Argentine President Javier Milei used his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to deliver an enthusiastic condemnation of “globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda” and warn that the U.N. flagship Agenda 2030 is a threat to global freedom.
Milei introduced himself as a “libertarian economist … honored with the mandate of the presidency of the Argentine Republic” thanks to the “precipitous failure of over a century of collectivist policies,” marking a notable rift from many General Assembly speeches that amplify U.N. leadership messages on climate change, wealth redistribution, and silencing “misinformation.” Milei became president in December 2023, so Tuesday’s event was his first opportunity to address the forum.
Before delivered a list of damning facts about the current state of the United Nations, Milei applauded the institution for successfully preventing a third world war, the original purpose of its existence.
“We went from having two world wars in less than 40 years, which together took over 120 million lives, to having 70 consecutive years of relative peace and global stability,” he noted, “under an order that allowed the whole world integrate itself commercially, compete, and prosper.”
This “outstanding success in the history of nations,” Milei stated, brought about a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, which the president, an avid student of Judaism, read to the forum:
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
But the U.N. “started to mutate,” he continued, and became “a leviathan of multiple tentacles that wants to decide not just what every state or nation should do, but how all the citizens of the world should live.” The current U.N. is “a supranational government model of international bureaucrats who want to impose on the citizens of the world a determined way of life,” he warned.
Milei then launched into a searing condemnation of the recent United Nations record, condemning its support of Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns and its support of totalitarian regimes:
This is how we have seen how an organization that was born to defend the rights of man has become one of the principal advocates for the systematic violation of liberty – for example, with the worldwide quarantines during 2020 which should be considered a crime against humanity.
In this very house, which claims to defend human rights, bloody dictatorships such as those of Cuba and Venezuela have been allowed onto the Human Rights Council with not even the least reproach. In this very house, which claims to defend the rights of women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women allows entry to countries that punish women for showing skin. In this very house, systematically, they have voted against the state of Israel – which is the only country in the Middle East that defends liberal democracy, while showing simultaneously a total incapacity to respond to the scourge of terrorism.
“Crimes against humanity” is a catch-all term in international law for actions that, on a global scale, are prosecutable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Milei did not single out anyone to charge with the crime, but the context of accusing the United Nations of playing a role in supporting repressive quarantines points to the head of the U.N.’s World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was reelected to lead the agency uncontested despite his egregious failure in contain the novel coronavirus or holding China accountable for its destruction of relevant biological evidence and silence as the virus began spreading in Wuhan in December 2019. Tedros’ current main project is the development of a “pandemic treaty” that would greatly empower the W.H.O. to act above sovereign states in the face of public health emergencies.
Milei also used his speech to condemn the World Economic Forum (WEF), a venue he has visited to share similar condemnations of globalism.
“What also hasn’t helped is the tutelage of the World Economic Forum, where they promote ridiculous policies with Malthusian veneers, like the policies of Mission Zero, which harm above all poor countries,” Milei told the United Nations, “to policies tied to sexual and reproductive rights — when the birth rates of Western countries are collapsing, announcing a bleak future for all.”
Milei predicted that the world is “at the end of a cycle.”
“Globalism and the moral posturing of the woke agenda have crashed into reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer to real-world problems — in fact, they never had them,” he declared. “If Agenda 2030 failed, as its own promoters recognize, the response should be to ask ourselves if it was not a poorly conceived plan from the beginning, accept that reality, and change course.”
The Argentine president concluded by summarizing the creed of his anti-collectivist, libertarian movement in Argentina.
“We believe in the defense of life — for all. We believe in the defense of the right to property — for all,” he listed. “We believe in the freedom of expression — for all. “We believe in freedom of religion — for all. We believe in freedom of commerce — for all. And we believe in limiting governments — all of them.”