Institution key to finding babies stolen by dictatorship suffers 60% budget cut under Milei

President Javier Milei’s austerity policies have hit one of the main pillars in Argentina’s fight to find and identify those who were “disappeared” by the last dictatorship, half a century ago. The National Bank of Genetic Data (BNDG by its Spanish initials), created to identify children stolen from the victims of the military regime, has undergone a 57% budget cut since the start of the current administration in 2023, a new report warns. In the week in which Argentina is commemorating 50 years since the last military coup, which began on March 24, 1976, the report by the Economy, Politics and Science group at the Iberoamerican Center for Research in Technology, Science and Innovation (CIICTI)   shows that the institution has suffered a drop in salaries, staff and resources under the libertarian government. Human rights organizations warn that this could potentially affect the search for the close to 300 children taken from dictatorship victims who remain missing. The BNDG is a public institution created in 1987. It collects, stores and analyzes DNA samples of relatives of people who were forcibly disappeared during the 1976-1983 dictatorship and compares them to those of people believed to be their children. The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo estimate around 500 babies were stolen from dictatorship victims and handed to other families to be raised under new identities. As of 2026, 140 of them have been identified thanks to the bank. Read more of the Herald’s coverage of the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup here The report by the CIICTI found that the genetic bank’s budget has been consistently reduced since late 2023, when Milei became president. In 2024, the BNDG’s budget was cut by 35%, and in 2025 by 30%. In 2026, it suffered another drop of 5.8%. This means that its resources have been cut by more than half since Milei became president. “Scientific and technological agencies such as the BNDG require not only funds to pay the salaries of their staff, but also a budget for supplies, operational costs, capital investments, and expenses related to the provision of services and the performance of institutional tasks,” the report said. Compared to 2023, salaries within the institution have dropped 46% in real terms, and funding of operational costs are estimated to have fallen by almost 66% in the past three years. In addition, the bank has been “continuously” losing staff since December 2023, with a 34% reduction. The report detailed that “the institution is third among those most affected by loss of jobs” within the Argentine science, technology and innovation public sector, one of the most affected by budget cuts under the libertarian government. During their speech as part of the massive march organized for the 50th anniversary of the coup on Tuesday, human rights organizations warned about the budget cuts and how they are affecting their fight for memory, truth and justice. “The state must guarantee the restitution of the appropriated grandchildren, but since Milei’s government rose to power the only thing that has happened was a reduction of the public policies aimed at enforcing that and other rights of our people,” said the document read by Estela de Carlotto, head of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, and other activist leaders. You may also be interested in: Five numbers that show how the dictatorship affects Argentina to this day Attacks on human rights policies This is not the only measure from the current administration that has affected the institution. In May 2025, the government restructured the bank. The BNDG stopped being a decentralized agency — which meant that it had autonomy over its own resources — and became a “deconcentrated” one, losing its administrative capabilities. In April 2024, just four months after the start of Milei’s government, lawmakers warned that the BNDG could be at risk if the president’s mass reform provision known at the time as “omnibus bill” or Ley Bases was approved. Among many things, the bill aimed to give the executive branch the power to dissolve certain public organizations and institutions. It included a list of organizations that were exempt, but the BNDG was not initially in it. After demands from human rights organizations, the bank was included in the safe list when the bill was approved months later. Other human rights institutions and policies have suffered hard blows during Milei’s administration, including the dismantlement of the human rights secretariat and the elimination of the investigation unit that conducted investigations within the National Identity Commission to find children of the disappeared alongside the BNDG. The government has justified these measures by saying there was an overlap between different sectors of the public administration which were carrying out the same or similar tasks. They have also accused institutions dedicated to issues related to the last military dictatorship of operating under an ideological bias which favors Kirchnerism, the main opponent of the government. Since the start of his administration — and even during his campaign — Milei has questioned the work of human rights organizations, insulting them and accusing them of being thieves. The current government was also the first since the return of democracy in 1983 to publicly question the number of 30,000 dictatorship victims. In November, former human rights undersecretary Alberto Baños called the figure “false” during a hearing at the United Nations. You may also be interested in: How the grandmothers of disappeared children drove a revolution in genetics