According to a report by the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), the Ministry of Human Rights Office has employed 696 people under this category, "70.55% are contracted by the private sector" through agreements with various institutions. Part of the senior staff has a fixed-term employment contract thus implying that "decision-makers are not on the Secretariat’s permanent staff."

The Secretary of Human Rights Office (SDH, for its acronym in Spanish) is responsible for policies for the promotion and protection of civil, political, economic, and collective rights.  It designs and solves community actions for spreading the word on human rights and equal opportunities for people with disabilities, indigenous people, and refugees. In addition, the SDH must promote actions related to missing children cases, family violence, and eradication of sexual exploitation, bioethics and research of children born in captivity. Their work mainly focuses on the implementation of "reparation politics" to victims of the past military dictatorship.

The AGN explained that to fulfill its functions, the Secretariat has only 205 contracts of the National Public Administration and other staff, 491 people, hired through the Automotive Dealers Association of Argentina (ACARA) Automotive chamber of Commerce (CEC) and the Bar (CA), under agreements signed within the agenda of Law 23,238.

Law 25,164 –of Regulation of Public Employment- states that "no permanent staff can only meet seasonal or temporary jobs" as a result of "a non-permanent increase in tasks or momentary lack of personnel." But according to the report, approved this year on data from 2009, this situation is not what is configured in the SDH.

In fact, the watchdog adds that "personnel working in senior positions are also linked to the agency under this type of contract", working against the teachings of the previous Act, that "the decision lies with people who are not in the permanent staff of the Public Administration "and therefore recommended in the same report," no permanent staff assigned to seasonal or temporary duties, occupying senior positions with permanent staff."

The watchdog also noted that the agency had no strategic plan (for planning purposes and methodologies), "that no reports were made in 2009 (useful for determining deviations from the plans) and have no records of goals executed during 2009 and 2010.”

Human Rights Situation in Argentina

In order to assess the situation of human rights in the country, the Secretariat made an adaptation of the indicator system that uses the American Institute of Human Rights, composed of one hundred twenty (120) guidelines. However when asked to submit the audit indicators, SDH "had not developed any series on the proposed indicators," which led to the "failure to observe the situation on the issues involved."

According to the AGN, this information "could have shown the situation of the issues to the Secretariat and could have measures the impact of the policies implemented".
 
Stregnthening Human Rights 

Furthermore, to strengthen the mechanisms for promoting human rights, "Strengthening the System of Protection of Human Rights" (FORPODHU) between the European Union and Argentina was created.

The total estimated cost of the project is € 6,000,000 of which the EU is committed to financing € 5,000,000, and the Republic of Argentina will provide € 1,000,000. About the Audit Program they said that they "did not obtain evidence of the existence of official statistical surveys or studies on human rights issues in each region or province" before signing the project. This work would have allowed a diagnostic of the jobs before they developed an agreement.

The project also included the installation of a network of "human rights observatories". 11 observatories were installed; however the watchdog points out that "no document that reflected the criteria have been used for the proper location of the Observatories of Human Rights."

When the auditors tried to advance the analysis of the "project to strengthen human rights they met with the difficulty that the performance reports only recorded "the progress of each planned activity, but not a comprehensive overview of the state of completion". What also didn’t help was the fact that the indicators do not allow "to assess and measure whether they are meeting the objectives of the project."

Finally, the National Audit Office found that "they had not formed the National Advisory Committee, under the Financing Agreement Subscribed". This activity, the report said, "is the responsibility of the SDH and assumed by the Strengthening Protection of Human Rights Management Unit System, since April 2007."