By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Apr 2 2025 – Today’s multiple and connected crises – including conflicts, climate breakdown and democratic regression – are overwhelming the capabilities of the international institutions designed to address problems states can’t or won’t solve. Now US withdrawal from global bodies threatens to worsen a crisis in international cooperation.

The second Trump administration quickly announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO), terminated its cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council, walked out of negotiations on a global tax treaty and imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court officials.

Although the USA has sometimes been an obstructive force, including by repeatedly blocking Security Council resolutions on Israel, global institutions lose legitimacy when powerful states opt out. While all states are formally equal in the UN, the reality is that the USA’s decisions to participate or quit matter more than most because it’s a superpower whose actions have global implications. It’s also the biggest funder of UN institutions, even if it has a poor record in paying on time.

As it stands, the USA’s WHO withdrawal will take effect in January 2026, although the decision could face a legal challenge and Trump could rescind his decision if the WHO makes changes to his liking, since deal-making powered by threats and brinkmanship is how he does business. But if withdrawal happens, the WHO will be hard hit. The US government is the WHO’s biggest contributor, providing around 18 per cent of funding. That’s a huge gap to fill, and it’s likely the organisation will have to cut back its work. Progress towards a global pandemic treaty, under negotiation since 2021, may be hindered.

It’s possible philanthropic sources will step up their support, and other states may help fill the gap. The challenge comes if authoritarian states take advantage of the situation by increasing their contributions and expect greater influence in return. China, for example, may be poised to do so.

That’s what happened when the first Trump administration pulled out of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). China filled the vacuum by increasing its contributions to become UNESCO’s biggest annual funder. Presumably not coincidentally, a Chinese official became its deputy head, while China was able to block Taiwan’s attempts to join. It was out of concern about this growing influence that the Biden administration took the USA back into UNESCO in 2023; that decision could now be reversed, as Trump has claimed UNESCO is biased against the USA and ordered a review.

The Human Rights Council may be less immediately affected because the USA isn’t currently a member, its term having ended at the close of 2024. It rejoined in 2021 after Trump pulled out in 2018, and had already made the unusual decision not to seek a second term, likely because this would have provoked a backlash over its support for Israel. Apart from its relationship with Israel, however, during its term under the Biden administration the USA was largely recognised as playing a positive role in the Council’s business. If it refuses to cooperate, it deprives US citizens of a vital avenue of redress.

The USA’s actions may also inspire other states with extremist leaders to follow suit. Argentina’s President Milei, a keen Trump admirer, has imitated him by announcing his country’s departure from the WHO. Political leaders in Hungary and Italy have discussed doing the same. Israel followed the USA in declaring it wouldn’t engage with the Human Rights Council. For its own reasons, in February authoritarian Nicaragua also announced its withdrawal from the Council following a report critical of its appalling human rights record.

It could be argued that institutions like the Human Rights Council and UNESCO, having survived one Trump withdrawal, can endure a second. But these shocks come at a different time, when the UN system is already more fragile and damaged. Now the very idea of multilateralism and a rules-based international order is under attack, with transactional politics and hard-nosed national power calculations on the rise. Backroom deals resulting from power games are replacing processes with a degree of transparency aimed at achieving consensus. The space for civil society engagement and opportunities for leverage are in danger of shrinking accordingly.

Real reform needed

Revitalising the UN may seem a tall order when it’s under attack, but as CIVICUS’s 2025 State of Civil Society Report outlines, civil society has ideas about how to save the UN by putting people at its heart. The UNMute Civil Society initiative, backed by over 300 organisations and numerous states, makes five calls to improve civil society’s involvement: using digital technologies to broaden participation, bridging digital divides by focusing on connectivity for the most excluded, changing procedures and practices to ensure effective and meaningful participation, creating an annual civil society action day as an opportunity to assess progress on civil society participation and appointing a UN civil society envoy.

Each of these ideas is practical and could open up space for greater reforms. A UN civil society envoy could, for example, promote best practices in civil society participation across the UN and ensure a diverse range of civil society is involved in the UN’s work.

Civil society is also calling for competitive Human Rights Council elections, with a civil society role in scrutinising candidates, and limits on Security Council veto powers. And as time approaches to pick a new UN Secretary-General, civil society is mobilising the 1 for 8 billion campaign, pushing for an open, transparent, inclusive and merit-based selection process. The office has always been held by a man, and the call is for the UN to make history by appointing a feminist woman leader.

These would all offer small steps towards making the UN system more open, democratic and accountable. There’s nothing impossible or unimaginable about these ideas, and times of crisis create opportunities to experiment. States that want to reverse the tide of attacks on international cooperation and revitalise the UN should work with civil society to take them forward.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact [email protected].

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By Maryse Guimond
JERUSALEM, Apr 2 2025 – The end of the tenuous ceasefire in Gaza is having disastrous consequences for women and girls. From 18 to 25 March—in just those 8 days, 830 people were killed—174 women, 322 children, with 1,787 more injured.

Let me break that down because these are not just numbers, they are people: every single day from the 18 to 25 March, an average of 21 women and over 40 children are killed.

This is not collateral damage; this is a war where women and children bear the highest burden. They comprise nearly 60 per cent of the recent casualties, a harrowing testament to the indiscriminate nature of this violence.

What we are hearing from our partners and the women and girls we serve is a call to end this war, to let them live. It is a situation of pure survival and survival of their families. Because as they say, there is simply nowhere to go. They are telling us they will not move again, since no safe places anyway.

As a woman recently said to us from Deir Al Balah, “My mother says, ‘Death is the same, whether in Gaza City or Deir al-Balah… We just want to return to Gaza.” This is a feeling that is shared by many other women I had an opportunity to meet with during my last visit in January and February.

How is the UN helping civilians in Gaza?. Credit: UNICEF/Abed Zagout

The UN says Gaza is facing a food crisis.

Another woman from Al-Mirak tells us “We’re glued to the news. Life has stopped. We didn’t sleep all night, paralyzed. We can’t leave. My area is cut off. I’m terrified of being hit – every possible nightmare races through my mind.” This is simply no way of living.

Since March 2nd, humanitarian aid has been halted by the Israelis. And people’s lives are again at risk since the Israeli bombardments resumed on March 18.

The ceasefire, while brief, had provided some breathing. During that time, I had the opportunity to visit some of our partner organizations who were repairing their offices in Gaza City with what material was available. I saw neighbours coming together to clean some of the rubble on their streets, heard children playing. Met with women who expressed their fragile hope for peace and for rebuilding their lives. I saw thousands of people on the roads back to Gaza City.

And now that hope is gone. For now, 539 days, the relentless war has ravaged Gaza, obliterating lives, homes, and futures. This is not merely a conflict; it is a war on women—on their dignity, their bodies, their very survival.

Women have been stripped of their fundamental rights, forced to exist in a reality where loss is their only constant. Cumulatively, over 50,000 people have been killed and more than 110,000 injured.

It is crucial to protect the rights and dignity of the people of Gaza, especially women and girls, who have borne the brunt of this war. Women are desperate for this nightmare to cease. But the horror persists, the atrocities escalate, and the world seems to be standing by, normalizing what should never be normalized.

As we have seen in these 18 months of war, women play a crucial role during times of crisis. However, after all this time, they speak of being trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

This war must end. I, and others, have echoed this plea countless times, amplifying the voices of the women inside Gaza. Yet the devastation deepens.

What will we tell future generations when they ask? That we did not know? That we did not see?

International humanitarian law must be upheld. The systems we established to protect humanity must be respected. All humans must be treated equally. This war is shattering core values and principles.

As UN Women, we join the UN Secretary-General in his strong appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian access to be restored, and for the remaining hostages and all those arbitrarily detained to be released immediately and unconditionally.

Maryse Guimond, UN Women Special Representative in Palestine, speaking at the Palais des Nations from Jerusalem, on the disastrous consequences for women and girls following the end of a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza.

IPS UN Bureau

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