Public Note #16 – In support of IACHR Resolution on the Pandemic and Human Rights in the Americas

The Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Commission for the Defense of Human Rights – the Arns Commission – welcomes and congratulates the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for the recent publication of its Resolution 1/2020 “Pandemic and Human Rights in the Americas”.

Its reading is recommended to all entities dedicated to the defense of human rights in Brazil and, even more, to the formal authorities of the three branches that compose the Republic, at the three levels of government.

In strong terms, 85 recommendations have been presented to the OAS Member States so that the fight against COVID-19 is based on the most absolute respect for both international and Inter-American norms and treaties for the protection of human rights.

Some of these recommendations reveal clear adequacy to serious aspects of facing the pandemic in our country. One of them fits perfectly with the concern expressed by the scientific world, religious authorities, jurists, and different leaders of democratic life regarding several unreasonable statements made by the President of the Republic: “In current circumstances, it is the duty of the authorities to inform the population, and as they do so, they must act with diligence and give reasoned reports that are science-based”.

Other recommendations address dramatic aspects of the current health crisis in the Brazilian context. The first one concerns the large segments of the population still submerged in poverty and extreme poverty, without jobs, or with a work situation marked by precariousness and earning an income below the threshold of human dignity.

Persons deprived of their liberty – whose population in Brazil is the second largest in the world, below only the United States – are presented as a segment of high vulnerability to the pandemic. Therefore, it is essential to propose extraordinary protection measures, as well as actions to reduce prison overpopulation by adopting alternative measures.

Indigenous peoples are also the object of accentuated concern in the IACHR Resolution, which recommends unrestricted respect for peoples in voluntary isolation (isolated groups in Brazil), and proposes the interruption of all productive and extractive projects in the territories of Indigenous peoples during the period of overcoming this situation of public calamity.

The Arns Commission asks all partner entities that defend human rights to be aware and learn about the aforementioned Resolution, as well as to disseminate it widely through all their communication mechanisms, sending the recommendations to the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary authorities from all different government levels.

Photo: Marcelo Casal / Agência Brasil