March, 2010: A report from Porto Alegre

The United Peoples’ in Brasil has developed its first short course on Human Rights in January 2010. The aim of the program is to approach Human Rights from the grassroots movement’s point of view – from their struggle. The program, therefore, is a mix of lectures and discussions with visits to people’s places to listen to their stories and to see them acting in their environment. The two-week activities took place at the UP campus in Porto Alegre, from January 10 to 24, and has worked with the following themes:

Interacting with social movement:

- The participants were able to meet a group of people who live on the streets and produce the newspaper Boca de Rua (The Mouth of the Street ). That’s the way they have found out to practice their right to express themselves and to “become visible” to the society. This way they have a dialogue with people in town and also get money from selling the newspaper. That’s the goal of this 10-year sucessful project in Porto Alegre.

- Visiting a Landless Worker’s Movement (MST) farm – we have been to Assentamento Capela (Capela Settlement), in Nova Santa Rita municipality (70km from Porto Alegre), where 100 families live from agriculture, suine and hens raising and rice crops. The production is organized in a cooperative way, so they are practicing their right to have a land and to live from it. They are already there for 17 years with production cooperative, school for children and housing. The MST is a 30 years old NGO and is the strongest social movement in Brazil, which stands for agrarian reform and gather around one million people around the country.

- Studying the role of media in the society by visiting a community radio station – Ipanema Comunitaria is a radio in Ipanema neighborhood (where the UP campus is located). The radio is supported by an Association and its struggle is for democracy on media; the aim is to provide a media for the community to express themselves.

- Public session on the Third Human Rights National Plan in the Legislative Assembly – discussion within the Human Rights Comission. Written by thousands of people and organizations through conferences (locals, regionals and national) the Human Rights National Plan was under attack from the national mainstream media in January. For this reason activists and organizations called out a public session to talk about a reaction to the conservative media, political parties and the Catholic church.

Lecture:

What is and what does The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Based in San José, Costa Rica, the court is an autonomous judicial institution of the Organization of American States established in 1979, and whose objective is the application and interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights. The lecture was about the conception, history and stories by Tamara Biolo Soares, a brazilian lawyer who worked there over the last six years.

Cultural:

The school of samba- get to know the afro-brazilian heritage in Porto Alegre through its music for Carnival. Rehearsal of Imperadores do Samba (The Emperors of the Samba), one of the schools of samba in town with more than 2000 participants.

Workshops:

- Human Rights League: open activity to promote human rights in the region of Imbé City, a beach 125 km from Porto Alegre. It was a workshop to provide information and discussions to activists from social movements as well as policemen and teachers on how to deal with institutional violence.

- Democracy and participation: playing Game. The Multilayered Democracy is an educational game developed by the International Academy for Education and Democracy. Edugame is a dialogue tool where participants relate to challenges of everyday life, to political institutions and participation at all levels. Participants learn how to relate to governance levels, from global to local, and how to consider effective courses of action relating to their own issues. At the same time participants will reflect over their own context, thereby providing the possibility of dialogue among participants from different cultures.

- The new Constitution and the Human Rights in Bolivia – To spread our views on the South America realities, we invited Ms. Alexandra Falter (Germany) to contribute with her knowledge about Bolivia. We were pleased and honoured with her presentation about the New Constitution and the Human Rights in Bolivia joined by other participants, even two indigenous people from the kaigang ethnicity who live nearby Porto Alegre.