In defense of Human Rights

On March 19th, the Institute for Defense of the Right to Defense (IDDD), in partnership with the Arns Commission, filed a request to be admitted as amicus curiae in a lawsuit to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in defense of the National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture (Mecanismo Nacional de Prevenção e Combate à Tortura – MNPCT, in Portuguese).

The amicus curiae or "friend of the court" is a legal instrument that allows entities with recognized expertise on a certain topic to share knowledge (data, studies, and experience) with the court, to inform it about a matter of public interest under debate, and thus help the court to base its decision.

The request seeks to integrate Claim of Non-Compliance with a Fundamental Precept (ADPF) No. 607, authored by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic (Procuradoria Geral da República – PGR, in Portuguese) and filed in August 2019. Its goal is to suspend the effects of President Jair Bolsonaro's decree that dismissed the experts of the National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture (MNPTC), in addition to making their work an unpaid activity.

In practice, the president’s measure promotes the dismantling of the government body that is responsible for investigating and confronting human rights violations and the use of cruel punishments in places of deprivation of liberty, such as prisons, therapeutic communities, places of shelter for the elderly, in addition to checking the sanitary conditions of these environments and the health of prisoners. Still last year, the Institute for Defense of the Right to Defense (IDDD) and the Arns Commission represented the Prosecutor’s General Office (PGR), in order to provoke it to take legal steps to question the constitutionality of the decree in question.

With the third largest prison population in the world, confined to dirty and overcrowded prisons that do not offer basic conditions for people to serve their sentences with dignity, Brazil needs institutions like the National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture (MNPCT) in order to establish a minimum level of respect for human rights. The mechanism is also part of the international commitment adopted by the country, such as through the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The end of torture must be a permanent commitment and therefore independent from the political stance or ideological inclination of those in power.