After accompanying accusations of human rights violations for two years in 15 Brazilian states and 60 cities, the Brazilian Human Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Platform (DhESC Brasil) issued national reports, yesterday, in six areas: alimentation, water and rural land, education, environment, housing and urban land, and health and work.
The DhESC Brasil Platform is made up of approximately 40 civil society entities and organizations active in the field of human rights.
The texts are brought together in the book, National Report on Human Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, prepared with the support of the United Nations Volunteers Program.
The report on alimentary rights, for example, points to the accomplishments of the current Administration with the implementation of the Zero Hunger Program, seen as the outcome of a long process of mobilization by Brazilian society over this issue.
On the other hand, it says that the priorities of paying government debt and meeting inflation targets take precedence over those related to the fulfillment of social goals.
“In this context, reducing unemployment, recovering the salary mass, and carrying out agrarian reform, among other priorities, continue to be of secondary importance,” the document affirms.
Another criticism has to do with the Administration’s human rights policy, regarded as “mistaken and focused on monitoring violations of some rights, in a way that is totally divorced from the dimension of human economic, social, and cultural rights.”
The National Reporters on Human Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project gets its inspiration from the United Nations’ rapporteurs on special topics.
The national reporters are human rights specialists charged with the task of receiving denunciations of violations of this category of rights and conducting investigatory missions as well as suggesting solutions for the problems that are discovered.
The coordinator of the project, Maria Elena Rodriguez, explains that the organizations of reporters constitute a public project, without official ties, to denounce violations but at the same time formulate proposals for the three levels of government.
“The idea of the project is to assert that economic, social, and cultural rights are human rights, as important as civil and political rights, and that the State should be effectively committed to guaranteeing them for everyone.”
Agência Brasil