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The 14th edition of this annual conference took place at the German Club in Buenos Aires, bringing together thirteen speakers and around one hundred attendees.
The conference was opened by Carlos Fara, President of CADAL; Gabriel C. Salvia, General Director of CADAL; and Rushan Abbas.
The first panel, entitled “Is Anything Still Standing? The International Human Rights System in the Face of Democratic Backsliding”, addressed the following questions: Is the international human rights system in crisis, or has it always been more fragile than we believed? Which threats to the international human rights framework are structural, and which stem from current circumstances? What is changing under the Trump administration, and what was already changing? Does civil society have a real capacity to influence the international human rights system? What specific limitations does it face, particularly small and medium-sized organisations in the Global South? Are there solid grounds for hope, or are we facing an epochal shift that requires us to rethink our strategies from scratch? The panel was moderated by Inés Pousadela, with Eduardo Ulibarri, Patricia Tappatá and Andrea Oelsner as speakers.
The second panel, entitled “The Global Defence of Human Rights”, was moderated by Rubén Chababo, with Roberto Saba, Inés Pousadela, María Teresa Blandón and Alfredo Okenve as speakers. It addressed the following questions: Which strategies have proved most effective in supporting democratic activism in authoritarian contexts? How can international solidarity work alongside local agendas without reproducing patterns of dependency or imposition? What lessons have we learnt in recent years about the funding and sustainability of transnational activism?
In the third panel, Javier El-Hage presented the Tyranny Tracker, with commentary from Marcela Barahona, Elisa Trotta Gamus, Jonathan Duarte and Eduardo Repilloza. The Human Rights Foundation’s (HRF) Tyranny Tracker monitors key indicators to assess conditions and trends in Latin American countries, offering essential insights into electoral competition, freedom of dissent and institutional accountability, the three fundamental pillars of democratic governance. Using this framework, the panel examined the cases of Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In the final panel, conducted in English, María de los Ángeles Lasa spoke with Marcelo Alegre and Dolkun Isa under the title “Are There Grounds for Hope in the International Defence of Human Rights?”
