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ABSTRACT
Human rights have advanced since Brazil’s re-democratisation, but social authoritarianism prevents more advancements. Progress requires structural changes. I argue that human rights state theory might work as a ‘realistic utopia’ for human rights defenders to persuade the Brazilian nation state to fully embrace human rights norms. But it ignores the role international human rights law can play. Beyond Gregg, I propose the development of a human rights state that seeks the internalisation and socialisation of international human rights law in Brazil’s domestic jurisdictions. I advance that theory to incorporate international human rights law towards establishing a human rights culture. I draw on empirical evidence from a specific case study to undergird my argument and develop a political strategy on how further human rights change could perhaps be brought to Brazil with the help of the idea of a human rights state.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Professor Benjamin Gregg (University of Texas, USA), René Wolfsteller (University of Glasgow, UK), Dr Angela Pires Terto (UnB, Brazil), and Dr Juan Carlos Ruiz (CEDEUS-PUC, Chile) for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Ulisses Terto Neto holds a PhD in Law from the University of Aberdeen, UK, and a Master’s Degree in Public Policies from the Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA), Brazil. Ulisses is a human rights lawyer and lecturer in law at the Centro Universitário IESB, Brasília, Brazil. He is affiliated to the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL), University of Aberdeen, UK, and the Research Group Direito, Sociedade Mundial e Constituição (DISCO), Universidade de Brasília (UnB), Brazil. His research interests focus on human rights theory, protection of human rights defenders in Latin America, and international human rights law.
Notes
1. Benjamin Gregg, The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
2. Evelina Dagnino and Ana Claudia Chaves Teixeira, ‘The Participation of Civil Society in Lula’s Government’, Journal of Politics in Latin America 3 (2014): 39–66; Evelina Dagnino, Alberto Olvera, and Aldo Panfichi, eds, La Disputa por la construcción democrática en América Latina (Juárez, Mexico: CIESAS, 2006); Evelina Dagnino, ‘Civic Driven Change and Political Projects’, in Civic Driven Change. Citizen’s Imagination in Action, ed. Alan Fowler and Kees Bierkhart (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 2008); Evelina Dagnino, ‘Conceptualizing Culture: A Perspective from the South’, Cultural Processes Newsletter of the Research Network Sociology of Culture, European Sociological Association 1 (August 2008): 18–23; Evelina Dagnino, ‘Dimensions of Citizenship in Contemporary Brazil’, Fordham Law Review 75, no. 5 (2007): 2469–82; Evelina Dagnino, ‘Citizenship: A Perverse Confluence’, Development in Practice 17, no. 4/5 (2007): 549–56; Evelina Dagnino, ‘“We All Have Rights But … ”: Contesting Conceptions of Citizenship in Brazil’, in Inclusive Citizenship. Meaning and Expressions of Citizenship, ed. Naila Kabeer (London: Zed Books, 2005), 147–63; Evelina Dagnino, ‘Os movimentos sociais e a construção da democracia no Brasil: Tendências recentes’, JILAS – Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 7, no. 1 (2001): 75–104; Evelina Dagnino, ‘Cultura, Cidadania e Democracia: a transformacao dos discursos e praticas na esquerda latino-americana’, in Cultura e Politica nos Movimentos Sociais Latino-Americanos: novas leituras, ed. Sonia E. Alvarez et al. (Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2000); Evelina Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy: Changing Discourses and Practices of the Latin American Left’, in Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements, ed. Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Evelina Dagnino, ‘Os Movimentos Sociais e a Emergência de uma Nova Noção de Cidadania’, in Anos 90: Politica e Sociedade no Brasil, ed. Evelina Dagnino (Sao Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1994); Evelina Dagnino, ‘An Alternative World Order and the Meaning of Democracy’, in Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order, ed. Jeremy Brecher, John Brown Childs, and Jill Cutler (New York: South End Press, 1993).
3. John Clark, Kathleen Coll, Evelina Dagnino, and Catherine Neveu, Disputing Citizenship (Bristol: Policy Press, 2014).
4. Daniel M. Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
5. Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
6. Engin Isin, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
7. Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, eds, Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
8. Dagnino et al., La Disputa por la construcción democrática en América Latina; Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’; Dagnino, ‘An Alternative World Order and the Meaning of Democracy’.
9. Luis Viana Filho, O Governo Castelo Branco (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio, 1975); William C. Smith, ‘The Political Transition in Brazil: From Authoritarian Liberalization and Elite Conciliation to Democratization’, in Comparing New Democracies: Transition and Consolidation in Mediterranean Europe and the South Cone, ed. Enrique A. Baloyra (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil: 1964–85 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
10. Economic, social and cultural rights are those related to family life, the work place, social security, participation in national cultural manifestations, access to housing, access to integral health, access to potable water, access to public quality education, etc. See Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Fact Sheet No. 33: Frequently Asked Questions on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Geneva: OHCHR, 2008.
11. ‘Just as there was much legal continuity from democracy to authoritarianism, however, the transitions to democracy in the 1980s did not entirely dismantle the repressive legal apparatus that had been constructed under the military rule. For example, the verdicts of the political trials in Brazil and Chile were never repudiated by the state, even after the transitions to democracy. Some of the laws on which the trials were based – and the institutions that prosecuted and tried political defendants – still exist’, in Anthony W. Pereira, Political (In)Justice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 8. See also Francisco Panizza and Alexandra Barahona de Brito, ‘The Politics of Human Rights in Democratic Brazil: A Lei não Pega’, Democratization 5, no. 4 (1998): 20–51; Manuela Lavinas Picq, ‘The Politics of Human Rights in Brazil: Imposition of Norms From Without or Innovation From Within?’ (PhD International Studies Dissertation, December 2004, University of Miami).
12. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For an analysis of Brazil’s re-democratisation under the spiral model see Ulisses Terto Neto, ‘Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil: A Legal and Socio-Political Analysis of the Brazilian Programme for the Protection of Human Rights Defender’s’ (PhD Thesis, University of Aberdeen, UK, 2016); Ulisses Terto Neto, ‘Making the Human Rights Talk Matter: Are the Brazilian State’s Practices Really Following its Rhetoric Towards the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in the Country?’, Revista Quaestio Iuris 9, no. 4 (2016): 2263–311; Ulisses Terto Neto, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights: A Call for the Monitoring of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Brazil’, Revista Direitos Humanos Fundamentais 15, no. 1 (2015): 13–34.
13. Dagnino, ‘An Alternative World Order and the Meaning of Democracy’, 240; Alvarez et al., Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture.
14. Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’; Dagnino, ‘Os Movimentos Sociais e a Emergência de uma Nova Noção de Cidadania’; Dagnino, ‘An Alternative World Order and the Meaning of Democracy’.
15. Dagnino, ‘An Alternative World Order and the Meaning of Democracy’, 240.
16. Dagnino et al., La Disputa por la construcción democrática en América Latina; Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’; Dagnino, ‘An Alternative World Order and the Meaning of Democracy’.
17. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, ‘Democratic Consolidation and Human Rights in Brazil’ (Working Paper 256, The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 1998): 1–45, 22; Ajay Gudavarthy, ‘Introduction: Why Interrogate Political Society?’, in Re-framing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society, ed. Ajay Gudavarthy (London: Anthem Press, 2012), 10.
18. The military dictatorship (1964–1985) ratified only two United Nations human rights instruments (CERD and CEDAW), whereas post-1985 democratic governments ratified/acceded several human rights instruments from the United Nations (CAT, CRC, CCPR, CESCR, CEDAW-OPT, CRC-OPT-AC, CRC-OPT-SC, CAT-OPT, CRPD, CRPD-OPT, CCPR-OPTI, CCPR-OPT2, and CPED) and the Organization of American States (ICPPT, ACHR, ICPPEVAW, AP-ACHR-ESCR, and OP-ACHR-ADP) systems. See the United Nations Human Rights Treaties: http://www.bayefsky.com/; and the Organization of American States (OAS): http://www.oas.org/ (accessed 19 January 2017).
19. Hillebrecht, Courtney, ‘The Domestic Mechanisms of Compliance with International Human Rights Law: Case Studies from the Inter-American Human Rights System’, Human Rights Quarterly 34, no. 4 (2012): 959–85; Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America; Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’.
20. Clark et al., Disputing Citizenship, 11. The authors draw on the point of ‘citizenship as imperfect’ by Etienne Balibar, Nous, citoyens d’Europe? Les frontieres, l’Etat, le peuple (Paris: La Decouverte, 2001).
21. Clark et al., Disputing Citizenship, 11; Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America; Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship; Isin, Being Political.
22. Risse et al., The Persistent Power of Human Rights, 9–10. See also Beth Simmons, ‘Compliance with International Agreements’, The Annual Review of Political Science 1 (1998): 75–93; Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Beth Simmons, ‘Treaty Compliance and Violation’, Annual Review of Political Science 13 (2010): 273–96.
23. Ingo Wolfgang Sarlet, Dignidade da pessoa humana e direitos fundamentais na Constituição Federal de 1988 (Porto Alegre: Livraria do Advogado, 2004); Ingo Wolfgang Sarlet, A eficácia dos direitos fundamentais (Porto Alegre: Livraria do Advogado, 2005).
24. For more details on this argument see Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America.
25. Risse et al., The Persistent Power of Human Rights; Risse et al., The Power of Human Rights.
26. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil; Terto Neto, ‘Making the Human Rights Talk Matter’.
27. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil; Clark et al., Disputing Citizenship; Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America; Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship; Isin, Being Political; Alvarez et al., Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture.
28. Gregg, The Human Rights State; Risse et al., The Persistent Power of Human Rights.
29. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 3.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.; Benjamin Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
32. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 3.
33. In the sense that individuals are socialised into values of solidarity on the grounds of mutual expectations as, for instance, the mutual expectation to have their self-granted human rights recognised by others.
34. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 6.
35. In the sense that it is an accomplishable political project or a ‘realistic utopia’ as in Gregg, The Human Rights State, 45.
36. Ibid., 7.
37. Ibid.: ‘To claim rights is the first step toward eventually gaining them, and assertive selfhood both reflects and motivates this moral autonomy. The human rights project facilitates the development of a personality structure of assertive selfhood. That project is one of collective political action. As such, it is one more resource for helping individuals develop assertive selfhood and a human rights personality. In part, the individual develops by recognizing others in their self-granting activity. And he or she develops by collectively challenging nation state authorities to recognize and respect the self-granted human rights.’
38. Ibid., 8.
39. Ibid., 11.
40. Ibid., 13, all original emphases.
41. Ibid., 26.
42. Ibid.; Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction.
43. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 36.
44. For more details see Antônio A. Cancado Trindade, ed., A Incorporação das Normas Internacionais de Proteção dos Direitos Humanos no Direito Brasileiro (San Jose, CR: Instituto Interamericano de Direitos Humanos, Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha, Alto Comissariado das Nações Unidas para os Refugiados, e Governo da Suécia (ASDI) 1996); Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, ‘Brazil and the International Human Rights System’ (Working Paper CBS-15-00 (P), University of Oxford Centre for Brazilian Studies, 1999), 1–46; Pinheiro, ‘Democratic Consolidation and Human Rights in Brazil’; Flavia Piovesan, Direitos Humanos e o Direito Constitucional Internacional (Sao Paulo: Editora Saraiva, 2008).
45. ‘As part of Brazilian society’s authoritarian and hierarchical social order, to be poor means not only economic and material limitations, but also to be submitted to cultural rules that implicate a total lack of recognition of poor persons as subjects, as someone entitled to rights. […] In this sense, the fight for rights, for the right to have rights, revealed what, in fact, had to be a political struggle against a diffuse culture of social authoritarianism, establishing the basis from which the urban popular movements could establish a connection between culture and politics as something constitutive of their collective action’, in Dagnino, ‘Cultura, Cidadania e Democracia’, 82–3.
46. Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America; Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’; Alvarez et al., Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture.
47. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil; Ulisses Terto Neto, A Política Pública de Assistência Jurídica: A Defensoria Pública no Maranhão como Reivindicação do Campo Democrático Popular (Juruá: Juruá Editora, 2010); Maria da Gloria Gohn and Breno M. Bringel, eds, Movimentos sociais na era global (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 2012); Maria da Gloria Gohn, História dos movimentos sociais no Brasil: a construção da cidadania dos brasileiros (Sao Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2012); Maria da Gloria Gohn, Teorias dos Movimentos Sociais: paradigmas clássicos e contemporâneos (Sao Paulo: Edições Loyola, 1997); Alvarez et al., Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements.
48. Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’, 52.
49. Terto Neto, A Política Pública de Assistência Jurídica; Brinks, The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America; Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Books, 1994).
50. Dagnino, ‘Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy’; Alvarez et al., Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture.
51. Leonardo Avritzer, ‘Civil Society in Latin America in the Twenty-First Century: Between Democratic Deepening, Social Fragmentation, and State Crisis’, in Civil Society and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Richard Feinberg, Carlos H. Waisman, and Leon Zamosc (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Alberto Olvera and Leonardo Avritzer, ‘El concepto de sociedad civil en el estudio de la transicion democratica’, Revista Mexicana de Sociologia 54, no. 4 (1992): 227–48; Antonio Gramsci, Escritos políticos (Volume I) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2004); Giovanni Semeraro, Gramsci e a sociedade civil: cultura e educação para a democracia (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1999); Alvarez et al., Culture of Politics, Politics of Culture; Ivete Simionatto, Gramsci: sua teoria, incidência no Brasil, influência no serviço social (Sao Paulo: Cortez, 1995).
52. Positivisation is a legal-formal procedure through which international norms are implemented into national legal systems; whereas socialisation would be a socio-political process through which international human rights norms are widespread and accepted by individuals within national states. See Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The Socialisation of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: introduction’, in Risse et al., The Power of Human Rights; Gilmar Ferreira Mendes, Inocêncio Mártires Coelho, and Paulo Gustavo Gonet Branco, Curso de Direito Constitucional (Sao Paulo: Editora Saraiva 2008).
53. Ibid.
54. For more details on Brazil as a middle power see Sean Burges, ‘Mistaking Brazil for a Middle Power’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19, no. 2 (2013): 286–302, doi:10.1080/13260219.2013.85335; Daniel Flames, ‘Emerging Middle Powers’ Soft Balancing Strategy: State and Perspectives of the IBSA Dialogue Forum’ (GIGA Working Paper 57, 2007): 1–30; Eduard Jordaan, ‘The Concept of a Middle Power in International Relations: Distinguishing between Emerging and Traditional Middle Powers’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 30, no. 1 (2003): 165–81, doi:10.1080/0258934032000147282.
55. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Pierre Bourdieu, Razões Práticas sobre a Teoria da Ação (Campinas: Papirus 1996); Pierre Bourdieu, A Miséria do Mundo (Petrópolis: Vozes 1997); Pierre Bourdieu, O Poder Simbólico (Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil 1998).
56. For details on how Gregg develops his argument for a human rights state, see Gregg, The Human Rights State, 45.
57. François Facchini and Mickaël Melki, Ideology and Cultural Change, Seminar Sepio, 21 June 2011, Mse, Paris 1, France; and Association for the Study of Religion, Economics & Culture, ASREC Annual Meeting, 7 –10 2011, Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, Washington DC.
58. For details on Gregg’s normative localism see Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction.
59. See the United Nations Human Rights Treaties: http://www.bayefsky.com/; and the OAS: http://www.oas.org/ (accessed 19 January 2017).
60. For details see Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil; Jeffrey W. Cason and Timothy J. Power, ‘Presidentialization, Pluralization, and the Rollback of Itamaraty: Explaining Change in Brazilian Foreign Policy Making in the Cardoso-Lula Era’, International Political Science Review 30, no. 2 (2009); 117–40; Pinheiro, ‘Brazil and the International Human Rights System’; Pinheiro, ‘Democratic Consolidation and Human Rights in Brazil’; Piovesan, Direitos Humanos e o Direito Constitucional Internacional.
61. See Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
62. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil; Cason and Power, ‘Presidentialization, Pluralization, and the Rollback of Itamaraty’; Pinheiro, ‘Brazil and the International Human Rights System’; Pinheiro, ‘Democratic Consolidation and Human Rights in Brazil’; Piovesan, Direitos Humanos e o Direito Constitucional Internacional.
63. See the United Nations Human Rights Treaties: http://www.bayefsky.com/; and the OAS: http://www.oas.org/ (accessed 19 January 2017).
64. See Risse and Sikkink, ‘The Socialisation of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices’; Mendes et al., Curso de Direito Constitucional.
65. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil.
66. Terra de Direitos: http://terradedireitos.org.br (accessed 19 January 2017).
67. Interviews with Darci Frigo conducted at the headquarters of Terra de Direitos in Curitiba, PR, in April 2013, and of Caritas Brasil in Brasília, DF, in September 2015.
68. Secretaria de Direitos Humanos da Presidência da República: http://www.sdh.gov.br (accessed 19 January 2017).
69. Interview with former Federal Deputy Nilmário Miranda conducted at his office in Brasilia/DF, in November 2013.
70. Justiça Global: http://global.org.br/en/ (accessed 19 January 2017).
71. Interviews with Sandra Carvalho conducted in Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro/RJ, in April 2013, and in the headquarters of Caritas Brasil in Brasília/DF, in September 2015.
72. Presidência da República: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2007-2010/2007/Decreto/D6044.htm (accessed 19 January 2017).
73. Câmara dos Deputados: http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/fichadetramitacao?idProposicao=422693 (accessed 19 January 2017).
74. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Secretaria de Direitos Humanos da Presidência da República: http://www.sdh.gov.br/sobre/participacao-social/cddph (accessed 19 January 2017).
78. Ibid.
79. Terto Neto, Protecting Human Rights Defenders in Brazil; Risse et al., The Persistent Power of Human Rights; Risse et al., The Power of Human Rights.
80. OHCHR: http://www.ohchr.org/en/professiona-linterest/pages/vienna.aspx (accessed 19 January 2017).