(The Center Square) – U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., maintained America’s position on withdrawing from the World Health Organization in video remarks on Tuesday, claiming the organization has strayed from its purpose of promoting and protecting global health.
“Like many legacy institutions, the WHO has become mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest, and international power politics,” Kennedy said.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization and to “pause the future transfer of any United States Government funds, support or resources to the WHO.”
Kennedy reiterated that United States support has been critical to the organization but that the WHO has allowed other interests besides global well-being to interfere with carrying out its mission.
“While the United States has provided the lion’s share of the organization’s funding historically, other countries such as China have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy contended that the WHO should be run with a certain degree of transparency, as it is an organization representing its 194 member states.
“[The WHO] has failed to maintain an organization characterized by transparency and fair governance by and for its member states,” Kennedy said, adding that the organization “often acts like it has forgotten that its members must remain accountable to their own citizens and not to transnational or corporate interests.”
As an alternative, Kennedy suggested that new organizations might be founded that would demonstrate the values the U.S. has said the WHO has largely abandoned.
“I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organization as a wake-up call,” he said. But new institutions or “existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent, an accountable,” could provide a kind of replacement, according to Kennedy.
The president previously initiated America’s withdrawal from the organization in July 2020, at odds with the organization over its response and guidance concerning COVID-19, but President Joe Biden reinvigorated American participation in the WHO once he took office. Trump rescinded those executive actions with his Jan. 20 executive order.
