The Argentine delegation to the OAS threw a opposition bomb to LGBTI issuesgender and others related to human rights in the negotiations of the resolutions to be approved in the OAS General Assembly next week, with the aim of rolling back the text agreed in previous years.
This happened after more than a month of discussion by the OAS Commission on Juridical and Political Affairs (CAJP) in Washingtonwhere the text of the resolutions that will be approved at the next 54th General Assembly of the OAS to be held in Asunción, Paraguay, between June 26 and 28, was debated.
“Climate change”, “criminalization and persecution of social protest”, “gender perspective”are some of the key concepts that the Argentine Government does not even want to hear mentioned. Page 12 had access to the draft in which the Chancelleryin which these proposals for changes to the original text can be read.
A look at what the delegation to the OAS questions gives an idea of the marked shift in foreign policy regarding human rights. In a review of what is proposed to be added, rewritten and deleted, the official positions on many issues ranging from sexual and reproductive rights to environmental rights are revealed. going through racism, people with disabilities, indigenous communities, Afro-descendants, childhoods and more. In general terms, and in contradiction with the national legislation itself, the Milei government proposes to sweep away almost any reference to the “lgbti population” and “gender” in the text of that resolution.
In the section in which the OAS expresses its concern about the dangerous situations to which Human Rights activists (it names them as “defenders”) are exposed in the different member countries, Argentina asks that the fragment in which the criminalization of protest is condemned. The same when it is said that the situation of women human rights activists, who “run specific risks, including sexual and gender violence,” must be taken into account.
“They have practically crossed out the entire ‘Human Rights Defenders’ section. That section is there every year. It is consolidated. It is not surprising that this Government, and I say this in a context in which there are still people detained for demonstrating against the Bases Law, attacks precisely that section”says the historical lesbian activist María Luisa Peralta.
The government also opposes the passage in which the organization indicates its concern about the violence to which the women are exposed. lgbti childhoods, in, for example, school. He suggests that this fragment be deleted, claiming that he considers that this wording “seriously violates the freedom of education and, in particular, the ideologies of private schools.”
He is also against condemning “discrimination, hate speech and manifestations, incitement and acts of violence motivated (…) due to their sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression and their sexual characteristics”, with the argument that this suggestion violates the freedom of expression.
In a completely unprecedented gesture, Argentina also raises objections to the commitment that the OAS proposes to reaffirm in relation to the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women, known as Convention of Belém do Pará (to which our country has adhered since 1994). The suggestion to change the definition of “sexual and reproductive health” of women to “comprehensive health” also speaks for itself.
In comments made by Argentina cross out the term “gender” every time it appears, a gesture that in the context of the United Nations is usually seen as a proposal from African Union countries, Muslim countries, the Vatican (which is an observer State), Russia, Hungary. “Countries with extreme conservative positions. But also, on this occasion the Milei government has crossed out the mention of ‘women and girls’ in the resolution. We have never seen that before,” says María Luisa Peralta.
In the section on environmental issues, every time the words appear “climate change”, The comments of the local delegation appear to question: “Argentina considers that it does not correspond to declarations on human rights to pronounce on discussions of a scientific nature.”
Every time the concept of “Agenda 2030”, Argentina highlights its contrary position. The 2030 Agenda is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals, 17 interconnected goals established in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UN-GA), which include, among others, horizons such as: “Zero Hunger,” “Gender equality”, “Reducing inequalities”, “Climate action”, “Non-polluting energies”.
“They take very extreme positions. They oppose any mention of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which sets objectives that states together should try to advance. The central core has to do with poverty and very basic conditions such as access to drinking water and the fight against poverty. We also talk about the environment and of course, if we talk about poverty, we also talk about gender,” explains María Luisa Peralta.
“Milei’s government is opposed, as are others on the far right, because they consider that this is part of ‘globalism’. An alleged great conspiracy of multilateral spaces that would go beyond sovereignty. Which is not true because the states are members of those spaces and all the documents that are discussed there are negotiated by everyone.”
Esteban Paulon, a national deputy with a long career in lgbti activism, expressed his concern to this newspaper about the retrograde turn carried out by the government of Javier Milei, advised by Úrsulla Basset, an ultra-conservative lawyer, who was one of the main faces against the equal marriage law, who is now taking up a new position in the Chancellery. “For more than two decades, our country was a pioneer in the international arena. Even with Mauricio Macri this continued to be the case: a pioneering country in promoting legislation and international tools for the protection of the LGBTI community.”
“We are concerned not only because of what it implies at the international level, but because it anticipates a worsening of the questioning of rights behind closed doors. Precisely one of the issues on which the Argentine delegation focuses is questioning the legislation that prohibits efforts to correct people’s sexual orientation and gender identity,” says Paulon in reference to the so-called “reconversion therapies” of sexual identity.
“It is not new that the right of Cambiemos, Libertarians and Peronists, radicals and civic accomplices came to derail our country in the model of exclusion prior to the Sáenz Peña Law,” adds Flavio Rapisardi, doctor in communication and LGBT activist. “The suggestions before the OAS do not deprive anything of what is bad and bad people: the plans for planned misery reveal what we have insisted on since the 90s: “differences” (ethnic, sex-gender, geographical, corporal) are pretexts to reproduce dispossessionthat is why perhaps it is time for a double movement: impeachment of Milei and his accomplices and for the movements of differences to abandon their gondolas of comfort and assume anti-authoritarian political alliances: they can never again be in the Pride March as complicit as the Coalition Civic, PRO and UCR”.
