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Alda Castillo, 27 year old military police officer died by drug traffickers shot her. This is just one of 60,000 homicide victims in Brazil in 2014. This story involves Article 3 (The right to life).

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On February 2, 2014, Alda Castilho, a 27-year-old military police officer died after suspected drug traffickers opened fire on her squad in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro. "Her death was in vain," her mother, Maria Rosalina da Silva, told us last month.

Castillo was one of the almost 60,000 homicide victims in Brazil in 2014. It is unknown how many were the victims of drug traffickers. In Niterói, São Gonçalo and Itaboraí, three cities within Rio de Janeiro´s metropolitan area, about 400 of the 480 homicides in 2014 were drug-related, estimates Fábio Barucke, the Civil Police's chief of homicide investigations in that region.

Brazil's approach to criminalizing drug production and distribution has fueled the growth of criminal organizations and weakened the rule of law.

The "war on drugs" is the main driver of police operations in shantytowns, which often end in death. Brazil´s police killed more than 3,000 people in 2014, according to official data. While the police routinely say these deaths resulted from shootouts with criminals, Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of cases in the last decade in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in which the evidence strongly suggests they were extrajudicial executions. In some instances in Rio de Janeiro, according to prosecutors and police officers Human Rights Watch interviewed, corrupt police officers involved with drug traffickers committed the killings.

Apart from contributing to the spike in homicides and the strengthening of deadly gangs, Brazil's "war on drugs" has also failed to achieve its objectives. Drugs are more plentiful now and stronger than in the 1970s, when the United States began pushing the rest of the world to fight the illegal drug trade.

Police officials described to us the futility of anti-drug operations. Military Police Major Roberto Valente, for example, told us that if they capture a low-level operative, such as a lookout, his gang will give him a gun and promote him once he leaves prison.

Often, top traffickers simply continue their trade from prison. If the police kill them, they are likely to be replaced before the body is stiff.

Having suffered so much in the name of fighting drugs, Brazil should encourage a new approach during the UN´s Special Session on this issue, which starts today in New York. It is time to decriminalize possession of drugs for personal use and to take a look at legalizing drugs.

Opponents of decriminalization argue that it will increase drug use, but the experiences of other countries do not support that assertion. In Portugal, which decriminalized possession of drugs for personal use 15 years ago, the number of people dependent on drugs decreased, as did HIV transmission among drug users and incarceration rates.

Some countries are trying out the legalization of production, distribution and use of marijuana, the most commonly used illegal drug. Early evidence suggests this may cut into the profits of drug traffickers without firing a single bullet. Brazil should consider doing the same.

A new approach to drugs may save the country millions of reals that could be used for drug treatment and the prevention of violence. Most important, it could save thousands of lives every year. It is time to put an end to the current senseless policy.

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On February 2, 2014, Alda Castilho, a 27-year-old military police officer died after suspected drug traffickers opened fire on her squad in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro. "Her death was in vain," her mother, Maria Rosalina da Silva, told us last month. Castillo was one of the almost 60,000 homicide victims in Brazil in 2014.

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Rights Being Practiced and Enjoyed (Cam T)

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Rights Being Practiced and Enjoyed (Cam T)

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Cuba: Free Graffiti Artist

Danilo Maldonado is a graffiti artist in Cuba who was recently arrested after posting a video celebrating Fidel Castro's death. This story involves article 19 (Freedom of Expression).

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(New York, December 16, 2016) - Cuban authorities should order the immediate release of Danilo Maldonado Machado, the graffiti artist known as "El Sexto," whom they arrested on November 26, 2016, and have been treating with increasing severity ever since, Human Rights Watch said today.

Police arrested Maldonado after he posted on social media a video of himself celebrating Fidel Castro's death earlier that day. Since then, he has been held incommunicado in various detention centers for as long as three days at a time. Family members who have seen him said he had been severely beaten on several occasions and subjected to three days of solitary confinement, naked and without food. Though still not charged with a crime, he was transferred on December 14 to a high-security prison that houses convicted criminals. Authorities have given his family no information about how long he will remain there.

"Nobody should be arrested for expressing political views," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "And under no circumstances should anyone be beaten or held incommunicado, or imprisoned prior to trial alongside criminals who have been tried and sentenced."

In the video, which Maldonado posted on Facebook, he spray-paints Se Fue (he's gone) on the Havana Libre hotel and asks people to "come out into the streets" and "ask for freedom." The video was later widely broadcast on YouTube.

Nobody should be arrested for expressing political views. And under no circumstances should anyone be beaten or held incommunicado, or imprisoned prior to trial alongside criminals who have been tried and sentenced.

Speaking on the phone from Havana, Maldonado's mother, Maria Victoria Machado, said that police stormed into her son's house later that day, dragged him to a police station, beat him severely, and then took him to the Villa Marista state security prison, notorious in Cuba for holding political prisoners. There, she said, they beat him so severely that it brought on an attack of asthma, from which he suffers. Only then - 72 hours after his arrest - was he allowed to contact her so that she could bring him an inhaler.

Maldonado spent the three days in solitary confinement the week of December 4, said Alexandra Martinez, his fiancée, a US citizen who lives in Miami and was speaking on December 15 from Havana. On December 14, Maldonado was transferred to the El Combinado del Este prison where the family says that he is housed with prisoners convicted of violent crimes who may pose a real danger to his safety or even his life.

Short-term arbitrary arrests of Cuban human rights defenders, independent journalists, and artists have increased dramatically in recent years. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an independent human rights group that the government views as illegal, received more than 7,900 reports of arbitrary detention from January through August 2016 - the highest monthly average in the past six years.

Maldonado has long been a target of police harassment. In 2014, police arrested him for spray painting "Fidel" and "Raul" on the backs of two live pigs - for which he served 10 months in prison.

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(New York, December 16, 2016) - Cuban authorities should order the immediate release of Danilo Maldonado Machado, the graffiti artist known as "El Sexto," whom they arrested on November 26, 2016, and have been treating with increasing severity ever since, Human Rights Watch said today.

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Rights in Conflict - The Toll of Unchecked Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro. (Courtney Boehmer)

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Rights in Conflict - The Toll of Unchecked Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro. (Courtney Boehmer)

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Police in the state of Rio de Janeiro have killed more than 8,000 people in the past decade, including at least 645 people in 2015. One fifth of all homicides in the city of Rio last year were police killings. Three quarters of those killed by police were black men. This story involves article 10 and 11. (The right to trial and were always innocent until proven guilty)

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Unlawful Police Killings Undermine Law Enforcement in Brazil

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Rio de Janeiro state promised improvements in public security in preparation for the Olympics, but it has not done enough to address extrajudicial executions by police, a central obstacle to more effective law enforcement. Unlawful police killings have contributed to the unraveling of the state's ambitious efforts to improve public security.

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Criminal Gangs Run Brazil’s Prisons.

Inmates in local prisons in Brazil are being killed daily.  This is happening because the gangs are running the prisons. This story involves article 3 (The right to life)

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The killing of 33 inmates in the Brazilian state of Roraima is another sign that the country's prisons are disgracefully out of control. Many of the bodies were decapitated, a practice widely used by gangs to terrorize their enemies.

The gruesome killings followed by only days the deaths of 60 inmates in Amazonas. Brazil's president, Michel Temer, called that massacre "a devastating accident."

When criminals run the prisons, brutal killings should come as no surprise.

An accident is something random and unexpected. But the repeated mass killings in Brazil's prisons are anything but.

The prison violence is rooted in the authorities' failure to provide humane conditions and to maintain control within the facilities. Many prisons are informally privatized - not handed over to legitimate corporations but to the very gangs they exist to punish.

When criminals run the prisons, brutal killings should come as no surprise.

In the state of Maranhão, I witnessed prison authorities asking incoming detainees which gang they belonged to so they could be sent to a facility run by that gang. Two detainees with no prior record -accused, on flimsy evidence, of possessing drugs and a gun- told me they were not members of any gang, but asked to be held with the gang that controlled the neighborhood where they lived. They were afraid they would be killed if incarcerated with members of a rival gang. Such arrangements are a recipe for gang recruitment.

In the state of Pernambuco, I visited facilities where guards patrolled only the outside perimeter and did not enter cellblocks. Instead, they gave cellblock keys to certain prisoners. Not surprisingly, those prisoners -called keyholders- used their power to sell drugs and extort payments from fellow prisoners and family members, under threat of beatings or worse. Prison officials either turned a blind eye or participated in such rackets in exchange for kickbacks.

Brazil desperately needs a policy overhaul to end inhumane overcrowding. Its prisons hold 67 percent more inmates than their official capacity. Brazil needs to explore alternatives to prison. More than 40 percent of those crowding its prisons have yet to be convicted of a crime, and lengthy delays in judicial proceedings are endemic. In October, I interviewed two women in a Pernambuco prison who had been waiting more than six years for trial.

Brazil also needs to rethink its counterproductive "war on drugs" policy. More than a quarter of all detainees -pretrial and convicted- are behind bars on drug charges. Among women, the figure is closer to two-thirds. One of those detained is "Roberto," a young man serving a sentence of more than four years side by side with convicted murderers at the massive Curado prison complex in Pernambuco when I visited it in 2015, for possessing 15 grams of marijuana, worth 50 reais (about USD15).

Reform is also needed within the prison walls through ending the illegal practice of holding pretrial detainees among convicted criminals. Inmates should be provided with meaningful work and education. And most important, the State needs to regain control of the cellblocks from dangerous criminals who are, in many facilities, the real authorities.

Or Brazil can continue to do nothing, let gangs run the prisons, and wait for more tragedies like this week's.

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The killing of 33 inmates in the Brazilian state of Roraima is another sign that the country's prisons are disgracefully out of control. Many of the bodies were decapitated, a practice widely used by gangs to terrorize their enemies. The gruesome killings followed by only days the deaths of 60 inmates in Amazonas.

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Rights being practiced and enjoyed -Colombia: Constitutional Court Upholds Same-Sex Marriage. (Courtney Boehmer)

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Rights being practiced and enjoyed -Colombia: Constitutional Court Upholds Same-Sex Marriage. (Courtney Boehmer)

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The Colombian Constitutional Court ended years of uncertainty for same-sex couples and bolstered the rights of LGBT people when it upheld the validity of same-sex marriage on April 28, 2016. The articles that this story involves are article 1 (free and equal) , article 19 and 18 (freedom of expression and freedom of thought.) and article 16 (marriage and family)

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Rights being Denied - Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis, Severe Medical and Food Shortages, Inadequate and Repressive Government Response. (Courtney Boehmer)

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Rights being Denied - Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis, Severe Medical and Food Shortages, Inadequate and Repressive Government Response. (Courtney Boehmer)

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Venezuela is experiencing a profound humanitarian crisis. Severe shortages of medicines and medical supplies make it extremely difficult for many Venezuelans to obtain essential medical care. And severe shortages of food and other goods make it difficult for many people to obtain adequate nutrition and cover their families’ basic needs. This story involves article 25 (food and shelter for all).