(Originally published on the Harvard Kennedy School website)
On Wednesday, 7 January, the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of the United States from 66 organizations, half of which are linked to the UN. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the oldest agency in the UN system, is not affected. Nevertheless, the administration had already set the tone during the ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference, held last November in Baku, signaling a clear recalibration of its engagement within the UN system.
In a plenary statement, the U.S. delegation announced its disengagement from several ad hoc groups, arguing that negotiations had drifted from the ITU’s core mandate into ideological or politicized territory. It called for a “back to basics” approach, limiting the ITU’s work to telecommunications and ICT development, and rejected references it viewed as infringing on national sovereignty, including the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.
