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ARGENTINA: ‘The state is abandoning its role as guarantor of access to rights’

VaninaE ManuelTCIVICUS discusses the deterioration of civic space and human rights under Argentina’s current government with Vanina Escales and Manuel Tufró of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS). Founded under dictatorship in 1979, CELS promotes the protection and effective exercise of human rights, justice and social inclusion, nationally and internationally.

Since its inauguration in December 2023, the government of Javier Milei, a self-proclaimed ‘anarcho-capitalist’ who allied with culturally conservative groups, has promoted policies of economic deregulation, the reduction of the state and social spending cuts, resulting in increased unemployment and poverty. It has adopted a restrictive and repressive approach towards protests against these policies, denigrating journalism and anyone who expresses critical opinions. In the face of these restrictions on civic space and human rights, civil society is seeking international visibility and solidarity and pursuing strategic litigation.

How would you describe Milei´s government?

This is the first libertarian -- or anarcho-capitalist, as Milei describes it – government we’ve had in Argentina. Its rise is part of an international trend towards the erosion of democracies as a result of policies of market extremism and the advance of the far right. Like other expressions of the far right in Europe or the USA, it is characterised by brutalism and a recourse to authoritarianism to deal with social conflict. At times it also shows features such as historical denialism and regressive values about gender roles and the rights of sexual, gender and racial minorities. But it also has some peculiar aspects: unlike its counterparts in the global north, its xenophobic nationalism hasn’t targeted immigrants but Indigenous peoples instead.

In the economic sphere, the libertarian agenda has manifested itself in the liberalisation of prices, leading to high levels of inflation and thus to a brutal transfer of income from the middle and poorer classes to the richest.

As far as social policy is concerned, the government has tended to leave in place only policies of direct income transfers to individuals, meagre subsidies or social aid such as the Universal Child Allowance, which alone cannot mitigate the effects of the recession or counteract the impacts of the withdrawal of the state. This withdrawal can be seen in the lack of food and medical supplies and the closure of and disinvestment from community spaces and social policies. The state has withdrawn from its role as guarantor of access to basic services.

The stated aim is to weaken controls on businesses, particularly foreign ones, in order to attract investment. Deregulation has a direct impact on the environment, as it ignores the rights of Indigenous peoples and peasant communities over the territories where companies want to set up. Companies receive privileges while the country is deprived of its natural resources.

Some reforms were imposed by decree and others by an omnibus bill called the Basic Law, which was passed by Congress after much debate and amendment.

How is the government reconciling libertarianism with cultural conservatism?

There is a tension within the government between neo-liberalists who promote market deregulation, economic liberalisation and changes in labour policies, and the equally authoritarian but conservative voices that defend the last military dictatorship, state terrorism and state violence, and attack emancipatory movements such as feminism and its egalitarian gains.

On this terrain, the government is fighting a cultural as well as a material battle. Verbal attacks go hand in hand with the dismantling of gender policies. For example, the government dissolved the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and then dismantled all policies against gender violence. Officials have also spoken out strongly against abortion and sexual and reproductive rights in general.

As part of the dismantling of state structures, programmes aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and care, health and early childhood policies are being dismantled. Our monitoring of care policies has shown that only seven out of 43 are still in force. The state is abandoning its role as mediator and guarantor of access to rights.

In addition, at the international level, the government is challenging commitments made by the state through international treaties, which in Argentina have constitutional priority, enshrined in legislation. At the recent General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS), for example, the government demanded that any mention of climate change, gender and LGBTQI+ people be removed from the final documents. We believe that the OAS, the United Nations and their human rights mechanisms should closely monitor the Argentine government’s actions.

How have these processes affected civic space?

The quality of civic space has been severely compromised. Protests are now treated as crimes. These basic practices in any democracy are presented as, at best, obstacles to traffic and, at worst, seditious activities aimed at overthrowing the government.

This is reflected in blatantly unconstitutional norms such as Resolution 943/2023 of the Ministry of Security, known as the ‘anti-picketing protocol’, which states that any assembly that disrupts traffic in cities or on roads is a flagrant crime and authorises direct police intervention, without the need for a court order, to disperse it and investigate protesters.

This resolution authorises the deployment of large numbers of security forces at every protest, often using abusive and indiscriminate ‘less lethal’ weapons such as rubber bullets and teargas, as well as physical violence and arbitrary arrests. We have documented at least 80 such arrests in recent months. Protesters have been released because the government has no evidence to prosecute them. But as a result of these tactics, many demonstrations are broken up or do not take place at all.

In the past six months, at least 47 journalists have been injured in protests. Many more have been harassed on social media and criminally prosecuted for anti-government statements.

The government has dismantled the public media to the point where we have no way of knowing what is happening in different parts of the country, unless something comes to the attention of private media and international correspondents and they decide to cover it. In Argentina today, the right to generate information and be informed by a plurality of voices is being violated.

How is civil society organising to resist these restrictions?

Civil society organisations have filed several precautionary measures ahead of protests to protect the right to peaceful assembly. But the judiciary has not accepted them, arguing that there is no a priori risk, but rather that it is necessary to assess how a demonstration unfolds. The judiciary also has a very weak role in controlling arbitrary arrests and assessing excessive police violence.

Since the judicial route is not bearing fruit, it’s time to resort to international mechanisms for the protection of human rights, something CELS has done many times throughout its history, since it was born under the dictatorship. We are working to provide information on the human rights violations taking place in Argentina.

On 11 July we took part in a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The state was present, but only reaffirmed its position in favour of the criminalisation of social protest, justifying it as a mechanism to deal with sedition and attempts at destabilisation. The government was evasive and did not answer questions such as what protocols were in place to control the use of less lethal weapons, or why a regulation to control police action in public demonstrations had been repealed.

We are also compiling a register of physical and digital attacks from non-state sources, particularly from parts of the radicalised right. Thanks to our work with the political research team at Crisis magazine, we have already registered around 280 cases of offline harassment on the Radar portal, and we are beginning to register online attacks, including the leaking of personal data that could lead to physical attacks.

Today, more than ever, it is necessary to organise in national and international networks to carry out information and denunciation campaigns with a collective voice. If we wait for the total destruction of rights to raise our voices, it will be too late.

Civic space in Argentina is rated as ‘narrowed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.

Get in touch with CELS through its website or its Facebook and Instagram pages, and follow @CELS_Argentina and @vaninaescales on Twitter.

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