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US Mission to the UN Takes Aim at Human Rights, Gender, Disarmament, International Law, and Multilateralism

Image credit: Bernd Dittrich | Unsplash

14 January 2025
By Ray Acheson 

At the end of December 2025, the US Mission to the United Nations released an explanation of its positions on resolutions in the UN General Assembly Third Committee, which focuses on social, humanitarian, and cultural issues. The positions outlined in the document have profound implications well beyond the Third Committee, especially when coupled with the US government’s recent withdrawal from 66 international organisations and the US president’s  claim that he is not constrained by international law, only his own “morality”. It’s important that civil society, international organisations, and other governments are aware of these positions and work together to uphold international law despite the US efforts to destroy it.

Rejecting collective understandings for unilateral impositions

The US position paper says it is moving away from “ideological multilateralism” and seeks to make the United Nations “accountable to the nations that fund it.” This in itself is ironic, since the US government did not pay its annual contribution to the UN’s regular budget last year. Importantly, a UN member state that is in arrears of its dues payment for two full years loses its vote in the General Assembly.

The list of Third Committee resolutions the US has decided are “performative” and/or “politicized” is extensive, including texts related to the rights of Indigenous Peoples, homelessness, youth, women, racism, torture, water and sanitation, social inclusion, refugees, migrants, mercenaries, human rights, democracy, Palestine, combatting the glorification of Nazism, and many more.

Beyond its rejection of these resolutions, the US Mission to the UN also outlines its broader positions on related issues. Some positions are relevant to RCW’s work for disarmament, demilitarisation, protection of civilians, human rights, gender equality, climate justice, and more. For example, the US Mission asserts: 

  • There is no such thing a “human rights-based approach”.
  • States do not have extraterritorial obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and these rights are not justiciable in US courts.
  • Non-state actors do not have obligations under international human rights law and therefore cannot commit human rights violations.
  • Private actors have no obligations regarding human rights under international human rights law.
  • The US doesn’t recognise an independent human right to access to justice or equal access to justice.
  • The US does not have obligations regarding the rights of the child, “including the principle that the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children.”
  • “Women are biologically female and men are biologically male” and the US expects the United Nations to ensure that its documents and programming align with that policy by using terminology that clearly refers to women and men, girls and boys, and avoids ambiguous terms.
  • The US is committed to “the protection of life at all stages, and the defense of the family as the fundamental unit of society.” The US will not support language on “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” without caveats and qualification. It says: “UN agencies have used such terminology to promote abortion rights, transgender rights for children, gender ideology, and other controversial issues that are not universally agreed human rights. The United States also reaffirms that there is no international right to an abortion’.”
  • The US does not support the use of the term “right to privacy”.
  • There is no “right to development”.
  • The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) impinge upon state sovereignty and the US government will nolonger reaffirm them.
  • There is no general, binding obligation under international law for states to provide humanitarian access or to require the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian or other assistance at all times.
  • The humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence do not constitute binding obligations under international law.
  • Any claims that US sanctions worsen human suffering or undermine development are false and misleading.
  • Many countries have gotten “wildly off track” in “exaggerating climate change into the world’s greatest threat” and the US “will no longer tolerate” this practice.
  • The UN should avoid using diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts and terminology at the expense of recognising hard work, excellence, and individual achievement and upholding the equal dignity and rights of every person.
  • Categorisations of populations as “marginalized,” “vulnerable,” or disadvantaged are “neo-liberal” and “paternalistic”.
  • Torture does not include the death penalty or “interrogation methods that are legal under U.S. law.”  
  • The use of “less-than-lethal weapons” does not decrease the need to use any kind of weapon in all circumstances.
  • The Mandela Rules, the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, and the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials are non-binding.
  • No international body can impose centralised mandates or global governance regimes that constrain artificial intelligence (AI). 

Some of these positions were articulated earlier in 2025 by the US Mission, for example during an explanation of vote last year on resolutions in the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, as well as at the Commission of the Status of Women. But having them compiled together in one place provides a much bigger picture of the orientation of the Trump regime across a range of issues.

Manipulation of language

It’s also worth noting how this position paper distorts concepts and manipulates language in ironic and vexing ways. For example, in defence of tariffs, the US Mission says “Trade should serve the people, not global elite”—even as the Trump regime’s tariffs have led to devastatingly high costs for those living within the United States. In another reference to elites, the US Mission says it is “dismayed that many members of the European Union and other countries also continually link humanitarian contexts to climate change instead of the man-made actions of elites in governments who have the power to control their actions and behavior.” The refusal to acknowledge a link between humanitarian crises and climate change is one problematic aspect of this sentence; another is the reference to elites making decisions, which in the US case includes both denial of climate change and active destruction of the planet through fossil fuel extraction and war, as well as decisions to create humanitarian crises by continuously engaging in and fueling war with weapons and other material support.

Similarly frustrating, in its rejection of the concept of hate speech and disinformation, the US Mission says these impose “Orwellian definitions to justify their undue restrictions on speech,” which are “a threat and danger to free thinking people everywhere.” Meanwhile, the Trump regime is violently cracking down on free speech within the United States, with federal agents detaining, incarcerating, and even killing those who protest its fascist agenda against immigrations, trans people, and more. Its gaslighting about reality and repression of dissent is what is Orwellian.

The language the Trump regime is deploying to defend its positions is important to assess and critique. The US government is intentionally using phrases and concepts such as elite power and Orwellian repression and inverting them to assert that it is the US government and its right-wing supporters—not the people whom its policies are harming—that is suffering from “ideological multilateralism” and “woke liberalism” and other progressive bogeymen. Pushing back on the appropriation and subversion of language like this will be important to ensuring that truth is spoken to power and not the other way around.

Standing alone to pursue the fantasy of being a “superpower”

To back up these positions with actions, in early January 2026 the Trump regime withdrew from 66 international organisations and UN initiatives. Among these are several relevant to work on disarmament, arms control, non-proliferation, and protection of civilians in armed conflict. These include the UN Register of Conventional Arms; the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict; the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise. It also withdrew from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which among other things has held meetings and discussions on small arms and light weapons.

The list shows that US also withdrew from a number of international and peacebuilding entities which also have relevancy for on disarmament and the protection of civilians, including the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law; the International Law Commission; the Peacebuilding Commission; and the Peacebuilding Fund.

The withdrawals, together the US positions articulated above, solidify the Trump regime’s approach to international law and power. By pulling out of initiatives and organisations that help achieve the goals of the UN in relation to peace and security, human rights, socioeconomic justice, environmental wellbeing, and international law, the Trump regime is making it clear it will not be bound by the rules of the international system, but only the whims of its power-hungry leaders. As White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller proclaimed, “We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.”

However, the US withdrawals also provide an opportunity for these bodies to be able to function more effectively. In the past, certain international disarmament and human rights spaces have benefited in some cases from the absence of a belligerent and disruptive US presence. It is important that other states do not take the US withdrawals as an invitation to moderate their own positions, but instead to worker for bolder outcomes. At a time when gender quality, women and LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, international law, and more are being challenged and undermined, it is essential that states stand up for human rights, peace, justice, equality, and the planet.

Confronting power projections

Other governments and UN agencies, working with international organisations and civil society around the world, need to take urgent action to ensure that multilateralism, diplomacy, human rights, and ecological wellbeing are bolstered and centred.

Governments that claim to believe in international law, in the “rules-based order,” in diplomacy and cooperation over war and militarism, need to let go of their own conceptions of privilege and power and build new transnational alliances that can withstand, confront, and destabilise the fascist project underway. As tech analyst Paris Marx notes, “Part of the reason the United States has been able to get away with everything it’s done this past year is because countries have not come together to wield their collective pressure to stop it. As 2026 begins, that needs to change.”

Some governments began this work last year with the Hague Group, coming together in an attempt to end material support for Israel to stop the genocide of Palestinians. This group offers one possible configuration that could build power; other configurations are also possible and necessary. The key will be to figure out how the majority of the world can protect each other from the economic, political, technological, and military might of those seeking power at all cost. People around the world are already building these alliances and coalitions; so too must those working within the multilateral system.