Key Takeaways
- After the Trump administration assumed leadership of the anti-rights initiative, Argentina became its newest member.
- Documents obtained by GPAHE reveal that Bolivia declined an invitation to join the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD) during Hungary’s final weeks overseeing the Secretariat.
- With Argentina joining, the GCD now has four members in Latin America: Argentina, Haiti, Guatemala and Paraguay.
- The U.S. is already seeking to expand the agreement further in the region, with Trump administration representatives meeting with senior Chilean officials the same week Argentina’s membership was announced.
With the U.S. now holding the Secretariat of the anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ+ Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), Argentina has become the latest Latin American country to join the anti-rights agreement, and the Trump administration is leading the outreach to expand the coalition’s membership.
Argentina’s decision to join is hardly unexpected. The country’s far-right president, Javier Milei, has been a longtime ally of Trump in the region. Milei has repeatedly spoken out against sexual and reproductive rights. With its addition, the GCD now has four members in the region: Argentina, Haiti, Guatemala and Paraguay. But documents obtained by GPAHE reveal that another Latin American country recently declined an invitation to join: Bolivia.
In January 2026, the Secretariat of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, then held by Hungary, invited Bolivia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs to join the declaration. (Source: documents obtained by GPAHE through a public records request).
The declaration is a nonbinding international agreement launched in 2020. It states that there is no international right to abortion and no “obligation on the part of States to finance or facilitate” it. In Argentina, by contrast, national law has guaranteed free and unrestricted access to abortion up to and including the 14th week of pregnancy since 2021.
The anti-woman initiative also promotes a restrictive definition of the family, describing it as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” and mentioning “equal sharing of responsibilities for the family by men and women.” This language implicitly excludes LGBTQ+ and diverse family models, particularly single-parent and same-sex families.
In practice, the agreement represents an attack on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), women’s access to abortion and reproductive healthcare, and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community (for more information, see GPAHE’s Geneva Consensus Declaration Fact Sheet).
U.S. Assumed GCD Secretariat From Hungary in June
As previously reported by GPAHE, the U.S. replaced Hungary as the Secretariat of the GCD in June 2026 following Viktor Orbán’s defeat in the April national election. However, the Trump administration did not publicly announce the transfer until August 12. The next day, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Argentina’s joining.
The U.S. had been one of the declaration’s founding members before withdrawing under the Biden administration. It rejoined the coalition in January 2025, shortly after Trump returned to office, setting the stage for its takeover of the Secretariat following Orbán’s electoral wipeout.
In January 2025, the U.S. formally requested to rejoin the Geneva Consensus Declaration. (Source: documents obtained by GPAHE through a public records request).
The Maria Kopp Institute, founded by Orbán’s Fidesz government, was the Hungarian organization responsible for carrying out the Secretariat’s work until the U.S. assumed the role. The transfer was initiated by the Trump government after Prime Minister Péter Magyar won the Hungarian election. On June 9, the American Embassy in Budapest sent a diplomatic note offering to take over the Secretariat, and records obtained by GPAHE show that the official handover took place on June 17.
Despite no longer running the Secretariat, Hungary remains listed as one of the 42 countries that have joined the GCD.
Europe and Latin America are the regions where the declaration has the weakest presence. The agreement is made up mostly of countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. More than half of the original signatories to the declaration are authoritarian regimes, including Bahrain, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The U.S.’s new role and Latin America’s recent shift toward right-wing and far-right governments could give the GCD new momentum in the region. The U.S. Ambassador to Argentina made that goal explicit following the country’s accession to the declaration: “Over 40 countries are already part of this initiative. We hope more nations in our hemisphere will join.”
English translation of a post by the U.S. ambassador to Argentina celebrating the country’s accesion to the GCD. The original post is in Spanish. (Source: X).
That push is now coordinated through the Trump Administration’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Global Affairs, which holds the GCD Secretariat. Its director, Bethany Kozma, is playing a central role in the U.S. government’s work on the declaration. She traveled to Buenos Aires to participate in the ceremony marking Argentina’s signing on to the GCD.
Kozma’s position also brings a prominent anti-abortion advocate into the U.S. leadership of the initiative. Before joining the second Trump administration, she had a record of equating abortion with “murder.” She was also involved in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian playbook for a Republican administration that Trump is now enacting. Kozma appeared in some of its internal training videos.
After assuming the leadership of the declaration, the U.S. credited the Orbán government for its efforts. “Hungary has faithfully safeguarded the Declaration and its principles, and we are grateful for its leadership and commitment to expanding the Declaration’s signatories,” said the Departments of State and HHS in a press release.
Despite that praise, the Fidesz government did not have the same success in recruiting Latin American countries. Bolivia, under the conservative government of President Rodrigo Paz, declined an invitation sent in January 2026 by the Maria Kopp Institute to join the anti-abortion agreement as its 41st member.
In May 2026, Bolivia declined an invitation from the Hungarian Secretariat to join the GCD. (Source: documents obtained by GPAHE through a public records request).
In a diplomatic note dated May 7, 2026, Bolivia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Hungarian Embassy in Peru that it could not join the declaration at that time due to the absence of a “specific regulatory framework” for considering accession.
The Bolivian response came more than three months after the invitation was sent, and weeks after Orbán lost Hungary’s April election.
Hungary had led the GCD since November 2022, when it took over the Secretariat from Brazil after that country’s far right president, Jair Bolsonaro, lost his campaign for reelection. During its term, the Maria Kopp Institute worked to expand the coalition’s membership, primarily in Africa. It also handled the U.S. return to the declaration and Poland’s withdrawal in February 2025.
Under U.S. leadership, Latin America is emerging as a key target for the GCD’s expansion. On August 12, Bethany Kozma met with Chile’s Minister of Women and Gender Equity and the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Argentina’s joining the GCD raises the question of which country in the region could follow, as far-right governments gain ground across Latin America.
