. The statement says: "UNESCO is working to promote social and cultural causes of disagreement and supports great attention to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist ideological agenda for international development that contradicts our foreign policy "America First".

Azuley said in a statement that UNESCO was ready for the decision of the United States. The last time the country withdrew from UNESCO was in 2017, during Trump's first term, cutting off more than 22% of the agency's funds. According to UNESCO, the last withdrawal will not be as strong as in 2017, because the U.S. contribution is currently 8% of UNESCO's current annual budget of $900 million.

Azulei also said that the statements of the United States contradict the reality of UNESCO's efforts as the only UN agency responsible for Holocaust education and the fight against anti-Semitism. "We will continue to work hand in hand with all our American partners in the private sector, academia and non-profit organizations," she added in her statement.

The Lost World

Yesterday's decision is the latest in what is becoming a sequence of the U.S. withdrawal from the UN or UN-related agencies and treaties, including the World Health Organization and the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

The United States was one of the founding countries of UNESCO at the end of World War II and started with "remarkable, idealistic goals for science, culture and education around the world, which united us in common standards for world peace," says Catherine McCarthy, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine at Duluth.

Matthew Brown, a philosopher of science at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, says: "UNESCO has been an important force in formulating and monitoring the rights and responsibilities of scientists and fighting for science as a common good."

Withdrawal from the United States, according to Gluckman, "is a further weakening of the complex network of scientific institutions created for the global good, including the good of the United States".