MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UK replies to Milei: “not the behaviour we expect of a democracy”

Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

The United Kingdom has asked for a written statement to be placed in the official record of the UN General Assembly in response to Argentine President Javier Milei's address, saying Buenos Aires' conduct over the Falklands “is wholly incompatible with the principles established in the United Nations Charter and is not the behaviour we expect of a democracy”.

The text, released by the British mission to the organisation, was submitted under agenda item eight of the 81st session, after Milei referred on Wednesday to sovereignty over the archipelago and over South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It is the same procedure London used in 2012 to reply to then president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

The document states that the United Kingdom “has no doubt” about its sovereignty over both territories and their surrounding maritime areas, and that it remains steadfast in supporting the islanders' right of self-determination, set out in the UN Charter and Article 1 of the two international human rights covenants. It says Argentina “continues to deny that this fundamental human right applies” to those inhabitants and actively seeks opportunities in international fora to assert its sovereignty claim.

The United Kingdom has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.

Our statement in response to the Argentine General Assembly Statement regarding the Falklands: pic.twitter.com/eWw8aS2MDI

— UK at the UN  (@UKUN_NewYork) September 23, 2026

The statement rebuts point by point the legal argument Milei set out. It says General Assembly Resolution 2065 “does not prohibit economic development or displace the Islanders' right of self-determination”, and that Resolution 31/49 “likewise does not limit or remove the rights of the Islanders to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. It adds that calls for negotiations “do not modify or dilute the obligation of nations to respect the legally binding right of self-determination”. These are UK government positions, contested by Argentina.

On the ongoing dispute over oil companies, the text says efforts to obstruct and harass international companies involved in the archipelago's hydrocarbons, and other local industries, “are a wholly unacceptable attempt to exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction, and have no justification whatsoever in international law”, describing them as obstructive to global business and inconsistent with free trade. It further states that hydrocarbon development is a legitimate commercial venture regulated by the legislation of the archipelago's government in strict accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that Argentine domestic law does not apply there.

The document includes a detail about the 2013 referendum that London does not usually highlight: alongside the 99.8% vote to maintain the current status, on a 92% turnout, the vote was supervised by independent observers from Canada, the United States, New Zealand and three South American countries: Uruguay, Chile and Brazil.

The statement closes a forty-eight-hour sequence. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham included the archipelago among the challenges to the rule of law in his address; that same night, Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno exercised the right of reply before the plenary and said “the illegal British occupation of the islands dates back to January 1833”, when the authorities and the established Argentine population were expelled. Milei spoke on Wednesday, and the British text followed hours later.

Argentina has 60 administrative proceedings open with no penalty applied and three criminal complaints covering ten companies and their directors. None of the allegations has been proven.