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In 2013, the Blacksmith Institute ranked the Matanza-Riachuelo, a tributary of the Rio de la Plata (La Plata River), as one of the ten most polluted places in the world. Over the past two hundred years the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin has been used as a sewage sink for the entire city of Buenos Aires. Pollution levels have increased steadily with urbanization in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. The high levels of contamination affect a population of approximately 5 million inhabitants in the basin, many of whom live in poverty and without access to basic needs. An estimated 10 percent of the total population in the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin lives in informal settlements, often in flood-prone areas and/or near open garbage dumps. The poorest populations living alongside the river are in constant contact with numerous contaminants ranging from untreated organic waste to toxic industrial chemicals. The problem with the Matanza-Riachuelo is not simply a problem of contamination in a slow-flowing river. Rather, the river raises thorny issues of governance, inequality, human rights, poverty, infrastructure, urban planning, and social cohesion. Therefore, the court-mandated clean-up project currently underway in the river basin is far more than an effort to engineer elegant technical solutions to sanitize a stagnant waterway. Instead, it also explicitly aims to recognize and address the longstanding social inequalities that exist in the basin. As such, the Matanza-Riachuelo provides a fantastic laboratory in which to study issues at the intersection of development and human rights. The main purpose of the Buenos Aires International Field Program is to create a space in which students can investigate the themes of human rights and development that the Matanza Riachuelo clean-up project illuminates. What has been achieved in the past six years?

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