Kast Administration's Budget Cuts Threaten National Search Plan for Chile's Disappeared

The Kast administration's proposed 2027 budget for the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights would discontinue the entire Human Rights Program of the Subsecretariat of Human Rights — the program that funds the National Search Plan for detained-disappeared persons, forensic investigations into mass graves, and the legal support system for victims' families. The Human Rights Program ran CLP $1.864 billion (approximately USD $2 million) in 2025; the Kast proposal zeroes it out entirely. Human rights lawyers and forensic scientists warned that defunding the program would freeze the Macul landfill excavation — where a March 2026 report identified possible remains of up to 30 disappeared persons — and halt ongoing DNA identification work by the Medical-Legal Service's Human Rights Unit. The cuts also endanger the physical infrastructure at Villa Grimaldi, Londres 38, and other memory sites that receive state co-funding. Former Boric administration officials described the move as 'deliberate institutional dismantlement designed to ensure the disappeared remain unaccounted for.'