MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Funds have been allocated to Argentina's Forensic Anthropology Team

Luis Fondebrider who first made public the fragile financial situation of the team said that his only intention was to ensure the continuity of their project

Last Thursday December 20, the Argentine ministry of Justice and Human Rights confirmed the transfer and payment order of the first of two outlays planned for the fiscal year, to the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, EAFF, which had complained a cut in funds.

 The Forensic Anthropology Team was born in 1984 as the tool to locate and identify the thousands of disappeared civilians from the last Argentine military dictatorship. As a result of its professionalism and results the EAFF has international recognition and is involved in similar tasks in other Latin American countries, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Other current activities in Argentina involve helping with the identification of femicide victims, searching for disappeared persons, training prosecutors and judges in the forensic science.

However lately their great success has been as part of the humanitarian project to identify remains of the Argentine combatants buried in the Falklands in unnamed graves. This effort has been extremely successful and globally acknowledged since of 122 graves, 106 already have full names.

However this was the first time in 34 years that the EAFF had come out to the Argentine public opinion to explain the situation and caution that without the appropriate funding, they would have to cease activities in Argentina and the Falklands. Not necessarily in other countries with other sources of financing.

According to a long release from the Ministry of Justice a new cooperation and financial support agreement with EAFF was signed last 30 October, following on talks started on 29 August.

The total sum was agreed in two payments of over 10 million Argentine Pesos, totaling some half a million US dollars.

The release then explains the different steps inside the Argentine bureaucracy, until the Finance ministry agreed to the payment of the first 10 million Pesos, while the second installment is conditioned to the review of how the funds were invested.

The ministry also points out that last year the funds allocated totaled 17 million Argentine Pesos and that since 2007, eleven agreements have been signed with the Anthropology Forensic Team for 88 million Argentine Pesos. It must be remembered that in Argentina inflation and devaluation of the Peso is rampant.

The Director of EAAF, Luis Fondebrider who first made public the fragile financial situation of the team and its works, said that his only intention was to ensure the continuity of their project, and that “all returns to its normal track”.

“We value the speed of the reply which we received and that should have not reached such a stage, because in effect the funds had already been allocated, it was not money to be transferred from other sources”, underlined Fondebrider, head of the prestigious team in its field.