HUMAN RIGHTS: UN High Commissioner to Evaluate Brazil

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 12 2000 (IPS) - The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, is about to launch a tour of Brazil, a visit that will likely give the South American nation a more visible presence on the world humanitarian agenda, just as Brazilian activists had hoped.

At the government’s invitation, Robinson will meet with State officials and representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to discuss Brazil’s most burning social issues, such as landless rural workers, street children, prison overcrowding, discrimination and racism, said her spokesman, José Díaz.

In April, Brazilian NGO leaders went to Geneva to seek the support of UN agencies and other international organisations based there to make social issues a priority and put Brazil on the human rights agenda.

The Brazilian delegation included federal legislator Nilmario Miranda, of the opposition Workers Party (PT), Romeu Olmar Klich, Presbyterian minister and secretary general of the National Human Rights Movement, and Franciscan priest Rodrigo de Castro Amédé Péret, director of Pastoral and Social Life in the Rural Environment (APR).

The activists met with the independent experts who make up the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which is entrusted with verifying member nations’ compliance with the international covenant consecrating those rights.

Brazil ratified the agreement in 1992 but has yet to present the UN committee with any report on the nation’s status as far as the rights covered in the pact, letting two opportunities to do so pass by in 1994 and 1999, maintained the delegation’s members.

Brazil has “scandalously omitted” the presentation of a report, said Miranda.

The country is among the world’s 10 largest and its economy is one of the most important, but the Human Development Index, prepared by the UN Development Programme, ranks the nation 63rd in the world.

The low living standards of major sectors of the Brazilian population are not due to the lack of resources, but to their inequitable distribution, according to the UNDP report.

The UN agency’s data cited by the Brazilian delegation indicate that the wealthiest 20 percent of the nation’s 166 million people (according to the 1991 census) control 64 percent of the country’s wealth, while the poorest 20 percent survive on just 2.5 percent.

In the absence of a governmental report on economic, social and cultural rights in Brazil, local NGOs decided to prepare their own report, co-ordinated by the human rights committee of the Brazilian parliament’s Lower House.

In this South American country, 26 million people live in unsafe conditions, lacking health, education, sanitation and other services. An estimated seven percent of Brazilian children suffer from malnutrition despite the fact that the country’s grain production is more than enough to feed the entire population.

In their presentation before UN officials, the Brazilian activists pointed out that territories constitutionally designated for indigenous groups are constantly being invaded by local landowners, who “use violence and coercion to intimidate the native peoples and drive them off their own land.”

From 1993 to 1998, said the delegation, there were more than 194 assassinations of indigenous members of these violence-ridden communities.

The 68 million members of the Afro-Brazilian community, meanwhile, disproportionately suffer the consequences of centuries of exploitation, according to the Brazilian human rights defenders.

Brazil’s government, they said, is concerned about the country’s international image, and presents it as a “racial democracy.” But there are no black or indigenous members of parliament, or of the upper ranks of the armed forces or the financial sector. “They can only be found in the slums and in the prisons.”

The civil society report on economic, social and cultural rights also mentions educational deficiencies, abuse and discrimination against women, and the erosion of workers’ rights.

The High Commissioner’s spokesman reported that Robinson had received the Brazilian representatives in April, and they had presented her with their alternative report on the reality of economic, social and cultural rights in their country.

Robinson’s agenda in Brazil, May 14 to 18, includes a meeting in the capital with NGOs that are working on implementing the measures arising from the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen.

In Sao Paulo, she is to meet with members of civil society who are involved in the fight against gender and racial discrimination. Brazil had proposed that the 2001 world conference against racism should be held here, but the meeting was ultimately scheduled to take place in South Africa.

In Rio de Janeiro, the UN official is to visit the offices of a programme that works to eradicate violence and discrimination against homosexuals.

Other important interviews include a meeting with president Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brasilia, and with Roman Catholic cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns in Sao Paulo.

HUMAN RIGHTS: UN High Commissioner to Evaluate Brazil

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 12 2000 (IPS) - The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, is about to launch a tour of Brazil, a visit that will likely give the South American nation a more visible presence on the world humanitarian agenda, just as Brazilian activists had hoped.
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