Under What Legal Status Could the Falkland Islands Rejoin Argentina?

The Falkland Islands question reaches beyond diplomacy and historical memory into a strictly constitutional dilemma: if Argentina recovered sovereignty, or reached a negotiated settlement, how would the archipelago fit into the nation’s federal structure?

Argentina’s 1994 Constitution gives a clear instruction in its First Transitional Provision. It calls for recovering full sovereignty over the islands while respecting their inhabitants’ way of life and the principles of international law. But the constitutional text does not explain exactly how the territory would be integrated politically.

The article identifies four main institutional alternatives, along with an intermediate diplomatic and administrative solution. One option would create a new Argentine province, either by altering the existing territorial structure or by establishing a province directly on the archipelago. Article 13 of the Constitution allows Congress to admit new provinces or elevate existing territories to provincial status, provided they have enough population and economic resources to sustain their government.

That model would give the islands their own provincial constitution, independent judiciary, local legislature and elected executive authorities. They would also receive equal representation in Congress through senators and deputies. Given the islands’ demographic characteristics, Argentina would become an “asymmetrical” federation, with a province granted special status and retaining its own language, English, as well as its religion and culture.

The alternative currently supported by Argentine law is to treat the islands as part of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands Province. Law 23,775 formally included the Falklands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and their surrounding maritime areas within that province’s jurisdiction. Under domestic law and official maps, the islands already have an assigned constitutional status as part of an existing province. If effective control were recovered, administration would formally fall to the provincial government in Ushuaia without requiring new national legislative structures. The article notes, however, that Article 2 of the law subjects the province’s status regarding the Falklands to treaties with foreign powers concluded by the federal government.