The “No to trafficking” Team of the National Justice and Peace Commission of the Argentine Episcopal Conference was pronounced in rejection of the decision of the National Government to suppress the Direct Assistance Fund for Victims of Trafficking.
Through a statement, the entity that fights against the crime of human trafficking, repudiated the measure taken by the government of President Javier Milei, and published days ago through the official bulletin.
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Among the arguments to defend the Assistance Fund, the No to Trafficking Team mentions that “it did not consume money from the public treasury, but rather it was assets from crime that the State should administer.”
With their “deepest concern,” they detail that the Direct Assistance Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking “is an instrument that had as its objective the administration of assets confiscated in judicial cases referring to the crimes of human trafficking and exploitation, and of the laundering of assets derived from such crimes, so that these are used to repair the damages caused to the victims.”
According to the Decree 1048/2024 published by the National Government in the Official Gazette of November 26, the dissolution of this Fund—along with four others—is based on an audit that revealed “the nonexistence of a formalized procedures manual, shortcomings observed in the Contract of the Trust and the lack of a Computer System for the management of the executive unit of the aforementioned Fund.”
In this way, the national government decree eliminates a “democratic law “which represented an authentic demand from victims and survivors, promoted by the Executive Branch and voted in Congress with a broad consensus of all political forces and the support of civil society organizations,” the ecclesiastical entity points out.
The decree mentions that the dissolution of trust funds is appropriate “in the current economic context, in order to promote greater transparency and efficiency in the management of public resources.”
Given this, the No to Trafficking Team claims not to understand the mention of the economic context “since as has been mentioned, the funds do not come from the public treasury.”
On the other hand, they warn that this measure “can only result in greater harm to the people who suffered slavery firsthand and were rescued from the clutches of crime.”
The statement also mentions a survey based on the reparation of victims of trafficking prepared by the Office of the Prosecutor for Human Trafficking and Exploitation (PROTEX).
Between 2019 and 2022, the study points out, “107 convictions were issued, of which in 27 (25.2%) some type of economic reparation was made for the victims,” reaching 168 victims.
“After years of progress, which had put our country at the forefront of the fight against this crime—the most serious that can be committed against freedom and human dignity—this fact represents a setback in terms of reparation and restitution of rights. of the victims, who cannot wait and the only thing that these types of measures do is turn them into victims again, abandoned by those who should be protected,” he concludes.
Juliet Villar
I am a journalist, with a degree in communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non-governmental organizations. Since 2016 I have been dedicated to Catholic journalism, first at the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as ACI Prensa correspondent for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.