Argentine President Javier Milei used his United Nations General Assembly address to accuse the organization of abandoning its founding principles, failing to confront authoritarian regimes and terrorism, overreaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and proving ineffective in Argentina’s longstanding dispute over the Falkland Islands.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Argentine President Javier Milei delivered a sweeping denunciation of the United Nations from its own General Assembly podium Wednesday, calling the organization “useless” and accusing it of sustaining a bureaucracy of “fatally arrogant parasites” while failing to fulfill its core responsibilities involving peace, sovereignty and human rights.
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Milei began by acknowledging the principles upon which the United Nations was created, including the peaceful resolution of international disputes and the protection of human freedom and dignity, describing those ideals as “noble words.”
He then argued that the institution had abandoned them.“today, regrettably, it is time to acknowledge that, in practice, that sacred covenant has been broken.”
“That’s to say, it has become a useless organization whose only purpose is to sustain a caste of fatally arrogant parasites masquerading as well-intentioned bureaucrats,” Milei said.
Contemporary accounts of the Sept. 23 address confirmed that Milei structured much of his criticism around what he said the United Nations failed to do and areas where he believes it exceeded its legitimate authority.
He accused international institutions of embracing what he called a “gender agenda, environmental extremism and unchecked immigration,” while becoming increasingly involved in decisions that he believes properly belong to sovereign governments and their citizens.
Milei also directed some of his strongest criticism at international institutions’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During the pandemic, bodies under the auspices of this house put themselves before scientific evidence and the sovereignty of nations and promoted forced lockdown policies throughout the world.
“Where some allege a public health policy error, we see a global experiment in social control disguised as science. And when a state wearing public health blinkers deprives its population of the right to work, to receive an education and to bid farewell to their dead, this results in millions of avoidable deaths; there is a word for it, genocide.”
The characterization of pandemic restrictions as “genocide” was Milei’s own political assessment. He argued that lockdowns and other emergency measures represented a fundamental violation of individual rights and national sovereignty rather than merely a mistaken public-health response. Reporting from Argentina on his address similarly documented his description of pandemic policy as a “global experiment in social control disguised as science.”
Milei said international institutions responded to their failures by expanding their authority rather than reconsidering their approach.
He charged that “every time [the U.N.] failed, rather than reviewing the model or apologizing, they doubled down.”
His criticism extended to the United Nations’ handling of international conflict and human rights.
“Those who were supposed to guarantee collective security and human rights failed in their task. They allowed chaos, violence and international terrorism to flourish,” he said.
“The alleged defenders of human rights have sheltered bloodthirsty dictatorships and regimes that stone women in the streets; they have systematically voted against Israel while remaining silent in the face of Islamic terrorism and the genocide of Christians in Africa.”
Milei has been a vocal supporter of Israel throughout his presidency and has repeatedly criticized international organizations he believes apply different standards to Israel than to other countries. His remarks Wednesday continued that theme.
The Argentine president then shifted from broad criticism of the United Nations to one of his country’s longest-running foreign-policy disputes: sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas.
Argentina claims sovereignty over the British-controlled islands, along with South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and surrounding maritime areas. Britain maintains that the Falkland Islanders have the right to determine their own political status. The two countries fought a war over the islands in 1982, which Britain won.
Milei presented the dispute as evidence of what he called a gap between U.N. resolutions and the organization’s ability to make those resolutions meaningful.
“And if that were not enough, an organization established to defend the territorial sovereignty of its members decided to look the other way with regard to the situation of the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands, South Georgia Islands, South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas.”
He said the islands “are a test of the gulf that exists between the words of international institutions and the reality upon which they purport to act.”
“There’s no shortage of words or resolutions; what is lacking is consequences,” Milei said. “Because an institution that cannot ensure that its words carry weight in the real world loses the most important thing of all, its authority.”
Milei reiterated Argentina’s sovereignty claim while calling for renewed negotiations with Britain and saying Buenos Aires intends to pursue the dispute peacefully. Argentina’s government said Wednesday that Milei told the General Assembly the Malvinas are a “national cause” and that his government would no longer simply wait for international institutions to act.
The issue has become increasingly prominent in Milei’s government. Argentina recently introduced legislation aimed at strengthening sanctions against companies conducting resource-related activities around the Falklands without Argentine authorization. Britain continues to reject Argentina’s sovereignty claim and supports the islanders’ stated desire to remain a British overseas territory.
Milei used the dispute to reinforce his broader argument that the United Nations has grown increasingly willing to regulate countries and individuals while remaining ineffective against governments and organizations that disregard international rules.
He said the institution has “built a bureaucratic leviathan devoted to deciding how the peoples of the world and their citizens should live.”
“This amounts to a curious mixture of anarchy and tyranny, impotence in the face of those who break the most basic rules, such as bloodthirsty dictatorships and terrorist organizations coupled with Orwellian control and impositions on liberal democracies that abide by the rules.”
His remarks echoed themes that have defined his international appearances since taking office in 2023: individual liberty, limited government, national sovereignty, free markets and opposition to large international bureaucracies.
Milei also has developed a close political relationship with President Donald Trump, who delivered his own criticism of the United Nations during this year’s General Assembly. Contemporary coverage noted the similarities between the two presidents’ arguments about international bureaucracy and institutional effectiveness, although each framed his criticism separately.
For Milei, the central problem is not the principles written into the U.N. Charter but what he views as the organization’s failure to enforce them consistently while accumulating authority in other areas.
He closed that part of his argument by invoking Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises, whose work has heavily influenced Milei’s political philosophy.
“I would remind them of what Mises said, ‘Good people do not think about controlling the lives of their fellow human beings.’”
Milei’s address amounted to one of his most expansive criticisms yet of the international institution, contrasting what he described as its admirable founding principles with an organization he now believes has become simultaneously ineffective against serious international threats and overly intrusive in the affairs of sovereign nations and their citizens.
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