Transparency bills turn into cages for Latin American civil society funders
A report facilitated by the Thomson Reuters Foundation with Fundamedios identified four emerging risks to civil society across ten Latin American countries, describing regulation that is excessively controlling, punitive or stigmatising. In May 2025, El Salvador introduced a foreign agent law imposing a 30 percent tax on foreign donations, adding legal and tax burdens on organisations receiving international funding.
The Argentine case shows how a measure can arrive dressed as reform. President Javier Milei's bill, still under debate in the Argentine Congress, was presented as making corporate lobbying more transparent, yet the report says it equates rights organisations with corporate lobbyists and would create a mandatory registry the government could suspend or cancel. What opened as accountability closes as an instrument of discouragement.
Source: Alliance Magazine · September 23, 2026