Background
Argentina remained immersed in a deep economic and social crisis. In June, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), 52.9% of the population were living in poverty.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child voiced concern over the closure and degradation of institutions, retraction of public policies, and drastic reduction to the budget allocated to guarantee the rights of children and adolescents, including cuts to investment in health and education.
Congress had failed to appoint an ombudsperson since 2009. The Executive Branch proposed only male candidates for two vacancies at the all-male Supreme Court.
A proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 13 years was pending approval.
Argentina rejected the 2030 Agenda. Furthermore, it was the only country to dissociate itself from the Pact for the Future and vote against a resolution in the UN General Assembly aimed at preventing digital violence against women and girls.
Sexual and reproductive rights
According to the Ministry of Health, since the 2021 legalization of abortion before 14 weeks of pregnancy, 245,015 people accessed a safe abortion within the public health system up to October 2023. Abortion-related deaths reduced by 53% between 2020 and 2022. In January, however, President Javier Milei referred to what he called “the bloody abortion agenda”, alongside other stigmatizing rhetoric and false information. Despite the abortion law remaining in effect (amid parliamentary attempts to overturn it), in September the National Directorate of Sexual and Reproductive Health announced that there was a shortage of essential supplies for abortion services.
According to information published in 2024, every hour five girls aged under 20 gave birth in Argentina in 2022. Despite this, the government reversed the Adolescents’ Unplanned Pregnancy Prevention Plan, which had successfully reduced the teenage pregnancy rate by 49% over the previous four years. The Ministry of Health dismantled it by reducing the real-term budget by 68%, ending the contracts of 619 specialists and cutting resources.
Sexual and gender-based violence
Between January and December a femicide was reported every 33 hours. Despite this, resource cuts for policies around gender-based violence were alarming. The gender-based violence hotline “144” reduced its staff by 42% and the Acompañar programme, which aims to strengthen the economic independence of individuals experiencing gender-based violence, had reduced its reach by 98.63% in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023.
In June the Brazilian justice system found actor Juan Darthés guilty of raping Argentinian actor Thelma Fardín when she was 16 years old. Juan Darthés holds dual Brazilian and Argentinian citizenship and had relocated to Brazil following Thelma Fardín’s accusation in 2018. Brazil does not extradite its own citizens.
In May, three lesbian women died after a man threw a Molotov cocktail into their room while they slept.
In August a man was convicted for the murder of Tehuel de la Torre, a young transgender man who disappeared on 11 March 2021. The court found that the crime was aggravated because it was motivated by hatred of gender identity, marking the first decision by the Argentinian justice system recognizing extreme gender-based violence against transgender men. Pierina Nochetti, a lesbian human rights activist, faced criminal charges that could have resulted in up to four years in prison for allegedly painting graffiti protesting at the disappearance of Tehuel de la Torre. In October, she was acquitted.1
In April, influencer Emmanuel Danann was sentenced to community service and participation in a gender violence prevention workshop and was prohibited from mentioning journalist Marina Abiuso following systemic online gender-based harassment against her.
Over the past five years, 63.5% of female journalists in Argentina have experienced digital violence, with 85.6% reporting harassment or trolling. Additionally, 45.9% have faced sexual harassment or threats of sexual violence. As a result, 50% of these journalists reported engaging in self-censorship, and 34.5% chose to withdraw from digital platforms altogether.2
Freedom of expression and mass surveillance
Since President Milei’s administration began in 2023, nearly 30 journalists experienced harassment and violence on social media and in the media from the president and other officials.3
Resolutions 428/2024 and 710/2024, issued by the Ministry of Security, enabled mass surveillance through monitoring social media, digital applications and the internet, as well as facial recognition and machine-learning algorithms used to analyse “historical crime data and predict future crimes”.
Freedom of peaceful assembly
Following the approval of restrictive regulations on the right to protest in December 2023, the authorities responded to public demonstrations with increasing repression. On 1 February, during a peaceful protest against a bill proposing austerity measures, Matías Aufieri was blinded in his left eye by a rubber bullet fired by police.
On 12 June, 33 people were arbitrarily detained and criminalized during protests against a new version of the same law. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the authorities’ comments stigmatizing and criminalizing demonstrators, and describing them as “terrorists” with alleged plans for a “coup d’état”.
Impunity
The Executive ordered the closure of the Special Investigation Unit for the search of children appropriated and forcibly disappeared during the 1976-1983 military regime.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights found Argentina responsible for failing to adopt reasonable measures to prevent the attack on 18 July 1994 at the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association centre, as well as for not fulfilling its duty to investigate the attack and its cover-up with due diligence and for violating the right to historical truth.
Economic, social and cultural rights
The introduction of austerity measures had a disproportionate impact on children and older people.
According to the INDEC, 15.7 million people lived below the poverty line in the first half of 2024, an increase of 11.2 percentage points compared with the end of 2023. UNICEF reported that in April more than a million children went to bed without an evening meal.
Reduction in pension values was one of the main drivers of the fiscal adjustment carried out by the administration. For the whole of 2024, the minimum pension benefit failed to cover the cost of living, impacting people’s right to an adequate standard of living. Despite the decision by Congress to increase the value of pensions, the president vetoed the change, undermining the economic and social rights of older people.
The average person living in Argentina suffered economic austerity, while the fiscal system favoured a regressive tax system that exacerbated inequality. The government justified austerity and budget cuts as necessary to achieve fiscal balance, while reducing progressive taxes and increasing tax exemptions for large companies.
Right to a healthy environment
Concerns remained over the government’s position on climate change. The president declared that “global warming is a lie from socialism” and announced that he was unsubscribing Argentina from the Agenda 2030 commitments, which include targets to limit climate change. The Climate Action Tracker rated Argentina’s climate targets and policies as “critically insufficient”, meaning that they were not at all consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit for the average global temperature rise.
The government also introduced regressive legislation authorizing deforestation in currently protected areas and expanding the authorization of mining activities in the periglacial zone. The reforms had not been passed by the end of the year.
- “Argentina: Ongoing criminalization against LGBT+ activist”, 30 May ↩︎
- “Muted: The impact of digital violence against women journalists”, 15 October (Spanish only) ↩︎
- “Escalation of attacks on freedom of expression in Argentina: Amnesty International’s letter to the IACHR”, 23 July (Spanish only) ↩︎
