Mariela Belski

Activist

• Born: 1971
• Birthplace: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Birthdate: 1971

Birthplace: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Significance: Mariela Belski is an Argentinian lawyer and human rights activist. She began serving as the executive director of Amnesty International Argentina in September 2011. Belski led a campaign for abortion rights in the country. Argentina passed a bill allowing abortions for women up to fourteen weeks pregnant in December 2020, making it one of the most progressive countries for abortion rights in Latin America.

Background

Belski was born in Buenos Aires in 1971. She enrolled in the University of Buenos Aires in 1991, graduating with a law degree in 1996. She went on to study at the University of Palermo from 1997 to 1999, doing coursework in public, constitutional, and human rights law. She earned a Master of Laws degree in 2003 from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. While at Essex, she was active in the university’s Human Rights Center. From 2005 to 2006, she attended the University of Chile where she did post-graduate coursework in human rights and human rights law.

Life’s Work

After completing her coursework at the University of Buenos Aires in 1996, Belski was hired as a legal advisor for the City of Buenos Aires’ education department. In this position, she drafted legal opinions on school scholarships and school inclusion and integration policies. She also developed an inclusion plan for migrant students within the city school system. She became a legal consultant in Buenos Aires in 1998, serving the secretary of state reform. In this role, she drafted a number of bills including one on education. From 1999 to 2001, she worked with the United Nations Development Programme in Buenos Aires before moving on to the human rights organization Article 19 in June 2003. She first served as an intern lawyer at Article 19 in 2003 before returning in 2007 as a consultant. As an intern, she produced an in-house bulletin on freedom of expression and information access across Latin America. As a consultant, she continued her focus on access to information as it related to the enforceability of social rights. She began working for UNESCO in November 2008, studying the societal impacts of Argentina’s financial crisis. Her work aimed to achieve education for all by 2015.

From January 2005 to September 2011, she worked in a number of roles for the Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (Association for Civil Rights) in Argentina. Some of the work she did with this organization included drafting and designing studies to address discrimination in education, rights of children living with their mothers in confinement, and access to education for children with disabilities. During this time, she also worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Fund for Women for a few months in 2010. In this role, she studied the use of strategic litigation as a tool to enforce sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America. Belski began serving as vice president of Red Argentina Para La Cooperación Internacional in December 2020. She became the executive director of Amnesty International Argentina in September 2011. Before joining Amnesty International, she also worked as a professor, researcher and member of the Public Interest Law Clinic at Palermo University.

Impact

One of the campaigns Belski led as director of Amnesty International Argentina was the legalization of abortion in the country. Amnesty International, alongside other organizations like the National Campaign for the Right to a Legal Abortion represented what was known as the “green wave” in Argentina. In the campaign to legalize abortion, activists would don a green scarf at public events to represent their support of the movement. In late 2020, Argentina made abortion legal for women who are pregnant up to fourteen weeks, which made the country a leader in abortion rights in Latin America. She also said that the legalization of abortion in Argentina was likely to impact other Latin American countries like Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. As she predicted, the “green wave” made its way to other Latin American countries like Mexico and Colombia, which within a few years also affirmed the right to abortion. However, Belski predicted implementation of the Argentinian abortion access law would be difficult, and said Amnesty International would continue to campaign. She said certain sectors sought to hinder access to legal abortion and had begun initiating legal actions in different jurisdictions of the country to block the implementation of the law.

As of 2023, Belski was also the only woman executive director of a human rights organization in Argentina. According to the International Alumni Association, Amnesty International Argentina was practically non-existent when she took on the role as executive director. As leader of the organization, she brought in five thousand new members in one year. The organization is now frequently mentioned in newspaper articles and has a large social media following. In addition to abortion, Belski was also outspoken about other human rights issues like transgender rights. When three transgender women were killed in Argentina in 2015, she told the Reuters news agency that a dark cloud had set over Argentina’s trans community and called for justice for the victims.

Personal Life

Belski enjoys watching documentaries and reading newspapers like The New York Times and The Guardian. She has a daughter.

Bibliography

Alcalde, María Antonieta, Mariela Belski, and Paula Avila-Guillen. “Passing the Green Torch To Our Sisters: How the Green Wave Took Over the U.S.” Ms., 11 July 2022, msmagazine.com/2022/07/11/green-wave-latin-america-marea-verde-roe-v-wade/. Accessed 23 June 2023.

“Argentina: Legalization of Abortion Is an Historic Victory.” Amnesty International, 30 Dec. 2020, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2020/12/argentina-legalization-abortion-historic-victory/. Accessed 23 June 2023.

“Free as a Green Bird: The Argentine Abortion Legalization Process, An Interview With Mariela Belski.” Scarleteen, 18 May 2021, www.scarleteen.com/article/politics‗pregnancy‗and‗parenting‗sexual‗health/free‗as‗a‗green‗bird‗the‗argentine‗abortion. Accessed 23 June 2023.

Mirochnik, Karina. “‘The Green Scarf, Emblem of the Struggle for Legal Abortion, has Already Transcended Borders’ Mariela Belski, Amnesty Argentina.” Women Across Frontiers, February 2021, wafmag.org/2021/02/the-green-scarf-emblem-of-the-struggle-for-legal-abortion-has-already-transcended-borders-mariela-belski-amnesty-argentina/. Accessed 23 June 2023.

“Mariela Belski.” Amnistía Internacional Argentina, 2023, amnistia.org.ar/nosotros/quienes-somos/mariela-belski/. Accessed 23 June 2023.

“Mariela Belski.” International Alumni Association, 2020, www.thealumniassociation.com/home/4838243-mariela-belski/profile. Accessed 23 June 2023.

“Outcry over the killing of three transgender women in Argentina.” Reuters, 14 Oct. 2015, www.reuters.com/article/argentina-transgender/outcry-over-the-killing-of-three-transgender-women-in-argentina-idUSL1N12E1XZ20151014. Accessed 23 June 2023.