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Breaking a tradition of almost two decades, the anarchic Argentine Foreign Ministry stopped intervening with observations and recommendations during the Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Recently, Argentina did not participate in Geneva in the review of dictatorships such as Equatorial Guinea and North Korea, about which there is much to observe and recommend in terms of human rights. It only did so with respect to Nicaragua.
Since 2006, with the creation of the HRC, all UN member states are required to submit to a review that includes an interactive dialogue during which statements and recommendations are made to the State under review. Such interventions are not legally binding, but offer an opportunity, in the case of dictatorships, to “name and shame”, thus exposing governments that criminalize human rights and showing solidarity with their victims.
However, only a few countries show a clear commitment to the defense of human rights when faced with the UPR of dictatorships, generally those that respect human rights internally the most.
Since the establishment of the HRC, Argentina has always intervened, whether the countries examined were dictatorships or exemplary democracies. Before the UPR of dictatorships, Argentina, under different governments, intervened with observations that were partially committed to the defense of human rights. Partially committed means that, as a country that lived through a dictatorship and received international democratic solidarity during those dark years, the observations and recommendations to dictatorships should be more energetic.
Now, since the arrival of Gerardo Werthein as Minister of Foreign Affairs, it appears that Argentina will stop intervening altogether. In the recent UPR of North Korea, Australia, for example, expressed concern “at the appalling regression in the DPRK since the 2014 Commission of Inquiry, which identified crimes against humanity” and Chile recommended “Allowing full and unfettered access to the Special Rapporteur on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.”
In previous reviews of North Korea, Argentina intervened as follows: On December 7, 2009, it noted cases of abductions and enforced disappearances of both DPRK and foreign nationals that had allegedly occurred in that country; and on May 1, 2014, Argentina praised the increase in the child literacy rate and the reduction in the level of child mortality, in a totally closed country, with little credible statistics and no freedom of the press.
Argentina's most committed intervention on North Korea came before the third review of the world's most closed dictatorship. Indeed, on May 9, 2019, Argentina requested that the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea be granted access to the country, and that the practice of deprivation of liberty in political prison camps be ended, promoting their closure and guaranteeing a fair trial, as well as full respect for freedom of expression and due process; and also to put an end to serious human rights violations, in particular arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture and other inhuman, cruel or degrading treatment, as well as enforced disappearances.
In a forum where the representative of the North Korean dictatorship closed by expressing his gratitude to countries such as Russia, China, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua “for their positive inputs and recommendations”, the proclaimed “Beacon of Liberty” of Javier Milei's government remained dark in the face of North Korea's human rights review, adopting an unforgivable attitude of silence in the face of one of the most closed and criminal dictatorships in the world.
