IACHR Rapporteur Expresses "Great Concern" about Human Rights in Brazil

WBO Press release
August 3 2023

• Document reports threats to economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights

• Conclusions are part of the final report after the visit of the rapporteur to four Brazilian capitals

The Special Rapporteurship the Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (DESCA) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published this Wednesday, August 30, the complete final report of the mission that was sent to Brazil in August. The document expresses "great concern" with the findings made during that visit and notes that the challenges that had already been verified in the 2011 report on Brazil "have worsened in recent years".

The mission, which visited São Paulo, Brasília, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro from June 10 to 17, was led by Special Rapporteur Soledad García Muñoz. The Washington Brazil Office (WBO) was one of the 25 Brazilian civil society organizations that made up the organizing committee for this visit, carried out in agreement with the Brazilian government. The Office of the Special Rapporteur for the DESCA is an autonomous office of the IACHR created specifically to support the commission in fulfilling its mandate to promote and protect economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights in the Americas.

The rapporteur said she was "particularly concerned about the figures presented by a study by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the growth of poverty and extreme poverty. This study shows that in 2021 more than 62 million people – that is, 30 percent of the population of Brazil – were living in poverty, of which 18 million were extremely poor". She further noted that "at least 33 million people in Brazil are living with severe food insecurity and a total of 125.7 million people are at some level of food insecurity – mild, moderate and severe."

Food insecurity hits "the most vulnerable and marginalized sectors of Brazilian society, such as people of African descent, indigenous and quilombola communities, women, children and adolescents, people in rural and peripheral areas and informal workers" the hardest, says the report.

The document also states that "in Brazil there are still significant and deeply-rooted social problems deeply, linked to the criminalization of poverty and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, social class or place of residence, which prevent the guarantee of economic, social, cultural, and environment rights and equal access to opportunities and resources without cross-cutting discrimination."

“This was the first official visit by an IACHR special rapporteur to Brazil since the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration," said Paulo Abrão, executive director of the WBO, who was also executive secretary of the IACHR from 2016 to 2020. "The last four years marked a very large distancing of the country in relation to international bodies for the promotion and protection of human rights. The new Brazilian government has correctly resumed opening the country to international scrutiny regarding human rights. It remains to be seen how the government will reacts to these observations to seek a real solution to all the problems that are being pointed out.”

The report is a 29-page document that provides findings on areas such as the right to water and food, cultural rights, the right to health, education, housing and a healthy environment, as well as labor and union rights.