Joint condemnation
UN and IACHR criticize Inquiry Commission, rural violence and draft laws to weaken environmental legislation
Violence against indigenous peoples, environmental activists and land rights defenders in Brazil was harshly criticized in a joint statement published by three UN experts and one rapporteur from the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS) this Thursday, June 8.
According to the experts, Brazil has seen the highest number of rural killings of any country over the past 15 years, with an average of one killing every week.
“Against this backdrop, Brazil should be strengthening institutional and legal protection for indigenous peoples, as well as people of African heritage and other communities who depend on their ancestral territory for their material and cultural existence,” they said. “It is highly troubling that instead, Brazil is considering weakening those protections.”
The document was signed by the UN special rapporteurs on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli Corpus, on human rights defenders, Michael Forst, and on the environment, John Knox, as well as the IACHR rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Francisco José Eguiguren Praeli.
Click here to read the joint statement in full.
According to the experts, “the rights of indigenous peoples and environmental rights are under attack in Brazil”. They mentioned, for example, the report of the Congressional Inquiry Commission on FUNAI (National Indian Foundation), approved on May 17, which calls for the indictment of more than ninety people connected to government bodies and civil society organizations and also recommends the restructuring of the process of demarcation of indigenous lands in Brazil. “This report takes several steps back in the protection of indigenous lands,” they criticized.
The rapporteurs said human rights violations in rural Brazil could intensify with the approval of draft laws that weaken environmental protection and dismantle the environmental licensing process for projects involving infrastructure, agribusiness and cattle ranching – a measure that would violate the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“Weakening such protections would be contrary to the general obligation of States not to regress in the level of their protections of human rights, including those dependent on a healthy environment,” they said in the statement.
One example is the bill of the General Licensing Law (3729/2004), which is being fast-tracked in the Lower House of Congress and could be voted any day now in the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee. The bill, sponsored by Congressman Mauro Pereira, dispenses with licensing for certain activities and relaxes environmental requirements for projects to be approved.
“The legal requirements for the approval of projects are extremely important for protecting the environment and the rights of people affected by them,” said Caio Borges, a lawyer for the Business and Human Rights program at Conectas.
“The joint statement of the rapporteurs shows that the dismantling of this process, combined with the gutting of regulatory bodies and the escalation of violence, places Brazil at odds with international law and further isolates the country in the international debate on sustainable development. It will be increasingly more difficult, for example, to meet the carbon emission reduction commitments assumed under the Paris Agreement, and this is regrettable,” he added.
Tomorrow, June 9, Conectas will make a statement in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, reinforcing the criticisms made by the rapporteurs and asking Brazil to halt the attempts to weaken environmental protection mechanisms in the country. The statement can be seen live starting at 5:30 am (Brasília time) on UN TV.
