The Trump administration has begun the process of withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, a move that could hurt the U.N. agency’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and reshape public health diplomacy.

 

The notice of withdrawal, effective July 6, 2021, was sent Monday to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. Under the terms of a joint resolution passed by Congress in 1948, the United States must give a year’s notice and pay its debts to the agency to leave.

Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for Guterres, said the secretary general was “verifying with the World Health Organization whether all the conditions for such withdrawal are met.”

 

It is not clear whether the president can pull the United States out of the organization and withdraw funding without Congress. When Trump first threatened to withdraw, Democratic lawmakers argued that doing so would be illegal and vowed to push back.

Rep. James Comer (Ky.), the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, called the withdrawal “the right decision.”

“Until the WHO undergoes some serious reforms, it doesn’t deserve our money or our membership,” he said in a statement.

 

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said Tuesday that, if elected, he would immediately rejoin the organization and “restore our leadership on the world stage.”

“Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health,” he tweeted.

A group of more than 700 experts on global public health and law on June 30 called on Congress to push back against the plan, warning that “cutting funding to the WHO during a global pandemic would be a dangerous action for global health and U.S. national interests.”

The letter, which was signed by former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, the president of the National Academy of Medicine, and university presidents and deans, said a U.S. pullout “will likely cost lives, American and foreign.”