Argentina: IACHR warns of erosion to women’s & LGBTQ+ right
- Buenos Aires Herald
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
In its annual report, the human rights watchdog for the Americas expressed concern about President Milei’s austerity measures and violent discourse.
MAY 12, 2025
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has warned that Argentina’s government is implementing policies that hurt the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people. President Javier Milei’s austerity measures and the rise in poverty during the first semester of 2024 also eroded the overall population’s enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, it added.
In its annual report, the human rights watchdog for the Americas also underscored worrying regional trends such as the militarization of security, the power of organized crime, restrictions on the right to protest, escalating hostility against freedom of expression, and the suspension of rights.
“The commission is worried about citizen security models that criminalize people, public security policies that go through prolonged periods of state of exception,” IACHR President José Luis Caballero told the Herald, regarding practices they have observed throughout the continent in 2024.
Other points of concern are the “deterioration of democratic institutionality” and the “rule of law,” as well as the criminalization of rights defenders and migrants, he said.
Human rights in Milei’s Argentina
In 2024, the first year of Milei’s presidency, government cuts and restructuring hindered efforts to fight gender-based violence and discrimination, the IACHR said in its report.
The commission highlighted the closure of the INADI institute against discrimination and the Women, Gender and Diversity Ministry, as well as an under-secretariat against gender-based violence that had been created to replace the ministry. Programs on these issues were outright eliminated, it noted.
“For the first time in 40 years, there is no governing body in the country responsible for the design and implementation of policies to prevent and eradicate gender-based violence,” the report said.
The Health Ministry is “reportedly failing to distribute supplies for the legal termination of pregnancy,” while civil society has reported “barriers” accessing legal abortion, such as excessive use of conscientious objections, refusal to address cases involving advanced pregnancies, and violence and stigmatization from healthcare professionals.
“High-ranking officials have made statements denying the existence of gender-based violence, a dismissive stance that may incite violence against women,” the report said. Similar statements have been made “stigmatizing diverse gender identities.”
The IACHR also observed “setbacks in memory, truth and justice policies” including layoffs in the Human Rights Secretariat and the closure of programs and specialized entities. These have included the Special Investigation Unit of the National Identity Commission (CONADI), which looked for children appropriated during the dictatorship, as well as the dismantling of the Armed Forces’ Compiling and Analysis Team and the Joint Committee on Intelligence Documents. Both groups combed through official documents in search of evidence that could solve dictatorship-era crimes.
Ahead of the report’s publication, the government told the IACHR it would guarantee that trials for crimes against humanity went ahead and that archives and memory sites were preserved. They claimed they had closed the units to avoid work being duplicated “in the context of economic crisis.”
However, the organization pointed out that these measures were carried out “in the context of official statements, even from the highest-ranking government authorities, which downplay, deny or vindicate the serious human rights violations committed during the dictatorship.”
The government told the IACHR it had trained security forces in human rights and prevention of institutional violence. However, the commission said it had recorded “several cases of disproportionate use of public force against demonstrators and journalists,” especially in 2024 — a period when Congress was debating Milei’s controversial Ley Bases.
These criticisms notwithstanding, the commission welcomed the creation of a special framework allowing Venezuelan migrants to regularize their migratory status, as well as the first-ever conviction of dictatorship criminals for kidnapping and torturing eight trans women. They likewise celebrated the conviction of a man for the aggravated homicide of Tehuel de la Torre, a young trans man who has been missing since 2021 and is presumed dead.
Released on Thursday, the IACHR’s annual report examines the rights records of countries across the Americas. It dedicated specific sections to systematic rights violations in Venezuela, the concentration of state power in Nicaragua, and representative democracy in Cuba.
ALL RIGHT RESERVED. BUENOS AIRES HERALD
