Social responsibility
Human rights violations committed by companies will be the subject of a lecture and a press conference given by Juana Kweitel, program director at Conectas, to the participants of the 1st Course on Journalism and Human Rights. The event will take place at the offices of Conectas on Saturday, October 25, starting at 9 am.
“In addition to States, companies can also violate human rights or be responsible for their respect and protection. For years, the UN has attempted to develop global standards to hold private actors accountable for denigrating human dignity,” said Juana Kweitel, program director at Conectas.
The expert explained that the expansion of economic relations has posed new threats to workers, the environment and local communities, introducing a whole new set of challenges to the field of human rights.
Kweitel will discuss the role of Conectas both in Brazil, where it has been conducting research on the human rights standards used by the BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank), and abroad, where it has been monitoring the activities of the Working Group on Business and Human Rights of the UN Human Rights Council and of the Working Group on Extractive Industries, Environment and Human Rights of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Afterwards, the students will have an hour and a half to write an article on the topics that were addressed. By the end of the course, at least one of each student’s articles should have been published in a media outlet with a responsible editor.
Once a week, the journalists Bruno Paes Manso, Carolina Trevisan, Cláudia Belfor and Fausto Salvadori Filho, of the Ponte group, will hold one-on-one educational sessions with the students. The educational supervision will be conducted by the journalist João Paulo Charleaux.
The 1st Course on Journalism and Human Rights, a module that is part of the Reporter of the Future Project, is being organized by Conectas in partnership with OBORÉ, Ponte, Abraji (Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism) and IPFD (Institute of Research, Training and Dissemination in Social Public Policies).
About the lecturer
Juana Kweitel has been program director at Conectas Human Rights since April 2011. She has a Masters in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex, United Kingdom, and in Political Science from the University of Sao Paulo (Topic: “Accountability of Latin American Human Rights Organizations”).
She also holds a postgraduate degree in Human Rights and Democratic Transition from the University of Chile, and she graduated as a lawyer, with honors, from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She has worked in Argentina as institutional coordinator of CELS (Center for Legal and Social Studies) and as coordinator of the same organization’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Program.
Kweitel serves on the Board of Trustees of the Brazil Human Rights Fund (2014), the Advisory Council of Open Global Rights (2013) and is a member of the Assembly of Members of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, Argentina).
Recommended reading
– “The Struggle for Accountability in the United Nations and the Future Direction of the Advocacy Agenda”, Patricia Feeney, SUR Journal 19.
Vale Unsustainability Report
Access to Justice: Human Rights Abuses Involving Corporations, ICJ (International Commission of Jurists)
