The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Spanish: Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) is a human rights organisation with the aim of finding the babies stolen during the era of the Argentine dictatorship known as the "Dirty War" (1976–1983). Its president is Estela Barnes de Carlotto.
It was founded in 1977 to locate children kidnapped during the repression and return them to their biological families. The work of the Grandmothers, assisted by scientist Mary-Claire King, has led to the location of over 10 percent of the estimated 500 children kidnapped or born in detention during the military era.[1] In 1998, the identity of 256 missing babies were documented. Of those, 56 children have been located and seven of them had died. The Grandmothers' work led to the creation of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and the establishment of a National Genetic Data Bank. Aided by recent breakthroughs in genetic testing, the Grandmothers succeeded in returning 31 children to their biological families, while 13 others were raised jointly by their adoptive and biological families; the remaining cases are bogged down in court custody battles.[2]
The stolen babies were part of a systematic plan in the frame of the "Dirty War".[1] According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), this was justified by the junta by the following reasoning: "The anguish generated in the rest of the surviving family because of the absence of the disappeared would develop, after a few years, into a new generation of subversive or potentially subversive elements, thereby not permitting an effective end to the Dirty War.".[2]
As an off-shoot of the Silvia Quintela case, former dictator Jorge Videla was put to house-arrest on charges of kidnappings.
On 14 September 2011 the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo received the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize in Paris for their work in defense of Human Rights.[3]