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4- No slavery
23- Workers Rights
24- The right to play

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On a warm January afternoon in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Sandra, a forty-year-old tobacco farmer, dragged a lawn chair to a clearing in her front yard and motioned for me to sit. She was round-faced, with wispy blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail, her skin creased from years of working in the sun.

"We've been growing tobacco since we were twelve or thirteen," she said, as her husband sat beside her. "Our parents planted tobacco."

© 2013 Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch

I was two days into a month-long trip to investigate child labor in tobacco farming in Brazil, which in 2008 banned all work on the crop by children under eighteen. I had spent two years researching the issue in the United States, where children can legally be hired to work on tobacco farms at age twelve.

Both countries are among the top five global tobacco producers-Brazil is number two and the United States is number four. But the United States has no restrictions on children working in tobacco farming, despite known dangers including nicotine poisoning, pesticide exposure, heat illness, and injuries. I was curious to see how Brazil's ban was working.

Sandra-whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, as with others quoted in this article-plants a few hectares of tobacco each year and sells it to a multinational company that supplies tobacco leaf to the world's largest cigarette manufacturers. She and her husband do most of the work on the farm themselves. They have two children: a daughter in her midtwenties who moved away from home to go to college in a nearby city, and a fourteen-year-old son, Matteo, a tall boy with a square jaw and braces.

"Our daughter, when she lived here, she helped," Sandra told me. "She did everything, from the harvest to planting. She started helping when she was about fourteen." But Matteo claimed he does not do much work on the farm. "I help a little bit, but mostly I stay on the Internet," he said, smiling.

I was skeptical. I understood that farmers would be reluctant to talk about child labor with a foreigner who had arrived at their door unannounced, speaking through an interpreter. After what I'd seen in my research in the United States, I had a hard time believing that the strong, athletic boy slumped in a chair across from me sat at home on the computer while his parents worked long hours in the fields.

But the family insisted it was mindful of the new law. Sandra warned of penalties if their son was caught working, though she wasn't sure what the penalties would be. "They can take you to court," she said. "The company says there's no way children can work in tobacco farming." Sandra and her husband hire a few adult workers to help on the farm during the harvest.

I learned that Matteo, who attends the local high school and hopes to study microelectronics, does help on the farm in the summer, but not nearly as much as his older sister did. He takes water to his parents in the fields. He loads piles of brittle, dried tobacco leaves into a wooden crate to form bales that weigh more than 130 pounds. Every so often, he helps his parents harvest tobacco, picking the thick green leaves by hand and holding them under his arm. "I don't allow him to work when the leaves are wet," Sandra told me. "It can make him sick."

A year and a half earlier, I had interviewed a fourteen-year-old girl on a humid July morning as she prepared for a day of work on a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina. It was her first week on the job, and she had gotten sick.

"My head started hurting, and I kind of felt like throwing up," she told me. The tobacco plants were dripping wet from dew and rain, and her clothes got soaked while she worked in fields. "I just go home in my wet clothes," she said.

Her symptoms are consistent with nicotine poisoning, an occupational health risk specific to tobacco farming. When tobacco is wet, and especially when the weather is warm and humid, nicotine dissolves in the moisture on the leaf's surface and can be absorbed through the skin. Common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, headaches, and dizziness, and children are affected more severely than adults.

In our research in the United States, my colleague and I interviewed more than 140 child workers, most of whom had started working at age twelve or thirteen. Two-thirds reported symptoms of nicotine poisoning. Most had never been told anything about the illness by their employers, though some knew their symptoms were linked to working in wet conditions.

But Sandra knew about nicotine poisoning, or "green leaf sickness," as it's called in Brazil. A tobacco company instructor came to the farm to give the family health and safety information about nicotine and pesticide exposure, as well as Brazil's child labor restrictions. He warned them not to harvest when the tobacco was wet, and to wear the protective gear provided by the company at a cost to the family. The gear she described-water-resistant pants and a long-sleeved jacket with air vents in the back-was hot and uncomfortable, but it helped her stay dry when the fields were wet.

The child tobacco workers I interviewed in the United States received no protective equipment. Most brought plastic garbage bags from home, poked holes for their heads and arms, and pulled them on to try-often unsuccessfully-to keep their clothes dry.

Sandra and her husband also received a separate set of equipment for applying pesticides, including a mask. Tobacco production in Brazil-as in the United States-involves applying a range of toxic chemicals at various stages in the season. Sandra's husband had taken a pesticide safety course offered by the company two years earlier. "It helped me realize I was doing it wrong," he said. When I asked if anyone in the family had gotten sick after working with the pesticides, they shook their heads.

The children I had interviewed in the United States had not been given any pesticide safety training, and more than half reported seeing tractors spraying pesticides in fields near where they were working. They said they could taste and feel the spray drift over them. They said it made their eyes and skin burn, and caused them to vomit, feel dizzy, and have trouble breathing.

Children are especially vulnerable to harm from pesticides because their bodies and brains are still developing. The long-term effects of childhood pesticide exposure can include cancer, problems with learning and cognition, and reproductive health issues.

Over the next three weeks, I interviewed almost eighty farming families in Brazil's three largest tobacco-growing states: Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul.

Like Sandra and her husband, they were small-scale growers, selling to one-or sometimes several-Brazilian or multinational tobacco companies. They greeted me with the same warm hospitality, spreading lawn chairs in their front yards and passing around a traditional communal cup of steaming chimarrão, a kind of tea. Even though the farmers sold to a dozen different tobacco companies, their experiences were remarkably similar.

All of them knew that children under eighteen are prohibited from work in tobacco farming. Most families said their farms had not been inspected by government officials and could not describe the specific consequences of a child labor violation, but they feared the penalties just the same.

"If someone from the company came out, and we had our fourteen-year-old son out in tobacco, it would be very difficult for us," a lean fifty-year-old farmer I met in Rio Grande do Sul told me.

Ministry of Labor and Employment officials I interviewed told me their offices are understaffed; they don't have enough inspectors to enforce labor laws consistently and effectively. But the families I interviewed saw the threat of punishment as real, and it prompted them to change how their children worked on farms.

Some parents also understood that tobacco farming had health consequences, and didn't want their children exposed to the work. Beatriz, a fifty-two-year-old farmer in Paraná, had an uneven gait, and suffered from chronic leg and back pain and kidney problems, which she attributed to years of work in the fields. She said she hallucinates and gets dizzy when harvesting tobacco.

"They say it's because of the nicotine that goes through the skin," Beatriz told me. Although she was among the poorest farmers I met, she chose to hire workers rather than send her seventeen-year-old daughter to the fields. "I don't let her do it," she said. "I grew up working in tobacco, and now I have health problems." Many other families told me they hired workers during the harvest, or swapped work days with neighbors and family members on other farms, rather than risk using their children.

Several farmers showed me the contracts they signed with tobacco companies, which included clauses about the child labor ban. Some families said company instructors checked with teachers and principals to verify children's school attendance.

They wore the same water-resistant suits and pesticide safety gear that Sandra's family had, and had the same colorful booklets with smiling tobacco farmers happily harvesting green leaves and spraying pesticides while wearing company-furnished protective equipment. The uniformity was striking, across all three states, from families living near urban areas to those in remote towns.

In the United States, I had interviewed dozens of children working fifty or sixty hours a week as hired laborers on tobacco farms. I saw them get drenched while working in wet tobacco fields with nothing but plastic trash bags to protect them from the nicotine and pesticide residues seeping into their skin. They described searing headaches, sudden vomiting, and dizziness that lasted all through the night.

The contrast between Brazil and the United States was stark and overwhelming.

Child labor has not been completely eliminated on Brazil's tobacco farms. Children still work in the tobacco fields, driven there by economic duress, as in the United States.

Rural poverty remains a problem in many parts of Brazil, and many farmworker advocates are concerned about what they see as unfair practices by large tobacco companies. Farm families are not guaranteed minimum earnings. The companies determine both the price of the agricultural inputs-seeds, pesticides, and other supplies, which farmers are required to buy from the companies-as well as the price and classification of the tobacco leaf once it's harvested. Small farmers have little control or room to negotiate.

"It's a yearly battle," a thirty-two-year-old farmer in Santa Catarina told me. Many farmers carried debts with the companies through the season and paid them off after the harvest. Sometimes, even then, they came up short.

But progress is being made on helping families understand the health hazards of the work, especially for children. This did not happen overnight. Some parents grumbled about how children would never learn to work if they were kept out of the fields until they were eighteen.

Amelia, a sixty-three-year-old grandmother in Paraná, framed it as a question: "You know what happens to children who don't work? They become drunks." A man in his midsixties in Santa Catarina gestured to his thirty-eight-year-old daughter and her thirty-five-year-old husband, who both worked as children, and said, "See? They didn't die. They're still here."

Ultimately, though, the strict regulation and penalties pushed people to end or limit their children's work on the farm. No such constraints are keeping kids out of the tobacco fields in the United States. Here, the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act-the federal law governing the employment of children-treat agricultural work differently from work in all other sectors.

Children of any age can work on small farms with parental permission. Children can be hired at age twelve to work on a farm of any size, for unlimited hours outside of school-day or night-provided they have written parental consent or work on a farm where a parent is employed.

In all other employment sectors, sixteen is the minimum age for most jobs, and younger children can work only in certain jobs for limited hours. At sixteen, children working in agriculture can do jobs deemed "particularly hazardous" by the U.S. Secretary of Labor, while children in all other sectors have to be eighteen to do hazardous work.

For years my colleagues at Human Rights Watch and other children's advocates pushed for a bill in Congress to provide child farmworkers with the same protections as workers in other sectors, but the bill was never brought to a vote.

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor introduced regulations that would have updated the decades-old list of hazardous occupations prohibited for children under sixteen working in agriculture, and banned all work by these children in tobacco farming. The proposal was withdrawn after it drew opposition from agricultural interest groups.

Prohibiting children under eighteen from working with a crop as toxic as tobacco may not sound like a radical notion. In most of the country, a person must be eighteen to buy a pack of cigarettes legally; California and New York City have raised this to twenty-one.

Yet on the day in May 2014 that we published our report, a tobacco company spokesman was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that banning children from tobacco work "is really contrary to a lot of the current practices that are in place in the U.S. and is at odds in these communities where family farming is really a way of life."

Since we published our report, some tobacco companies and tobacco growers' associations have adopted new child labor policies, or strengthened their existing policies. Now, most major players in the U.S. tobacco industry agree that children under sixteen should not be hired to work in tobacco farming. It's an important step, but it still means sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are in U.S. tobacco fields doing work that could make them sick.

The U.S. government has been reluctant to revisit the regulations issue. In April, bills were introduced in both the Senate and the House to ban children under eighteen from hazardous work on U.S. tobacco farms, but prospects are dim for legislative change in the current Congress.

With only incremental changes made toward eliminating child labor in tobacco farming in the United States, it is heartening to know that Brazilian tobacco farmers who were raised working in the fields are now thinking differently about child labor. The United States should take note of the example being set by its neighbor to the south.

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Tobacco's Children. Brazil Sets An Example for the U.S.

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On a warm January afternoon in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Sandra, a forty-year-old tobacco farmer, dragged a lawn chair to a clearing in her front yard and motioned for me to sit. She was round-faced, with wispy blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail, her skin creased from years of working in the sun.

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3- The right to life
18- Freedom of thought
19- Freedom of expression
20- Right to public assembly

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(São Paulo) - Brazilian authorities should conduct thorough and impartial investigations into the police use of force and detentions of protesters during recent anti-government demonstrations, Human Rights Watch said today.

The demonstrators were protesting the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, who lost the presidency of Brazil on August 31, 2016, and was replaced by her former vice president, Michel Temer. The largest demonstration took place in São Paulo on September 4, which organizers said attracted 100,000 participants.

Several videos publicized by news media and posted on social media point to the apparent excessive use force by police, including officers who appeared to purposely hit a protester with a patrol car, beat a lawyer and a reporter, and shoot rubber bullets and to use pepper spray on protesters at short range.

"Brazilian authorities need to ensure that the police respect the rights of protesters and journalists," said Maria Laura Canineu, Brazil director at Human Rights Watch. "That means providing clear instructions on proper forms of crowd-control, and ensuring that any officers who use excessive force or commit other abuses are held accountable."

New protests are scheduled for September 7.

One of the videos shows a patrol car chasing a protester in São Paulo on September 1. The driver of the car appears to intentionally hit the protester, who runs alone. Afterward, the officers handcuff the man and put him in the back of the vehicle. A video recorded the same day in Caxias do Sul shows police hitting a lawyer repeatedly with their batons. The man later said he had approached the officers while they were detaining two protesters and identified himself as an attorney.

Another video from September 4 shows a São Paulo police officer using pepper spray at short range against seemingly peaceful protesters as his patrol car passes them. A BBC reporter said several police officers hit him with their batons even after he identified himself as a journalist. A video of a protest the same day in Belém appears to show a police officer shooting a protester in the head at close range with a rubber bullet.

During a protest on August 31 in São Paulo, a stun grenade exploded near a 19-year-old student, whose eye was apparently perforated by a fragment, seriously injuring her.

Police detained 18 adults and eight children before the September 4 demonstration started in São Paulo, alleging they were going to participate in acts of vandalism. Officers said they found stones, masks, and an iron bar with some of the people they had detained, while the detainees claim the police planted the iron bar. Attorneys and family members said the police denied them contact with the detainees for five hours, and interrogated them without a lawyer. A judge released those who were over 18 on September 5, after ruling their detention was unlawful. Another judge released the eight children the same day.

On August 31, police detained two photographers who were covering the protests in São Paulo. One said police officers beat him and destroyed his equipment, news media reported. They were released the next day

While the demonstrations have been largely peaceful, some protesters have engaged in acts of violence and vandalism, including throwing bottles at police officers, destroying bank windows, and setting garbage on fire in the streets, the police and news media reported.

International human rights treaties ratified by Brazil and the country´s own constitution obligate the government to safeguard the rights of freedom of expression and association. Authorities should ensure that any acts of violence by protesters are met with a proportionate response, Human Rights Watch said, while also respecting the right of protesters to demonstrate.

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers state that law enforcement officials "shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms." Whenever the use of force is unavoidable, security forces should "[e]xercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and the legitimate objective to be achieved," the principles say.

"If any protesters engage in violence, the authorities have every right to bring them to justice and restore order," Canineu said. "But that does not justify the use of excessive force against demonstrators."

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(São Paulo) - Brazilian authorities should conduct thorough and impartial investigations into the police use of force and detentions of protesters during recent anti-government demonstrations, Human Rights Watch said today. The demonstrators were protesting the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, who lost the presidency of Brazil on August 31, 2016, and was replaced by her former vice president, Michel Temer.

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Brazil ordered to pay enslaved cattle workers

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Brazil ordered to pay enslaved cattle workers

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4- No slavery
23- workers rights

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The government of Brazil has been ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to pay $5m (£4.1m) to 128 former farm workers who were enslaved on a Brazilian farm between 1988-2000.

Brazil is the first country to be fined for failing to prevent slavery within its borders by the court, the legal arm of the Organisation of American States (OAS), a political and juridical forum comprising all 35 independent states of the Americas.

In a judgment in late December, the court ruled that Brazil had failed to put in place adequate measures and policies to prevent modern slavery and ordered the government to pay $5m to the workers. The 128 men were used as slave labour on Fazenda Brasil Verde, owned by the Quagliato Brothers group, one of the biggest cattle ranching companies in the north of the country. The ministry of work conducted 12 raids on the farm between 1988 and 2000 and rescued 340 workers from conditions of debt bondage and slavery.

In one of the last raids in 2000, officials found workers being watched over by armed security guards, threatened with violence and left without adequate shelter or food. They were promised salaries that they never received.

Xavier Plassat, coordinator of the National Campaign Against Slave Labour for the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), said the ruling had far-reaching implications for the continent as it highlighted the responsibility of individual states for preventing slavery within its borders.

He also commended the Court for emphasising the role that racial inequality and poverty plays in increasing vulnerability to labour exploitation.

The case was brought to the OAS by the Centre for Justice and International Law (Cejil) and CPT in 2013. Until the court made the ruling in December, no criminal charges had been levelled at Fazenda Brasil Verde and none of the workers had received any compensation.

As well as demanding the $5m payment, the court also ruled that the Brazilian government must reopen investigations into the case.

According to the NGO Walk Free, an estimated 160,000 people are trapped in some form of slavery in Brazil. More than 50,000 people have been released from conditions of slavery since 1995.

The ruling comes amid growing concern about proposed legislation that would amend and narrow the legal definition of slavery, something that anti-slavery activists fear would curtail efforts to clamp down on widespread and hidden labour abuses in Brazil's corporate supply chains.

Leonardo Sakamoto, a political activist and director of the NGO Repórter Brasil, described the proposed amendment to existing slavery definitions as an "ambush from all quarters", which is being propelled forward by the hugely influential agricultural lobby in parliament.

"Michel Temer's government could dismantle everything that has been built to end slavery, and it could happen at any minute," he said.

Brazil's Special Secretariat for Human Rights has confirmed that the government accepts the judgment delivered in the Fazenda Verde Brasil case and affirmed that it presents an opportunity for the state to strengthen and improve national policy on slave labour.

Xavier Plassat said, "It's hard to believe that the Brazilian government will take effective measures to break the slavery cycle, in terms not only of prevention, but of repression, punishment and social inclusion."
Topics

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Brazil ordered to pay $5m to workers formerly enslaved on cattle ranch

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The government of Brazil has been ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to pay $5m (£4.1m) to 128 former farm workers who were enslaved on a Brazilian farm between 1988-2000.

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13- Freedom to move
14- Safe place to live
16- Marriage and family

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Sixteen days of global activism against gender-based violence ends today, on Human Rights Day. The confluence is no coincidence. It is intended to emphasize that women's rights are human rights. That may sound obvious now, but it has not always been so. Twenty-five years ago, Human Rights Watch published a report denouncing the acquittals in Brazil of men who killed their wives or girlfriends with the excuse of "defending their honor."

Brazilian law has come a long way since then. Passage of the Maria da Penha law in 2006 was a milestone, establishing an array of measures to guarantee women's rights, prevent violence, and ensure justice in the event of violence. One of the law's main accomplishments was the creation of protective orders to provide a buffer by requiring a woman's alleged abuser to stay away from her, though getting such an order and making sure it's enforced remains more difficult than it should be.

© 2016 César Muñoz/Human Rights Watch

Despite this progress, more than 4,700 women were killed in Brazil in 2013--the last year for which there is data--half of them by a relative, partner, or former partner. Many more suffered homicide attempts, rape, or beatings.

"Rita," a 36-year-old woman we met in Recife in October, asked her partner to move out of the shack where they lived, after suffering years of physical abuse. The man came back at night and shot her three times. That was more than ten years ago, and the scar left by a bullet hole was still livid on her arm. Police talked to her once, Rita said, but never investigated the case seriously, as far as she has been able to determine.

After spending six months in the hospital recovering, Rita suffered violence from other partners. She obtained three protective orders, she said, but they were never enforced. When we met her, she was being threatened by a former boyfriend. "I am afraid of being killed," she told us. "I know that if I am killed, the crime will remain unpunished. I have no value in the eyes of the justice system, because I am poor."

Enforcement of protective orders is a major challenge in Brazil. Police visit women who have them in only a handful of municipalities. Yet they do help many women by sending a warning to aggressors that the justice system is looking.

The problem, for some women, is getting a protective order. Such was the case for Mariana Marcondes. A judge in São Paulo denied her a protective order, requiring more evidence than her own testimony of abuse by her husband, Chateaubriand Diniz. Mariana remained unprotected, even after Chateaubriand was convicted of threatening, beating, and confining her. On September 17, he stabbed her to death.

Police, prosecutors, and judges need better training to prevent, investigate and punish violence against women. And states and cities should improve the social and psychological services women who have experienced this violence need to survive and thrive.

Rita is right that poor women, without the capacity to pay for lawyers or psychologists, are especially vulnerable. But domestic violence affects women of means as well. Better-off women frequently endure abusive relationships to protect, for example, a child's education that the aggressor pays for, Maria da Penha, the activist and survivor of domestic violence for whom the law is named, told us. Whether a woman is rich or poor, little aggressions often escalate to devastating violence.

The state needs to give women the support they need to get free from violence, not just on Human Rights Day, but every day.

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A Women's Right to Be Free of Violence in Brazil

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Sixteen days of global activism against gender-based violence ends today, on Human Rights Day. The confluence is no coincidence. It is intended to emphasize that women's rights are human rights. That may sound obvious now, but it has not always been so.

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Brazil Police Abuses feed cycle off violence

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Brazil Police Abuses feed cycle off violence

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2- Don't discriminate
3- The right to life
5- No torture

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(Rio de Janeiro) - Torture and extrajudicial killings by police contribute to a cycle of violence in Brazil, undermining public security and endangering the lives of police officers, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2017.

Illegal killings make gang members less likely to surrender peacefully to police when cornered and motivate criminals to kill police whenever they have the opportunity. Human Rights Watch said. The killings also make community members less likely to report criminal activities or come forward as witnesses.

"The community's cooperation with the police is key to reducing the high levels of crime in Brazil," said Maria Laura Canineu, Brazil director at Human Rights Watch. "Turning a blind eye to police abuse not only denies justice to victims' families, it antagonizes communities and puts the police officers who patrol them at risk."

In the 687-page World Report, its 27th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights as an impediment to the majority will. For those who feel left behind by the global economy and increasingly fear violent crime, civil society groups, the media, and the public have key roles to play in reaffirming the values on which rights-respecting democracy has been built.

Police officers killed at least 3,345 people in 2015 in Brazil, according to the latest available data. While some police killings result from legitimate use of force, others are extrajudicial executions, as Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented.

Brazilian women and girls of child-bearing age face new health challenges from an outbreak of the Zika virus. Brazilian authorities should strengthen information and prevention programs, as well as provide better support for the families with children diagnosed with Zika syndrome, Human Rights Watch said.

Inhumane conditions in prisons and detention centers is an urgent problem. More than 622,000 adults are behind bars, 67 percent more than the prisons were built to hold, according to official data. Overcrowding and understaffing make it impossible for prison authorities to maintain control within many facilities, leaving detainees vulnerable to violence and gang activity.

Ninety-nine detainees were killed in prisons in the states of Amazonas, Roraima and Paraiba in the first eight days of January 2017, and 22 were killed in prisons in Roraima, Rondônia, and Acre in October 2016. In addition, eleven children were killed in two juvenile detention centers in the state of Pernambuco in October 2016.

More than 24,000 children are in juvenile detention, almost 24 percent more than the facilities' capacity. A bill under discussion would worsen overcrowding by raising the maximum detention period.

Torture and mistreatment of detainees, including children, is an acute problem, as Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented. The government's National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combatting of Torture found cases of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in "most, if not all" of the 17 jails and prisons it inspected between April 2015 and March 2016.

A positive step taken in 2016 was the expansion of "custody hearings" to all state capitals and some other jurisdictions. Such "custody hearings"-carried out promptly after arrest-help judges determine who should be in preventive detention and who should be set free pending trial. Brazil´s Congress should pass a proposed bill to make such hearings mandatory throughout the country.

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Brazil: Police Abuses Feed Cycle of Violence

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Torture and extrajudicial killings by police contribute to a cycle of violence in Brazil, undermining public security and endangering the lives of police officers. Illegal killings make gang members less likely to surrender peacefully to police when cornered and motivate criminals to kill police whenever they have the opportunity.

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Brazil: Reject Bill Undermining the Rights of People with Disabilities 

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Brazil: Reject Bill Undermining the Rights of People with Disabilities 

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16- Marriage and family
18- Freedom of thought
19- Freedom of expression  29- Responsibility

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Senator Lídice da Mata

Rapporteur of the Bill PLS 757/2015 at the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission of the Brazilian Senate

Your Excellency,

We would like to express our concern regarding the recent approval of the reform bill PLS 757/2015 by the Senate Human Rights and Participative Legislative Commission and currently under review by the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission, under your rapporteurship. The reform bill PLS 757/2015 whose authors were senators Paulo Paim (PT-RS), Chair of the Human Rights Commission, and Antonio Carlos Valadares (PSB-SE), has the objective of reforming several provisions of law number 10,406 of January 10, 2002 (Civil Code), law number 13,146 of 6 July, 2015 (Persons with Disabilities Statute), and law number 13,105 of March 16, 2015 (New Civil Code Procedure).

The human rights approach towards persons with disabilities is rooted in the principle that they should have the right to make decisions and choices in their lives on an equal basis with others. Enabling persons with disabilities to decide whether to marry, what house to buy, or where to live should be considered an inherent feature of their human dignity. In case they require support to take decisions, governments should provide the necessary systems to do so. The bottom line is that governments should provide the support people need to make their own decisions, rather than empower other people to make decisions on their behalf.[1]

Brazil has taken important steps to ensure the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities, including the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) - which has constitutional status --and the Brazilian Law for Inclusion.[2]

The present bill is a larger attempt to remedy conflicts between the New Procedural Code and the Brazilian Law for Inclusion. We recognize the important need to address those conflicts, but the harmonization of Brazil's legal framework should comply with the country's obligations under the CPRD. The present bill, however, appears to mark a retreat from advances in CRPD implementation established under Brazil's Law for Inclusion.

Article 84 of the Brazilian Law for Inclusion[3] establishes the right of persons with disabilities to exercise their legal capacity on an equal basis with others, and limits the possibility of applying curatorship only for "exceptional cases that should be proportional to the needs and circumstances of the person concerned, in each case, and for the shortest time possible" (article 84.3). This in itself is something that needs to be reviewed. Furthermore, article 85 limits curatorship only to business and patrimonial acts[4] and prohibits the application of this civil regime to issues related to one's own body, sexuality, marriage, privacy, education, health, work and voting (85.1).[5]

PLS 757/2015 appears to take a deliberate step back from all of this. The most worrying provision of the proposed reform would reinstate provisions from the Civil Code (Lei nº 10.406/2002) that authorized full guardianship for persons who were declared to be "incapable". Another worrying aspect of bill is its proposed extension of the use of curatorship regime for issues related to one's own body, sexuality, marriage, privacy, education, health, work and voting for persons with disabilities.

Article 12 (2) of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which Brazil ratified in 2008, requires that persons with disabilities "enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life." Instead of removing or limiting the legal capacity of people with disabilities, the CRPD in Article 12(3) requires that states provide support when needed and requested to persons with disabilities so that they can exercise their rights and make important life decisions for themselves.[6] Article 12(4) requires that measures relating to support for the exercise of legal capacity provide appropriate safeguards to prevent abuse-in particular that any such measures respect the rights, will and preferences of the person, are free from conflict of interest and undue influence, are proportional and tailored to the person's circumstance and are both limited in duration and subject to regular review. Finally, article 12.5 emphasizes the rights of persons with disabilities "to own or inherit property, to control their own financial affairs" and the state's obligations to "ensure that persons with disabilities are not arbitrarily deprived of their property". This provision is particularly important in light of the restrictions on legal capacity currently in place under the Brazilian Law for Inclusion.

There has been considerable debate as to the precise contours and appropriate implementation of Article 12. For its part, the CRPD Committee, which monitors implementation of this treaty, has recommended that the Brazilian government "withdraw all legal provisions that perpetuate the system of substituted decision-making." It also recommended that, in consultation with organizations of persons with disabilities and other service providers, "the State party take tangible steps to replace the system of substitute decision-making with a supported decision-making model that upholds the autonomy, will and preferences of persons with disabilities in full conformity with article 12 of the Convention." Furthermore, the Committee asked the Brazilian government to present a follow-up report on this specific recommendation[7], reflecting the importance it gave to compliance with the provisions of Article 12.

At its core, Article 12 requires a paradigm shift away from the manner all domestic legal systems have approached these questions in the past. We recognize the deep practical and ethical complexity of designing new systems that comply with article 12, and the fact that this takes Brazil into genuinely uncharted territory. But where articles 84 and 85 of the Law for Inclusion appeared to be a strong effort to move towards compliance with Article 12, the present bill appears to abandon that effort.

There have been several examples of supported decision-making in other countries that may be considered in implementing the Brazilian Law for Inclusion and complementary legislation. Mechanisms such as informal peer support to take specific decisions like housing or financial decisions or advanced directives, for example in Canada, which allow a person to decide before hand how he or she wants to manage affairs by stating in writing how this should be done. Also, people with disabilities could choose to delegate their legal capacity to a guarantor, who would help them make specific decisions. There are a range of possibilities and by calling a public hearing, the commission will have the opportunity to learn about more alternatives from different stakeholders.

We ask that you reject the approval of the bill as it is. We also call you to advocate for the creation of a special plural legislative commission, involving Senators and Deputies, which closely consults persons with disabilities and their representative organizations, legal scholars and other stakeholders, mandated at:

1. Addressing problems that have been identified in the contradicting laws and holding public hearings with wide civil society participation;

2. Proposing an alternative draft legislation to harmonize the Brazilian legal framework in compliance with the country's obligations under the CPRD, that would include:

1. eliminating the reference to "full guardianship" from the Brazilian legal system as a whole, including the New Procedural Code;

2. comprehensively addressing the supported decision making process in the New Procedural Code;

3. Developing sound solutions to the practical difficulties of establishing and enforcing a legal framework that is fully compatible with Article 12;

4. Promoting a full revision of any type of substitute decision-making models, among them the curatorship model;

Kind regards,
Human Rights Watch Instituto Baresi Rede Brasileira do Movimento de Vida Independente Associação Brasileira para Ação por Direitos das Pessoas com Autismo - Abraça ONG Essas Mulheres Instituto MetaSocial Movimento Down Inclusive - Inclusão e Cidadania Rede Latino Americana de Organizações Não Governamentais de Pessoas com Deficiência e suas Famílias - RIADIS Federação das Fraternidades Cristãs de Pessoas com Deficiência do Brasil - FCD/BR
[1] CRPD Art. 12(3).

[2] Lei Brasileira de Inclusão da Pessoa com Deficiência (Estatuto da Pessoa com Deficiência). Lei Nº 13.146, de 6 de Julho de 2015.

[3] Art. 84. A pessoa com deficiência tem assegurado o direito ao exercício de sua capacidade legal em igualdade de condições com as demais pessoas

[4] Art. 85. A curatela afetará tão somente os atos relacionados aos direitos de natureza patrimonial e negocial.

[5] A definição da curatela não alcança o direito ao próprio corpo, à sexualidade, ao matrimônio, à privacidade, à educação, à saúde, ao trabalho e ao voto.

[6] CRPD, Art. 12(3).

[7] CRPD, Concluding Observations for Brazil, paragraph 61. According to this follow-up recommendation Brazil will have to present a complementary report on September 2016.

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Brazil: Reject Bill Undermining the Rights of People with Disability, Establish Special Multi-stakeholder Legislative Commission

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Senator Lídice da Mata Rapporteur of the Bill PLS 757/2015 at the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission of the Brazilian Senate Your Excellency, We would like to express our concern regarding the recent approval of the reform bill PLS 757/2015 by the Senate Human Rights and Participative Legislative Commission and currently under review by the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission, under your rapporteurship.