LONDON — The United States officially left the World Health Organization on Thursday after a year of warnings that doing so would hurt public health in the US and globally, saying its decision reflected failures in the UN health agency’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump gave notice that the US would quit the organization on the first day of his presidency in 2025, via an executive order.

According to a press release from the US Health and State Departments, the US will only work with the WHO in a limited fashion in order to effectuate the withdrawal.

“We have no plans to participate as an observer, and we have no plans of rejoining,” a senior government health official said. The US said it plans to work directly with other countries – rather than through an international organization – on disease surveillance and other public health priorities.

DISPUTE OVER US-OWED FEES
Under US law, it was supposed to give one-year notice and pay all outstanding fees – around $260 million – before departing.

But a US State Department official disputed that the statute contains a condition that any payment needs to be made before withdrawal.

“The American people have paid more than enough,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email earlier on Thursday.

The Department of Health and Human Services said in a document released on Thursday that the government had ended its funding contributions to the agency. Mr. Trump had exercised his authority to pause the future transfer of any US government resources to the WHO because the organization had cost the US trillions of dollars, the HHS spokesperson said.

The US flag had been removed from outside the WHO headquarters in Geneva on Thursday, according to witnesses.

In recent weeks, the US has moved to exit a number of other United Nations organizations, and some fear that Mr. Trump’s recently launched Board of Peace could undermine the UN as a whole.

Several WHO critics have also proposed setting up a new agency to replace the organization, although a proposal document reviewed by the Trump administration last year instead suggested the US push for reforms and American leadership at WHO.

QUICK RETURN UNLIKELY
Over the last year, many global health experts have urged a rethink, including most recently WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The WHO also said the US has not yet paid the fees it owes for 2024 and 2025. Member states are set to discuss the US departure and how it will be handled at the WHO’s executive board in February, a WHO spokesperson said.

“This is a clear violation of US law,” said Lawrence Gostin, founding director of the O’Neill Institute for Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington, a close observer of the WHO. “But Trump is highly likely to get away with it.”

Bill Gates – chair of the Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health initiatives and some of the WHO’s work – told Reuters at Davos that he did not expect the US to reconsider in the short term.

Mr. Gates said he would still advocate for the US to rejoin. “The world needs the World Health Organization,” he said.

WHAT THE DEPARTURE MEANS
The US departure has sparked a financial crisis that has seen the WHO cut its management team in half and scale back work, cutting budgets across the agency. Washington has traditionally been by far the UN health agency’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18% of its overall funding. The WHO will also shed around a quarter of its staff by the middle of this year.

The agency said it has been working with the US and sharing information in the last year. It was unclear how the collaboration will work going forward.

Global health experts said this posed risks for the US, the WHO, and the world.

“The US withdrawal from WHO could weaken the systems and collaborations the world relies on to detect, prevent, and respond to health threats,” said Kelly Henning, public health program lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies, a US-based non-profit.— Reuters

BAGHDAD/UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations said on Thursday it was taking management responsibility for vast camps in Syria housing tens of thousands of women and children associated with Islamic State (IS), after the rapid collapse of Kurdish-led forces who guarded them for years.

Iraq, which has begun taking in detainees transferred from prisons in Syria as the Kurds retreat, said it would begin prosecuting them through its criminal justice system, and called on other countries to help take them in.

More than 10,000 members of Islamic State, and tens of thousands of women and children associated with them, have been held for years in about a dozen prisons and detention camps guarded by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s northeast.

The SDF has rapidly retreated this week after clashes with Syrian government forces, raising concern about security at prisons and humanitarian conditions at the camps.

The United Nations said the SDF withdrew on Tuesday from al-Hol, which along with another camp, Roj, houses 28,000 civilians, mainly women and children who fled Islamic State’s strongholds as the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed. They include Syrians, Iraqis, and 8,500 nationals of other countries.

Syrian government forces had established a security perimeter around the camp and teams from the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the UN children’s agency UNICEF reached the camp on Wednesday, officials said.

“UNHCR – which has taken over camp management responsibilities – is actively coordinating with the Syrian government to urgently resume the safe delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance,” senior UN aid official Edem Wosornu told the UN Security Council.

UN officials had not yet been able to enter because “the situation in the camp remains rather tense and volatile with reports of looting and burning,” UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. He said the Syrian government had expressed a willingness to provide security and support for UNHCR and aid groups.

DETAINEES SENT TO IRAQ
The US military said on Tuesday its forces had transferred 150 detainees from Syria to Iraq at the start of an operation that could eventually see up to 7,000 detainees moved out of Syria.

A US official told Reuters on Tuesday that about 200 low-level IS fighters escaped from Syria’s Shaddadi prison, although Syrian government forces had recaptured many of them.

Iraq’s Deputy UN Ambassador Mohammed Sahib Mejid Marzooq told the UN Security Council on Thursday that Iraq was accepting detainees to protect regional and international security, but that other countries should be prepared to help.

“This issue should not be left to become a long-term strategic burden on Iraq alone. The insistence of some states on considering their terrorist nationals a threat to their national security and the refusal to repatriate them is unacceptable,” he said.

Islamic State emerged in Iraq and Syria, and at the height of its power from 2014-2017 held swathes of the two countries, ruling over millions of people. Its “caliphate” eventually collapsed after military campaigns by regional governments and a US-led coalition.

An Iraqi military spokesperson confirmed that Iraq had received a first batch of 150 IS detainees, including Iraqis and foreigners, and said the number of future transfers would depend on security and field assessments. The spokesperson described the detainees as senior figures within the group.

RELATIVES OF SOME DETAINEES WORRIED ABOUT THEIR FATE
Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said Iraqi courts would take “due legal measures” against detainees once they are handed over and placed in specialized correctional facilities.

“All suspects, regardless of their nationalities or positions within the terrorist organization, are subject exclusively to the authority of the Iraqi judiciary,” the statement said.

Iraqi officials say IS detainees will be separated, with senior figures including foreign nationals to be held at a high‑security detention facility near Baghdad airport previously used by US forces.

The transfers have raised concern among some relatives of IS detainees in Europe. A European woman whose relative joined the group and was detained in Syria said her family was alarmed by reports that prisoners were being moved to Iraq, noting that Iraq has the death penalty.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said the family initially hoped changes in control in Syria might bring information on her relative’s fate.

“At least we thought we might finally learn where he is, whether he is alive or sick,” she said. “But when we saw that the prisoners were being taken to Iraq, that frightened us.”

Two Iraqi legal sources said the IS detainees sent from Syria include a mix of nationalities, with Iraqis making up the largest group, alongside Arab fighters from other countries and nationals of Britain, Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden.— Reuters

DAVOS, Switzerland — Elon Musk marked his last-minute Davos debut on Thursday with a critique of US solar tariffs and aggressive targets for Tesla, including humanoid robot sales next year, as well as flagging European approval for self-driving tech within weeks.

After years of describing the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting as elitist, unaccountable and disconnected from ordinary people, the world’s richest man was interviewed by World Economic Forum interim co-chair Larry Fink.

The BlackRock CEO expressed his admiration for Mr. Musk at the start of the wide-ranging discussion, which covered the future of robots and AI, the economic benefits of reusable rockets and Mr. Musk’s childhood fascination with science fiction.

Mr. Musk has become more prominent in recent years, driven by his proximity to US President Donald Trump and his stewardship of firms including Starlink-owner SpaceX, social media platform X, and artificial intelligence startup, xAI.

Breaking ranks with Mr. Trump on renewable energy, Mr. Musk said the United States could produce enough solar power to meet all of its electricity needs, including booming demand from the proliferation of Big Tech’s power-hungry data centers.

“You could take a small corner of Utah, Nevada or New Mexico – a very small percentage of the area of the US – to generate all of the electricity that the US uses,” he added.

“Unfortunately, the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high,” Mr. Musk said.

Mr. Trump has been openly critical of clean energy sources while encouraging oil majors to drill more for oil and gas.

His freeze on approvals for major onshore wind and solar projects has left thousands of megawatts of capacity in limbo at a critical time for the US as it rushes to secure enough power to meet soaring AI-driven requirements.

‘WE DON’T WANT TO BE IN TERMINATOR’
The interview did not touch on other major geopolitical and economic themes that have dominated the forum this week, including Mr. Trump’s ambitions for Greenland and Russia’s war in Ukraine, focusing instead on technology and robotics.

The pair joked about aliens, life on Mars, and the “Terminator” film series.

“We need to be very careful with robotics. We don’t want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie. Love his movies, but we don’t want to be in Terminator, obviously,” said Mr. Musk, referring to the fictional AI system from the “Terminator” films that becomes self-aware and turns on humanity.

Among the highest profile executives speaking at the Swiss mountain resort this week, Mr. Musk predicted robots will eventually outnumber humans, leading to a huge economic boom, and joked about traveling to Mars.

“People ask me do I want to die on Mars, and I’m like: ‘yes, but not on impact’,'” he said towards the end of the 30-minute session, drawing laughter from the audience.

His appearance at Davos comes as governments and regulators from Europe to Asia crackdown on sexually explicit content generated by his xAI chatbot Grok on X, launching probes, imposing bans and demanding safeguards, in a growing global push to curb illegal material.— Reuters