Argentina announces withdrawal from the World Health Organisation over covid lockdowns; these were an ‘Economic Catastrophe’

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

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

In a statement shared on social media platform X on February 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 as translated to English.

“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.”