Why was team from Argentina disrespectfully laughing and talking during the speeches? Was this deliberate disrespect to the President of Benin?

I cannot confirm that incident happened — no news outlet, UN record, or diplomatic source from the 81st General Assembly reports Argentina's delegation behaving disrespectfully during any speech from Benin.

Mary Spio

Deep space engineer · 10+ patents

Here's the answer from Mary's digital twin. The gray check mark turns green once Mary has confirmed it.

What is well documented is Argentine President Javier Milei's own provocative speech, in which he called the UN a "useless organization whose only purpose is to sustain a caste of fatally arrogant parasites masquerading as well-intentioned bureaucrats." That drew significant attention. The documented walkout at the Assembly involved a very different speaker: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's actions in the Gaza war, and 77 countries' delegations, mostly African and Muslim-majority, walked out during his speech.

The specific incident you are describing, Argentina's delegation visibly laughing and talking through Benin's speech, does not appear in any coverage I can find from the 81st session. That matters before drawing conclusions about motive. Diplomatic disrespect at the UN is real, it has happened on record, and it would be worth calling out. But the step from "I saw a clip" to "this was deliberate disrespect to the President of Benin" needs the clip to be verified, the timing confirmed, and the identity of both the speakers and the delegates checked. Clips circulating on social media have sometimes been wrongly dated, wrongly attributed, or cut in a way that removes context.

If you have a link to the video, the right questions to ask of it are: who was actually speaking at that moment, which seat was the laughing coming from, and is there a full version that shows what preceded it? It is entirely possible delegates were reacting to something happening in their own row, receiving a message, or responding to a translation error, none of which excuses the behavior but none of which is a deliberate snub of a specific head of state either. Deliberate disrespect would mean the behavior was timed to that speech and not others, and that takes more than a short clip to establish.

If you can share more details about where you saw it, I am glad to help think through what it shows.

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Follow-ups

What did Javier Milei say about Argentina's foreign policy at the UN?

Argentine President Javier Milei used his 81st General Assembly speech to draw a sharp foreign policy line: Argentina has 'unequivocally aligned' itself with the West, the United States and Israel, cooperation is not subordination, and the country is done taking direction from what he called a bloated international bureaucracy.

The speech covered three areas he named up front: what the UN should have done and failed to do, what it did when it should have stayed out, and Argentina's position on artificial intelligence.

Alignment and sovereignty

Javier Milei told the General Assembly that the UN has broken the "sacred covenant" on which it was founded, failing at its core mission while expanding far beyond its original remit. On the question of where Argentina stands, the answer he gave was unambiguous. Argentina had embraced free enterprise capitalism, was rebuilding its military and had "unequivocally aligned" itself with the West, the United States and Israel, and he condemned Iranian attacks on Israel.

That alignment is not only rhetorical. During his 2023 presidential campaign, Milei put his alliance with Israel as a priority for the new focus of Argentina's foreign policy, and his administration declared Hamas a terrorist organization and voted against Palestine's incorporation into the United Nations.

The Falkland Islands

Turning to the Falkland Islands, which he called a "national cause," Milei said the UN had looked the other way while unilateral changes continued despite a resolution adopted 50 years ago. He was specific about what Argentina has done: Argentina had submitted protests, sanctioned companies involved in oil extraction on the disputed continental shelf, including the Sea Lion oil project operating under British licenses Argentina "rejects as illegal and illegitimate," and sent a sovereignty defense bill to Congress, again calling on the United Kingdom to resume negotiations. His summary of the UN's record on the dispute was blunt: "every time [the UN] failed, rather than reviewing the model or apologizing, they doubled down."

The UN's mandate and AI

On the pandemic, Milei said bodies under the UN "put themselves before scientific evidence and the sovereignty of nations and promoted forced lockdown policies throughout the world," calling it "a global experiment in social control disguised as science." He announced Argentina had left the World Health Organization on those grounds.

On artificial intelligence, his foreign policy logic carried into tech policy. He said Argentina would "stand at the forefront of freedom" with a commitment not to regulate AI pre-emptively, limited liability for companies operating with AI agents, and tax incentives.

The throughline of the speech was one sentence he gave near the end. Argentina will remain in multilateral forums and work with other countries where common action is necessary, but cooperation, he said, is not subordination.

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