Argentina Announces Withdrawal From WHO Over COVID Lockdown ‘Economic Catastrophe’

President Javier Milei said that COVID-19 lockdowns promoted by the agency could be ‘classified as a crime against humanity.’

Argentine President Javier Milei looks on after the polls closed in the presidential runoff in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Nov. 19, 2023. Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images

The Argentine government has announced its decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) in response to the “catastrophic” economic impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

In a statement shared on social media platform X on Feb. 5, the office of Argentine President Javier Milei stated that the COVID-19 lockdowns were one of the greatest economic catastrophes in world history, citing the severe and lasting impact on global economies as Argentina’s primary reason for pulling out.

“The WHO was established in 1948 to coordinate global health emergency responses, but it failed its most significant test: it promoted indefinite quarantines without scientific backing during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement reads in English translation.

“These quarantines caused one of the largest economic catastrophes in world history.”

According to the statement, under the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, such lockdown policies could be classified as “a crime against humanity.”

Milei’s office stated that in Argentina, the WHO responded to a government that “kept children out of school, left hundreds of thousands of workers without income, caused businesses and [small and medium-sized enterprises] to go bankrupt, and, despite all of this, led to the loss of 130,000 lives.”

“It is urgent that the international community reassess the role of supranational organizations—funded by all—that fail to fulfill the purposes for which they were created, engage in political maneuvering, and attempt to impose their will on member states,” Milei’s office stated.

Anarcho-Capitalist

“President Milei instructed Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein to withdraw Argentina’s participation in the World Health Organization,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said at a Feb. 5 news conference.

Milei, a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, was inaugurated as Argentina’s president in 2023 after defeating Sergio Massa, economy minister for Alberto Fernández’s socialist administration.

In a September 2024 speech at the United Nations, Milei took aim at the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals, a global initiative for sustainable economic growth and environmental protection.

He said that although the program is “well-intentioned in its goals,” it is “nothing more than a supranational government program with a socialist slant.”

“If the 2030 agenda failed, as its own promoters acknowledge, the answer should be to ask ourselves if it was not an ill-conceived program to begin with,” Milei said.

Trump’s Similar Move

On Jan. 20, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States, the WHO’s top donor, would pull out of the organization.

He said the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.

Negotiations with the group about a pandemic agreement and the International Health Regulations would be suspended while the withdrawal is taking place, Trump said.

He said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the United States that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.

“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said.

WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said in response, “We hope that the United States will reconsider, and we really hope that there will be constructive dialogue for the benefit of everyone, for Americans but also for people around the world.”

The United States is currently the largest WHO funder, contributing about $1.28 billion during 2022–2023, the last year reported on the organization’s website. That equates to almost half of the WHO’s joint external evaluation missions for the last fiscal year.

WHO’s Reaction to China’s COVID Cover-Up

This is Trump’s second attempt to withdraw from the WHO. The president began the process in 2020 because of frustration over the WHO’s reaction to China’s cover-up of details surrounding the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 at the start of what became the COVID-19 pandemic.

The House Oversight and Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a report in December 2024 on the WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, calling it “an abject failure.”

According to the report, the WHO bent to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed “China’s political interests ahead of its international duties.”

As part of the alleged failure, the WHO reportedly ignored warnings by Taiwan on Dec. 31, 2019, about “atypical pneumonia cases” in Wuhan, which it asked the WHO to investigate.

“The initial mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic not only potentially caused the further spread of the virus, but it created a situation where people lost trust in the global public health organization,” the report stated.

A WHO spokesman told The Epoch Times: “Thanks for your query. We are looking into it.”

Reuters, Savannah Hulsey Pointer, Aldgra Fredly, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.