Milei downgrades Argentina's Human Rights Secretariat, slashes staff

President Javier Milei’s government has announced that it will downgrade Argentina’s Human Rights Secretariat as part of a sweeping round of state cutbacks.

The department will be deprioritised to a sub-secretariat and suffer an overall reduction of 30 percent in staffing levels, confirmed Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni at a press conference on Wednesday. 

The body, which falls under the orbit of the Justice Ministry, has been targeted for savings totalling around nine billion pesos, said the official.

“The Justice Ministry has decided that the Human Rights Secretariat will become the Human Rights Sub-secretariat. This means a 40-percent reduction in the organisational structure and a 30-percent cut in personnel, which represents an annual saving of nine billion pesos,” he said.

“The Human Rights office will now truly focus on guaranteeing all human rights, rather than defending an ideological and partisan agenda,” he declared, echoing regular claims from President Milei alleging the department is heavily politicised.

Although no further details were provided, the Justice Ministry, headed by Mariano Cúneo Libarona, specified that 50 percent of existing senior positions and directorates at the Human Rights Secretariat will be eliminated. 

“This measure implies a 30 percent reduction in staffing levels, without affecting the area’s core functions,” Adorni said Wednesday, adding: “Since we took office, 405 activist employees have already been dismissed – representing 44 percent of the staff we inherited.” 

Milei's approach to human rights has been criticised by leading experts and watchdogs, including Amnesty International, CELS and Human Rights Watch. 

Government critics, meanwhile, have accused officials of denialism and of relativising the crimes of the 1976–1983 military dictatorship with its regular calls for a “complete memory” of the dark era.

Rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were disappeared during the era of state terrorism.

Adoni also announced that the Archivo Nacional de la Memoria and the Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA (formerly the site of the ex-ESMA Navy Mechanics School, a clandestine detention centre during the last dictatorship) will be merged. Both units will now be coordinated by the Centro Internacional para la Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CIPDH), a body linked to UNESCO, said the government.

The restructuring of the Human Rights Secretariat is part of a broader ideological effort to shrink the state. “The government of President Milei continues working to close institutes, agencies and useless regulations,” said Adorni, who claimed that nearly 45,000 public contracts have already been cancelled since the administration took office.

Argentina’s cultural sector has also been targeted. Adorni announced that eight national institutes created by previous governments – including the Instituto Nacional Yrigoyeneano, the Instituto Nacional del Revisionismo Histórico Manuel Dorrego, and the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Históricas Eva Perón – will be merged into a single administrative unit under the Culture Secretariat “to avoid duplicated functions and guarantee a plural view of Argentine history.”

The Instituto Nacional del Teatro will also undergo major changes, said Adorni, revealing a new board will be imposed that will work ad honorem.

“We will not maintain useless structures or militant operatives embedded in the state,” Adorni insisted. “The state must stop serving as a refuge for political favours or ideological agendas.”

– TIMES/NA/PERFIL