Argentina leaves the World Health Organization

Javier Milei has definitively followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump. His government announced this Wednesday that Argentina will withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO), mirroring the decision that the President of the United States made as soon as he took office last January. The departure from the WHO "is based on deep differences in health management, especially regarding the coronavirus pandemic," said Milei's spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, at a press conference at the Casa Rosada. Later, the president reiterated the same argument, but in a less diplomatic manner. "We have decided to leave such a nefarious organization that was the executing arm of what was the largest social control experiment in history," he wrote on his social media.

The exit from the WHO aligns with Milei's anti-quarantine position that has always made him popular among the right, when five years ago he joined protests against the sanitary lockdown imposed by then-President Alberto Fernández to control the spread of COVID-19. Milei considered isolation in 2020 to be "a crime against humanity" that went against people's freedom. He has always accused the WHO of promoting it globally without scientific support to do so. With the departure from the multilateral organization, Milei brings Argentina into the club of isolationists led by Trump. The Argentine government is even considering breaking with the Paris Agreement, in line with its climate change denial policy. "We are evaluating it," Adorni confirmed this Wednesday.

Argentina had already hinted at the imminence of its withdrawal from the WHO. Last July, it did not adhere to the Treaty on Pandemics signed in Geneva because it "could affect national sovereignty," Adorni said at the time. "We do not have to adhere to any suggestion from a group of countries. We will make our own decisions in the face of an event that may never occur, like the existence of a pandemic," he added.

This Wednesday, he applied the same logic to his departure from the organization. "Argentina will not allow an international organization to intervene in our health. [The exit from the WHO] gives us more flexibility to adopt measures and greater availability of resources. It reaffirms our path to sovereignty in health matters," Adorni said. According to the spokesperson, the South American country is not currently receiving funding from the WHO, "so this measure does not represent a loss of funds nor does it affect the quality of services."

Following the official announcement, the President's Office deepened the attacks against the WHO through a long statement on social media. And it made it clear that the decision goes beyond its disagreements over the health strategy during the pandemic. "It is urgent to rethink from the international community what supranational organizations, funded by all, exist for if they do not fulfill the objectives for which they were created, dedicate themselves to international politics, and seek to impose themselves over the member countries," the text says.

Milei had already criticized the skeleton of international multilateralism during his presentation at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly last September. He accused the UN of being a "Leviathan with multiple tentacles" that imposes a socialist agenda on its members. He also said that the 2030 Agenda has failed, that the World Economic Forum promotes "ridiculous policies with Malthusian blinders" that harm poor countries, and invited all countries to abandon the Pact of the Future to embrace the Agenda of Freedom promoted by his far-right government.

At the Davos Forum held on January 23, the Argentine insisted on his criticisms. According to his speech, the "mental virus of woke ideology" has "colonized the most important institutions in the world." "Many states and the European Union have been armed wings of that sinister and murderous ideology," he said, launching attacks against multilateral organizations under the same concept.