Argentina

General Overview

The area of freedom of expression in Argentina during the period under analysis is dominated by a pattern that has no equivalent in the other countries monitored by MIDA: the periodic and systematic repression of pensioners’ demonstrations in front of the National Congress. This pattern, which began to take hold during the early months of the Milei government and consolidated throughout 2024 and 2025, combines the use of police force — tear gas, rubber bullets, batons — with the criminalization of demonstrators and arbitrary detentions. At the same time, the period saw civil resistance of remarkable breadth and diversity.

Repression as State Policy Against Protest

On June 5, 2024, workers from the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) protesting against layoffs and the closure of offices were evicted and repressed. On June 12, thousands of people demonstrating in front of Congress during the debate on the Ley Bases were repressed with rubber bullets, tear gas, and beatings; 33 people were arbitrarily detained and the national government accused them of “terrorism” and attempting to obstruct legislative proceedings — a criminalization that CELS documented and formally denounced. On August 28, pensioners marching against the presidential veto of the pension benefit update law were repressed with pepper spray by the Federal Police.

Throughout 2025, this pattern deepened. On January 29, March 5, and March 12, new episodes of repression occurred during pensioners’ marches in front of Congress. The March 12 episode was the most serious of the period: more than 100 people were detained, at least 15 were injured, and photojournalist Pablo Grillo was struck by a rubber bullet and suffered serious injuries that put his eyesight at risk — a direct attack on the practice of journalism in public space, which MIDA records as a specific setback in the press freedom sub-variable.

The regularity of these episodes configures them not as isolated incidents but as a deliberate policy of protest deterrence through the use of force. This systematic nature is the most distinctive feature of the Argentine case in this area and represents an indicator of deterioration of the right to protest as a fundamental democratic right.

Resistance: Breadth and Diversity of Mobilization

In response to this situation, civil society’s reaction was sustained and increasingly organized. On October 2, 2024, demonstrations across the country defended public universities and called for wage improvements for higher education teachers. In October, students from various universities occupied their faculties in repudiation of Milei’s veto of the university funding law. On February 1, 2025, a federal anti-fascist, anti-racist LGBTIQ+ march — with rallies in more than 130 cities across the country and 15 cities around the world — responded to Milei’s stigmatizing and homophobic remarks at the Davos Forum.

On April 10, 2025, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) carried out the third general strike against the Milei government — the previous ones had been on January 24 and May 9, 2024 — with high participation nationwide. On June 4, 2025, the march marking the tenth anniversary of Ni Una Menos converged with the mobilization of pensioners and workers from the Garrahan Hospital under the slogan “Uniting struggles is the task,” seeking to express the articulation of different demands in a shared space of resistance.

The persistence and scale of these mobilizations — which in several cases extended well beyond the city of Buenos Aires and involved very diverse sectors of society — constitute a relevant indicator of democratic resilience in the Argentine case.

General Overview

In the field of sexual and reproductive rights, we record the highest number of setbacks across the various rights monitored during this period, with a singular characteristic: several of the most profound deteriorations are not the result of major visible normative reforms but of the silent dismantlement of public policies, the defunding of programs, and institutional hollowing-out. This mode of regression — which advances without great publicity and without a formal legislative act that would make it more easily challengeable — is particularly damaging and difficult to reverse.

The Dismantlement of Care Policies

The report “La cocina de los cuidados” (“The Kitchen of Care”), produced by CELS with quarterly snapshots, offers the most systematic tracking of this process. In October 2024 — ten months into the administration — a survey of 49 care policies showed that 24 had been repealed or discontinued, and 18 were at risk or underimplemented: only 7 remained in force. By March 2025, the situation was even more complex: of 50 policies surveyed, only 5 remained standing — 90% had been cut, dismantled, repealed, or was at risk. The June 2025 report — eighteen months into the administration — found that only 4 of the 50 surveyed policies (8%) remained in force, and that 2,866,000 people had lost at least one care policy they had been beneficiaries of. The speed and depth of this dismantlement has no precedent in the recent history of Argentine social policy.

Sexual and Reproductive Health: Defunding and State Withdrawal

In April 2024, presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni announced the “redesign” of the ENIA adolescent pregnancy prevention plan, which included the termination of contracts for 619 people — nearly 80% of the total workforce. A year later, official data confirmed that the distribution of condoms and contraceptives had fallen 64% under the Milei government compared to the previous period. This defunding also affected the procurement of supplies to guarantee access to legal abortion, rapid HIV diagnostic tests, viral load testing reagents, and prevention materials. The combination of these measures — the defunding of access to legal abortion and HIV health care, the drop in contraceptive distribution, and the dissolution of a team working at the federal level on adolescent pregnancy prevention — constitutes a first-order setback in the right to sexual and reproductive health.

Regressive International Positions

In November 2024, Argentina was the only country at the UN to vote against a resolution to eliminate and prevent violence against women. This position — recorded by MIDA as a threat, since it does not modify the domestic normative framework but constitutes a relevant political signal — fits within the Milei government’s strategy of using multilateral forums to project its conservative gender agenda internationally. In January 2025, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei attacked the homosexual community and “gender ideology” in his speech — a declaration the president himself made as a representative of the Argentine State before a global audience.

General Overview

The area of labor rights in Argentina shows a high concentration of setbacks: within the space of twelve months, the Milei administration simultaneously attacked the right to trade union organization, the right to strike, pension rights, and general working conditions. The preferred tool was the decree of necessity and urgency, which allowed the executive to advance without legislative debate on reforms affecting millions of workers. At the same time, relevant legal defenses by civil society managed to halt, at least in part, some of the most regressive measures.

The Labor Reform in the Ley Bases

On July 9, 2024, with the enactment of Law 27,742 (Ley Bases), a wide-ranging labor reform came into force. Its main measures included the elimination of penalties for unregistered labor; the extension of the probationary period from three to six or twelve months depending on company size; the weakening of the presumption of employment relationship; the creation of the “collaborative worker” category, allowing up to three collaborators without an employment relationship; the introduction of a severance fund as a substitute for indemnity payments; and a labor tax amnesty with debt forgiveness of between 70% and 90% depending on company size. The set of these measures was characterized by specialized analysts as a regression toward unconstitutional labor standards.

Veto of Pension Update and End of the Moratorium

In August 2024, Milei vetoed a law passed by Congress that established an additional 8.1% increase in April pension benefits and stipulated that the minimum benefit could not be less than 1.09 adult basic food baskets. Congress was unable to gather the votes needed to override the veto. In March 2025, the government decided not to extend the pension moratorium that had allowed housewives and people without sufficient contribution records to access retirement benefits — closing off an inclusionary pension mechanism that had benefited hundreds of thousands of people — predominantly women — over the past two decades.

The DNUs on Strikes and Trade Union Organization

In May 2025, the government issued two decrees of necessity and urgency that directly attacked collective labor rights. DNU 340/25 restricted the right to strike by expanding the activities considered “essential services” — which require 75% mandatory service provision during a strike — and creating a new category of activities of “transcendental importance” with 50% mandatory provision. It also included as a criterion for defining an essential service any activities that affect “fiscal revenue collection targets” — a category so broad that it could potentially apply to virtually any sector of the economy. DNU 342/25 established the possibility for the executive to intervene in trade unions in cases that the government itself defines as “union leadership vacancy,” opening the door to direct State interference in the internal life of workers’ organizations.

The anti-blockade protocol, implemented through Resolution 901/2024 of the Ministry of Security in September 2024, had been the direct precursor to this escalation: it provided for the deployment of federal forces to end trade union blockades, automatic communication to employers to facilitate dismissals for “serious injury,” and the identification of participants for possible criminal action — effectively criminalizing the right to labor protest.

Legal Defenses

In response to the DNUs on strikes, on June 2, 2025, the Association of State Workers (ATE) obtained a favorable injunction ruling that suspended the restrictions on the right to strike set out in DNU 340/25. On June 30, 2025, the National Labor Court of First Instance No. 3 declared Articles 2 and 3 of DNU 340/25 constitutionally invalid, in a ruling that highlighted the absence of the emergency that would justify the use of a decree, and the illegitimacy of the restriction on the right to strike. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which had filed its own injunction on May 27, thus saw its position upheld by the judiciary. These rulings constitute a significant example of the restraining function the courts can exercise against executive encroachment on collective rights.

General Overview

This section seeks to show how the current Argentine government deploys policies and discourse with a racist and xenophobic component, replicating a pattern visible in other right-wing and far-right political forces around the world. Prior to the arrival of Javier Milei, Argentina had progressive legislation protecting migrants and had achieved certain advances in protecting the rights of the indigenous peoples of its territory. The cutting or dismantling of public policies and legislation is in this case accompanied by a discursive endorsement that stigmatizes and at times criminalizes migrant groups from Latin American countries and indigenous peoples.

Indigenous Peoples: Evictions and International Isolation

In October 2024, the government repealed Decree 805/2021 and ended the emergency regarding the possession and ownership of lands occupied by indigenous communities, originally established by Law 26,160. This law had been successively renewed since 2006 and constituted the primary mechanism for protecting communities’ territorial possession while technical and legal surveys of their territories were being conducted. Its repeal opened the door to evictions. For example, in the Patagonia region, on January 9, 2025, the Lof Paillako Community was evicted; on June 3, 2025, the Lof Quemquemtrew Community was evicted from Cuesta del Ternero, and the Lof Buenuleo Community was forced to leave 90 hectares in dispute at the foot of Cerro Ventana, where an eviction court order was in place.

On the international stage, in November 2024, Argentina was the only country at the UN to vote against a resolution on the rights of indigenous peoples in the General Assembly — a position that, like the vote against the resolution on violence against women, does not modify the domestic normative framework but globally projects the government’s agenda and signals to international human rights bodies that Argentina has abandoned its traditional role as a promoter of protective standards.

Migrants: The Regressive DNU of May 2025

In October 2024, DNU No. 942/2024 modified the composition of the National Commission for Refugees (CONARE) and regulated the Refugee Law in a manner regressive with respect to international standards, introducing a national security perspective that affects the right to seek and receive asylum recognized in the American Convention on Human Rights. In May 2025, DNU 366/2025 encroached upon the full range of migration rights: it restricted migrants’ access to health services and enabled the possibility of charging fees for access to education — a measure that, if consolidated, would imply the exclusion of migrant communities from essential public services previously guaranteed on a universal basis.