Weekly Report - 30 January 2020 (WR-20-04)

International scrutiny of the government led by President Sebastián Piñera has intensified this week following the arrival of an observer mission from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The mission is tasked with evaluating the situation in Chile amid accusations of systematic human rights violations by the security forces during the policing of the ongoing social protests that erupted in October last year. The Piñera government has been accused of being directly responsible for allowing and/or instigating these rights violations. Should the IACHR mission find credible evidence of this, the government’s standing both at home and abroad could be seriously damaged.