HUMAN RIGHTS: UN Prize a Recognition of Brazil’s Progress

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 7 1998 (IPS) - The head of Brazil’s National Secretariat of Human Rights, Jose Gregori, is the first Brazilian to be awarded the U.N. human rights award, in recognition of his work as well as the progress made by the country in cleaning up its human rights record.

Gregori, who has headed the state human rights office since its creation in March 1997, is the chief architect of the government’s human rights policy, said parliamentary Deputy and rights activist Helio Bicudo.

The U.N. prize is awarded every five years to a number of personalities and institutions. Past winners have included South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King, rights watchdog Amnesty International, Chile’s Vicaria de Solidaridad (Vicariate of Solidarity) and Sudan’s Women’s Union.

The bestowal of the award on Gregori this year – the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – confirms the improvement in Brazil’s foreign image.

For three decades, Latin America’s giant has sat in the dock – first for the torture and murders committed during the 1964-85 military dictatorship, and later because of rampant police violence and massacres of prisoners, street children, indigenous people and landless peasants.

The gunning down of 11 prisoners in 1992 in Sao Paulo, a 1996 massacre of 19 landless peasants in Eldorado de Carajas, in northern Brazil, killings of street children in Rio de Janeiro – all crimes committed by police – have severely damaged Brazil’s international image.

But a shift began to be seen in April 1996, when a National Human Rights Programme emerged from six regional seminars and two national-level meetings, in which parliamentary commissions and 210 organisations of civil society participated.

Brazil thus became one of the first countries to live up to the recommendations set forth by the 1993 Human Rights Summit held in Vienna, pointed out Carlos Alberto Idoeta, founder and former president of the Brazilian chapter of Amnesty International.

Ideota said the U.N. human rights award was motivated by the programme – which is “well designed, in which activists and society participate, and which shows a promising future, even though its application is not moving forward at the speed we would like” – while it also recognised Gregori’s leadership, “his perseverance and personal commitment.”

James Cavallaro, director of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said the award “is more a recognition of the person, his past struggle, than of the Secretariat” he heads in the central government.

The Secretariat set up to implement the National Human Rights Programme has scant resources, “both financial and legal,” said Cavallaro, because a number of bills designed to provide it with the authority to tackle human rights violations are bogged down in Congress.

He stressed that there were “distortions” at the level of institutions which favour impunity for police who commit abuses, such as the fact that bringing the perpetrators to justice depends on police investigations.

In spite of the criticism detailed by Human Rights Watch’s latest report, Cavallaro acknowledged the progress made by Brazil, in reducing modern-day slavery and child labour, for example, as well as the passage of a law broadening the possibility of alternative sanctions, and measures to curb police violence.

Promoting human rights is a slow process, due to its major cultural aspect. “It is a flag that remains for the 21st century,” said Gregori, when paid tribute by the Latin American Parliament.

The foundation, making human rights “a state policy,” has been laid in Brazil, said Gregori, a 68-year-old attorney who has been a human rights advocate since his days as a law student at the University of Sao Paulo in the 1950s.

During Brazil’s de facto regime, Gregori stood out for his work defending political prisoners and pressing for a return to democracy. From 1971 to 1982 he was active in the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic archdiocese of Sao Paulo, over which he presided for seven of those years, until his election to the Sao Paulo state parliament.

The Justice and Peace Commission and its creator, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, earned international rekown as the fathers of a broad human rights movement in Brazil.

The National Human Rights Programme coordinated by Gregori covers a wide range of activity by various government entities, from ministries to the judiciary, local governments and the armed forces.

Both its creation and implementation have depended on a close partnership between the state and social organisations. The Voluntary Civil Service project, for example, involves the ministry and state secretariats of labour as well as the military, and is carried out by a local non-governmental organisation.

Four Latin Americans have been granted the U.N. human rights award prior to Gregori: Chilean ambassador Manuel Bianchi, Ecuadoran Bishop Leonidas Proao, Mexican educator Maria Lavalle Urbina, Costa Rican jurist Sonia Picado Sotela, and Julio Tumiri Javier, founder of Bolivia’s Permanent Human Rights Assembly.