The Government of Argentina reported on Wednesday its decision to withdraw the country from the World Health Organization (WHO), two weeks after the US president, Donald Trump, did the same and under such arguments.
In a statement, the Argentine Executive expressed his disagreement with the approval of quarantines during the Covid-19 pandemic and accused the WHO of applying them.
Last September, in his first speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization (UN), Milei lashed out at that entity and reiterated that his government does not support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, or the Pact of the Future.
“We will never forget that they were the ideologues of the cavernícola quarantine that implied, according to the 1998 Rome Statute (article 7.k) commit, in complicity with all the states that took their directives, one of the crimes against the most quirky humanity From history, ”said Milei this Wednesday on his social networks.
Quarantine and WHO support
The South American country implemented a series of quarantines during the Covid-19 pandemic, beginning with a preventive and mandatory social isolation (ASTO) that was decreed on March 20, 2020.
Until the current date, Argentina has registered approximately 129 145 deaths related to COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, which places the country in an outstanding position in terms of virus mortality, with a rate of approximately 2 196 deaths per million inhabitants, among the territories with the highest mortality rates in relation to its population.
The announcement is also articulated with the policy of the ultraliberal president to reduce the state budget, given that Argentina contributes about 4.1 million dollars to the UN agency in health.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM4LCS8C5QK
Automatic alignment with the White House
Milei’s decision “is another sign of what in the 1990s we called the ‘automatic alignment’ with the United States,” said Andrea Oelsner, academic and director of the Political Science and International Relations career of the University of San Andrés.
Speaking to the French press agency, Oelsner said the measure implies “a step to international political isolation, which actually goes against what the government says to want to ‘open up to the world.”
The academic rejected the government’s argument on the loss of sovereignty “because WHO has no power to force states to impose domestic policies” and warned that Argentina loses with this withdrawal a cooperation forum “where to share valuable information.”
“Next pandemics, which are global by definition, are inevitable, which isolate and withdraw from mechanisms and opportunities for international cooperation and coordination is not very intelligent,” he said.
For the criteria of Federico Merke, associate professor of international relations at the University of San Andrés, Milei’s decision also “combines theatricality” to content his support bases and Trump’s government.
According to the academic, the decision “far from increasing the country’s international reputation, erodes its credibility,” and finished off: “health threats do not respect borders.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sez3-5mz1-0
Again towards Washington
Meanwhile, President Javier Milei will travel to the United States this month, a country that he already visited on January on the occasion of the investiture ceremony of President Donald Trump, and who has traveled another seven times in 2024.
The president’s trip was confirmed on Wednesday by the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, who said that it will be “a very short trip” and that it will take place around February 20, without specifying more details.
Transcended in the local press talk that the visit will be to Washington DC to attend the Conservative Political Action Summit (CPAC, in English) that will be held between 19 and 22 of this month.
