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........

© Buenos Aires Herald