President Javier Milei’s first year in office was characterized by new human rights challenges, including cuts to social program funding, obstacles to people’s ability to exercise the freedom of peaceful assembly, and hostile official rhetoric against journalists and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. While Argentina’s longstanding economic crisis persisted and poverty rates continued to rise, high levels of inflation began to stabilize.
Democratic Institutions
For years, Congress has failed to appoint an attorney general, an ombudsperson, and a Supreme Court justice, positions important to human rights that require a two-thirds majority vote in Congress for confirmation.
In April, President Milei nominated Ariel Lijo, a federal judge, to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, and Manuel García-Mansilla, a scholar, to fill another Supreme Court vacancy that opened in December, when a justice turned 75 years old.
Rights groups, citizens, business associations, and scholars have expressed concern over Lijo’s record as judge. As of October, Lijo had five pending disciplinary investigations in the Council of the Judiciary, the body charged with investigating and removing federal judges. According to one study, he has faced 29 other disciplinary proceedings that were closed, including 16 in limine, meaning without any analysis. Some proceedings were based on evidence that Lijo delayed, and otherwise manipulated, investigations into corruption.
At time of writing, neither candidate had received sufficient support at a committee level to put their nominations to a vote in the Senate’s plenary. If appointed, the five-member Supreme Court would be composed of only men—the only high court with such composition in Latin America.
At time of writing, Milei’s administration had not nominated any candidate to serve as ombudsperson, nor as attorney general.
As of November, 300 federal and national judgeships remained vacant, accounting for almost one-third of the total positions. The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that delays in appointments, which leave temporary judges serving for years, undermine judicial independence.
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Year-to-year inflation was 193 percent as of October, the government reported, with housing, water, and energy prices increasing 285 percent. Following a sharp monthly inflation rate of 25 percent at the time former President Alberto Fernández’s administration handed over to President Milei’s, soaring levels of inflation began to stabilize in 2024, with a month-to-month inflation of 2.7 percent recorded in October.
As of June 2024, 52.9 percent of the population lived in poverty, a sharp increase from 27.5 percent in 2019. People living in extreme poverty—which the government defines as the inability to meet key elements of the right to food—amounted to 18.1 percent of the population. Two thirds of children under the age of 14 were living in poverty, and almost 3 in 10 were in extreme poverty.
President Milei’s austerity plan drastically reduced government spending, impacting the financing of several social programs. A study showed that during the first four months of 2024, programs for victims of gender-based violence were cut by 70 to 100 percent. The reductions also affected programs providing medical attention to patients with cancer and fostering integration of people with disabilities. President Milei also vetoed laws passed by Congress to increase pensions and funding for public universities.
The government almost doubled the purchasing power of the child monthly allowance program, which benefits more than four million children under the age of 18.
Freedom of Peaceful Assembly
In December 2023, the Security Ministry published a protocol that, in practice, criminalizes any disturbance to traffic arising from a demonstration. It also gives police broad powers to disperse demonstrations and allows the government to force protest organizers to pay for police operations in response to protests and public property damage caused by demonstrations.
In January, three United Nations special rapporteurs asked the Milei administration to align the protocol with international standards on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.
In June, when thousands protested outside Congress against a government-promoted bill, the police activated the protocol and responded by shooting rubber bullets and teargas, and punching protesters. Some protesters burned garbage cans and a car. Police arrested 33 people that day, the last of whom was released in September.
Security Policies
In 2023, Argentina had a murder rate of 4.4 per 100,000 people, one of the lowest in Latin America. However, the city of Rosario, in Santa Fe province, had a rate of homicides five times higher than the average national rate, with local gangs fighting over control of the local drug trade.
In December 2023, the Milei administration sent more security officers to Rosario and implemented a plan to better coordinate security strategies with the local governments. The provincial government also tightened controls in prisons. As of October, murders in Rosario had decreased by 72 percent in 2024, compared to the same period in 2023.
In March, the Security Ministry published a resolution broadening the scope for security agents’ use of firearms. The resolution allows for the use of lethal force in an overly broad set of circumstances and undermines both administrative and judicial accountability for police abuse.
Attacks on Journalists
President Milei and high-level cabinet members have used hostile rhetoric to stigmatize independent journalists and media, usually through social media posts, speeches, and interviews that include a wide variety of insults and personal attacks. The Forum of Argentine Journalists (FOPEA) said, in September, that the president had verbally attacked at least 45 journalists since he took office.
Gender-Based Violence
Despite a 2009 law detailing comprehensive measures to prevent and prosecute violence against women and girls, the National Registry of Femicides reported 250 femicides—the murder of women and girls based on their gender—in 2023.
Gender-based violence is systemic and occurs in all sectors of society. In August 2024, former First Lady Fabiola Yáñez filed a criminal complaint accusing former President Fernández of gender-based violence. Fernández denied the allegations. A court was investigating the case at time of writing.
Violence Against LGBT People
President Milei and members of his administration have made disparaging comments about same-sex marriage, gender identity, and inclusive sexuality education.
In May, a man threw a Molotov cocktail into a boarding house in Buenos Aires, killing three lesbian women and injuring another, an attack activists linked to rising anti-LGBT rhetoric.
Past Abuses
The Supreme Court and federal judges, in the early 2000s, annulled pardons and amnesty laws shielding officials implicated in the 1976-1983 dictatorship’s crimes. As of September, the Attorney General’s Office reported that, of 3,732 people charged with crimes against humanity, 1,187 had been convicted, 1,213 died, and 192 acquitted; with the rest still being investigated.
In July, a group of congresspeople of the ruling party visited detainees serving prison sentences for crimes against humanity, including former Navy official Alfredo Astiz, who had been convicted in France and in Argentina for the kidnapping and torture in 1977 of two French nuns in Argentina, among others.
Court battles continue 30 years after 85 people died and more than 300 were injured in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center. No individual has been convicted. In June, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Argentina was responsible for the failure to prevent and investigate the bombing, and urged authorities to identify and bring to justice those responsible for the attack and its concealment.
Foreign Policy
The Milei administration has increasingly opposed international resolutions on economic, social, and cultural rights and gender. At the UN General Assembly in September, President Milei rejected the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and his government opposed the Pact for the Future, a global framework to address issues such as inequality, climate change, and international financial governance. In October, Argentina was the only country to reject a declaration on gender equality at the G20 forum. That month, President Milei threatened to fire career diplomats who disagree with his foreign policy views.