MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Tierra del Fuego team planning Falklands trip to assess the economic impact of UK 'usurpation' of the Islands

Tierra del Fuego University project is headed by chartered accountants, Ricardo Frías and Maia Gessaga, who next February plan to visit the Falklands

The economic impact of the “illegal” occupation of the Falklands Islands by the British, is to be analyzed by the Economic Development and Innovation Institute from the Argentine University of Tierra del Fuego, in coordination with other tertiary education centers both public and private.

The initiative under the name of “Infrastructural power applicable to the Southern Atlantic”, was chosen as one of the seven projects of the “PICTO 2021 Malvinas, Antarctica and South Atlantic” competition.

The research's purpose is “to analyze from different perspectives the infrastructural power exercised, --understood as the capacity to dominate territories-- which represent for the UK having control over the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, converting them into insular territories and their adjoining maritime spaces as the rear access to Antarctica”, according to a release from the Tierra del Fuego university.

The hypothesis of the project is that “the development of infrastructural power would give Argentina the capacities to boost a State policy of effective sovereignty exercise in the insular and maritime spaces with a bi-continental projection, including those illegally occupied”.

To address the issue the University's Institute organized working groups of experts with other participating universities, in such a way to add knowledge from different disciplines. The leading node will be the University of Tierra del Fuego which will address the issue from an economics perspective.

The project is headed by two chartered accountants, Ricardo Frías and Maia Gessaga, who next February together with other nodes of experts will travel to the Falkland Islands, for a grass roots survey and data collection, including interviews with the different relevant officials living in the Falklands.

“Our development commitment is based on accounting techniques to measure the impact of such occupation and the illegal activities in which the British government is involved in the usurped territories, including the unrestricted use of natural resources, which are contrary to the policies implemented by Argentina regarding fisheries, mineral resources and the abundant oil deposits offshore the Islands”, argued Frías in his presentation.

He added that the idea is to generate the necessary tools and knowledge based on science, “so that the Argentine government and the foreign ministry can review and generate future policies reaffirming our rights and with a more forceful impact on the Argentine sovereignty claim before international organizations”.

The project also includes a mapping of military activities, “which have a growing presence in the Islands and which to a great extent have been outsourced, since there are private military forces which interact with UK forces”, concludes the brief release.