Dec 13th 2024 | Nº. 147

Editorial

Early Tuesday morning, December 9, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was rushed from Brasília to São Paulo for emergency surgery to treat a brain bleed, a complication from a fall at home in October. Doctors reported consistently that he is stable, alert, and expected to return to work next week after a few more days of observation and another procedure on Thursday, December 13. Despite these health challenges, a Genial/Quaest poll released on Thursday, among the largest and most comprehensive polls released since Lula took office, shows that the president remains politically strong, with 52% of Brazilians saying they would vote for him in a hypothetical election, compared to 37% for former President Jair Bolsonaro, who remains barred from running. Indeed, the poll found that both Lula and Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, the runner-up in the 2018 race against Bolsonaro, would defeat all right-wing challengers currently discussed as alternatives to Bolsonaro. But Lula’s health complications and age—he will be 80 when Brazilians go to the polls to vote for president in 2026—also carry a potential political price, with the new polling indicating that 52% believe he should not seek another term.

If he does hope to win reelection, Lula will need to continue delivering policy wins. This week, Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino, a Lula appointee who served as justice minister at the start of his term, upheld stricter rules on the disbursement of funds allocated through congressional amendments. The decision, which maintains restrictions on how, where, why, and when Congress can spend money, has complicated Lula's efforts to pass key legislation in Congress. Lula has signaled his support for the demands of legislative leaders, suggesting that some kind of workaround is likely in the offing, but negotiations have been largely frozen this week by Lula’s hospitalization. Clearly, however, the administration seems to believe it is worth expending some of its own political capital to help secure the right of individual members of Congress to manage large slices of the federal budget as they see fit. 

One of the most eager candidates on the right hoping to challenge Lula in 2026 received some bad news this week. On Wednesday, December 11, Ronaldo Caiado, the governor of Goiás, was declared ineligible for political office for the next eight years by a regional electoral court.  The ruling follows a case brought by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which accused Caiado and allies in the state of abusing their power, including using the state government building for electoral purposes. Caiado was also fined R$60,000 (roughly US$10,000). While the decision is provisional and will certainly be appealed, it threatens the presidential ambitions of a staunch conservative who first sought the country’s highest office in 1989. 

Highlights

• Printed vote. The Constitution and Justice Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s lower house, approved Bill 1169/15, which establishes a mechanism for printing votes and physically counting these votes in the Brazilian electoral processes. The decision satisfies the demands of far-right sectors, who unfoundedly challenge the credibility of electronic voting machines. The matter had already been buried in the Chamber in 2021. For civil society organizations that monitor the debate, such as the Pact for Democracy, the process in the Committee occurred “without a broad debate and without following the due legislative procedure”. The bill now goes to the plenary of the Chamber for discussion. Read the Pact for Democracy's note at this link.

• Landless Workers. On the same day, the same Committee on Constitution and Justice approved a bill that allows owners of rural and urban properties to request the presence of the police to expel invaders, even if there is no court order. The bill was nicknamed “anti-MST,” in reference to the Landless Workers’ Movement, which uses land occupation as its main strategy to pressure for agrarian reform in a country that has one of the largest concentrations of land in the world.

• Gun policy. The plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill that makes it easier to legalize the possession of firearms that have not been registered. The measure changes a previous provision, which was included in the Disarmament Statute. According to this law, which dates to 2003, weapons that had not been registered by December 2008 would be considered illegal and would have to be confiscated. Another change is that it prohibits convicted individuals from purchasing weapons. The previous law was more restrictive: it prohibited people involved in even criminal and police investigations from purchasing weapons. The new law, promoted by pro-Bolsonaro members of congress, aims to increase the availability of firearms in society.

• Big tech. The Supreme Court has been debating, in two separate and parallel proceedings, measures to increase the regulation of digital platforms in Brazil. These debates have important consequences for controlling the dissemination of false information, especially during election campaigns, and will certainly have an impact on the issue of freedom of expression in Brazil. One of the cases is overseen by Minister Luiz Fux, who argues that platforms should exercise active control over illegal content posted by users. Currently, networks can only be held legally liable if they do not remove posts that the courts themselves have already deemed illegal. The debate continues in the Supreme Court with no date set for the completion of consideration of the legislation.

• Environmental preservation. The Senate's Environment Committee approved Bill 1990/2024 on Wednesday, December 11, which establishes the National Program for the Recovery of Caatinga Vegetation, the only biome exclusively Brazilian, present in 11% of the country's territory. The program includes measures to stimulate the bioeconomy and sustainable forest management, in addition to the pursuit of water security and the improvement of water quality and availability, with the involvement of local communities, training of workers in the benefited regions, and the increase in family farming. Instituto Escolhas played a fundamental role in the legislative process of the bill, which is now going to the Chamber of Deputies.

• Human rights. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has condemned the Brazilian State for the forced disappearance of 11 young people who lived in the Acari favela in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro in 1990. The sentence, announced on December 4, obliges the Brazilian State to continue the investigations into the case, which had been concluded in 2011. In addition, it determines that the search for the missing people must continue, that a public act of acknowledgment of guilt be held, that a memorial site for the victims be created in Acari, and that the families receive financial compensation and psychosocial support. The result rewards the struggle of the Mothers of Acari, a group that has been seeking justice and reparations internationally.

News from the WBO, Organizations and Social Movements

Brazilian delegation. The delegation of Brazilian congressional representatives, which went to Washington this week on a trip organized by the CIPÓ Platform and the WBO, was featured in several press reports that provide details about the meetings and the agenda. The delegation included Dandara (PT-MG), Arlindo Chinaglia (PT-SP), Túlio Gadelha (Rede-PE) and Célia Xakriabá (PSOL-MG). Read more by clicking on the link to this report.

Coup and amnesty. The president of the WBO Board of Directors, James N. Green, and the organization's executive director, Paulo Abrão, have jointly written an opinion piece published in the Sunday, December 8th edition of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper in which they recall the harmful effects of the 1979 Amnesty Law that has prevented the prosecution of military personnel involved in crimes committed during the dictatorship (1964-1985) and warn of the risks that a new amnesty law may now be introduced to prevent those involved in the coup plot from being held accountable. According to an indictment filed by the Federal Police, former President Jair Bolsonaro and a group of his supporters, including civilians and military personnel, were involved in the attempted military takeover. Click on the link to read the article.

Trump and the coup. Trump's inauguration on January 20 will bring with it a series of new threats to democracy in Brazil due to the close relationship and support he maintains with Bolsonaro and other Brazilian far-right figures indicted for attempted coup d'état, according to James N. Green, who on behalf of the WBO gave an interview to  journalist Heloísa Vilela, the Instituto Cultural Libertas (ICL) correspondent in Washington and Brasília. The interview is part of the series “Global Threat: The Dangers of the New Trump Era”, available at the link.

Cartagena+40. WBO Executive Director Paulo Abrão participated this week in the event that marked the 40th anniversary of the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees in Santiago, Chile. The event was marked by the adoption of an action plan for Latin America and the Caribbean. Paulo Abrão was the coordinator of the Cartagena +30 process held in Brazil in 2014. The meeting was attended by representatives of the governments of the signatory states, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the International Organization for Migration, and representatives of civil society organizations in the region.

Indigenous peoples. The Vladimir Herzog Institute paid tribute to Davi Kopenawa on Thursday, Decmber 12 for his “contribution to Brazilian culture and his tireless fight for human rights and nature.” The conversation with Kopenawa, who is a political leader, shaman and president of the Hutukara Yanomami Association, is part of the 4th Human Rights Fest. To access the video of the conversation, just click on the link.

Social Project. Ação da Cidadania premiered the play Abrigo in Rio de Janeiro this week, which is the result of a social project that involved 200 students in situations of social vulnerability, who participated in nine theater courses held over eight months. The project called Formação Ação da Cidadania e Shell invests in the professional training of young people who want to dedicate themselves to the performing arts, with courses in art direction, set design, costume design, dance, among others. Learn more in this report by the newspaper O Globo.

Artistic freedom. Article 19 launched this Wednesday, December 11 in São Paulo, the report “Artistic freedom from the Perspective of International Human Rights Law.” The event featured a pocket show by guest artist Uma Luiza Pessoa, followed by a panel with reflections on the connection between art and human rights in the past and present.

Feature Article

The Inequalities of Climate Disasters: Talking about Gender and Race

By Márcia Soares*

Climate disasters have become increasingly frequent, affecting entire communities. However, this crisis does not affect everyone equally, as we saw recently in the floods that devastated Rio Grande do Sul. The reality is that impoverished women, especially Black women, are the most impacted.

Often, people living in outlying regions are the ones most at risk of exposure to the effects of extreme climate events. They are also heads of households in poverty-stricken contexts who face additional challenges due to the ​​violations of their rights, which are intensified in crisis situations.

The report, “The Gender Dimension in the Big Push for Sustainability in Brazil: Women in the Context of the Social and Ecological Transformation of the Brazilian Economy,” produced by UN Women Brazil, is categorical in pointing out that the lack of effective actions in the face of the climate emergency disproportionately impacts women, girls, and feminized bodies, given that they start from a situation of profound structural inequalities.

The document shows that Black, Indigenous, quilombola, peripheral, poor women, and feminized bodies are groups especially exposed to the impacts of climate inaction, which highlights environmental racism. Furthermore, the context of profound structural inequalities, the increased frequency and intensity of extreme climate events – such as prolonged droughts, floods, storms, landslides, peaks of heat and cold, etc. – makes women more exposed to adversity than men. And this leads to the obvious: women in conditions of greater socioeconomic vulnerability tend to have fewer tools to face the impacts of climate change, given the gaps in wages, jobs, access to public goods and services, representation, and rights.

A crisis situation reproduces and increases social inequalities, where two issues are especially important to consider. One of them concerns the possibility of violation of the bodies of women and girls. The threat of sexual violence is constant, whether at the time of rescue or in the situation of compulsory shelter. In Rio Grande do Sul, there were numerous reports of the abuse of children and adolescents and attempted rape in temporary housing. Another issue concerns care work, which has historically been reserved for women. It is their responsibility to care for children, the elderly, and the sick in absolutely adverse conditions, when these people are without food, medicine and, often, without access to drinking water. All of this is compounded by the lack of referral services. Furthermore, many of these people are already at their physical, psychological and emotional limit and have fewer tools and income to deal with the consequences of disasters.

And while, on the one hand, they are more susceptible to the consequences of these events, on the other, the inequality in the emergency response by the government is evident. The attention and mitigation of the consequences of the crisis disregard – or do not prioritize – the needs of women and children. In addition to the invisibility to which this population has historically been subjected, there is another factor that must be considered: the lack of access for women to decision-making spaces and the formulation of policies to reduce these impacts: emergency strategies and actions are usually defined by predominantly male groups (see the majority composition of the so-called crisis committees, in the case of Rio Grande do Sul). The lack of security in shelters, the lack of safe spaces for children, and the absence of broader public policies aimed at women expose a critical flaw in the response to these emergencies.

Another issue that draws attention is the data gap with gender and race indicators. The Technical Note from the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) titled “An Estimate of the Population Affected by the Floods of Rio Grande do Sul in 2024,” from September 2024, indicates that the state of Rio Grande do Sul had 581,643 displaced people and 65,762 people in shelters during the flood. How many of them are women? How many are Black? How many are Indigenous? These are questions that we cannot answer.

The experience of Rio Grande do Sul has shown that, in the absence of adequate mitigation policies, community response was essential to reduce the devastating effects of flooding in their territories. When the government fails to provide adequate support, community leaders emerge to mobilize resources, solidarity, and care. Civil society organizations also played a crucial role in this process, not only in humanitarian aid, but also in disseminating information and supporting leaders so that they could act more effectively and safely.

In this new climate context, it is essential to rethink how disaster responses are structured, in order to prioritize the inclusion of women and their communities in discussions and in defining priority actions for preventing, mitigating, and repairing the impacts of these events. This is essential if we are to move towards a response model that not only mitigates damage, but also prevents new events from occurring in the most vulnerable territories.

*Márcia Soares is executive director of Themis – Gender Justice and Human Rights, a feminist and anti-racist organization that has been working for 31 years to expand women's access to justice.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.