By Allyne Andrade[1] and Ana Valéria Araújo[2]
In the first week of December, the Brazil Fund for Human Rights held a virtual meeting between representatives of all projects currently supported by the foundation. More than 75 initiatives participated, from 21 Brazilian states, with more than 100 activists present. There were two full days of reflections and analyzes of the current situation in Brazil, made by defenders of rights who work on different agendas, and who discuss the country from different perspectives and places.
The scope of this event, as well as the support for it after almost an entire year of the pandemic that plunged us into an exhausting sequence of meetings, courses, seminars and lives, all online, is yet another demonstration of the strength of civil society. Its potential to organize and fight for the realization of the rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution.
On this Human Rights Day, it is important to highlight the fundamental role that organized civil society plays in building a democratic country. Especially in a context in which the dominant institutional stance in the various spheres of government is to criminalize this work, to deny life and preach death.
O Brazil Fund for Human Rights for 14 years, it has supported these groups, collectives and grassroots organizations that operate in their territories, with in-depth knowledge of the real problems of their communities and with a great capacity to develop solutions, to build autonomous paths in search of collective well-being.
The foundation raises resources from various actors – cooperation agencies, international and national foundations, individuals – and allocates them to projects that propose collective actions aimed at defending and promoting human rights. With extensive knowledge of the field, initiatives, trends and emergencies across the country, he ensures that support reaches the cutting edge, with special emphasis on groups that carry out fundamental work, but have little or no access to other sources of resources. It also encourages the articulation, formation or consolidation of thematic or circumstantial action networks.
O Brazil Fund understand this work, grantmaking, as a tool that brings to the center of the political debate a plurality of propositions about what the fundamental rights of citizenship are and how to promote and expand them. A support format that illuminates local agendas and strategies, built from diverse knowledge and different understandings of the country and the world. In this way, it democratizes the construction of a more egalitarian country, empowering individuals, boosting community and collective development, strengthening voices so that they can lead their own causes.
Still with regard to the methodology of this work, another fundamental aspect is the selection process of supported projects and groups. Created by activists from diverse causes – land and territory, combating racism, rights of women and indigenous peoples, among others – the Brazil Fund brings activists with recognized performance and extensive knowledge of the field of human rights to the center of decision-making, through external and independent Selection Committees. It is these committees that, with each notice or emergency line of support, analyze projects, guide decisions and help the foundation in building and maintaining a plurality of views and priorities.
Problems and ways of coping
At the national meeting this December 2020, groups selected from five support lines of the Brazil Fund collectively outlined an overview of the latent challenges of a country still immersed in the Covid-19 pandemic and with the part of the population that has its human rights systematically and historically denied even more vulnerable.
The analyzes of these activists pointed out as priorities the real, comprehensive and integrated confrontation of the different faces and consequences of racism in Brazilian society. Also the defense of the land and territories of indigenous and traditional peoples, devastated by forest fires, invasions, illegal exploitation of nature and threats to the lives of human rights defenders, including the healthy environment. And also the defense of the lives of the LGBTQIA+ population, women and peripheral youth, and the fight against the exacerbated precariousness of work.
It is also essential to highlight that these groups go beyond pointing out problems: they propose ways to overcome inequalities and injustices and seek solutions in practice, based on their experiences, focused on specific problems in their communities.
They are black women from Mato Grosso who work with immigrants, quilombolas and riverside communities to expand their advocacy capacity in political bodies in their municipality. Immigrants from Rio Grande do Sul who propose projects to different funding sources, in search of resources that strengthen advocacy actions for access to basic rights. Relatives of victims of state violence in Rio de Janeiro who denounce the precarious situation inside prisons, such as lack of food and drinking water. Indigenous activists from Pará and the Amazon resist attempts to mischaracterize their ways of life and effectively protect the lives of threatened people.
This is the type of fundamental work that the Brazil Fund supports and that philanthropy for social justice, as a whole, drives.
The experience of the Covid-19 Emergency
A concrete example of what was said above was the Emergency Support Fund: Covid-19. Through this action, the Brazil Fund quickly provided emergency resources to deal with the social consequences of the pandemic to around 270 community initiatives in all Brazilian states.
This emergency fund was built based on careful listening to the field of human rights, which began to be carried out by the team at Brazil Fund in the first weeks of the pandemic. It was the activists and grassroots groups who highlighted the urgency of humanitarian aid – food and hygiene -, logistics – for distributing this aid -, and the continuity of rights defense work.
The team at Brazil Fund it also went into the field to raise more resources from national and international foundations and institutes and individuals. In total, R$ 2.4 million were donated, with a direct impact on the lives of 90 thousand people, and more than 450 thousand indirectly impacted.
Current strategy
With the closure of the Covid-19 Emergency Fund in September, based on constant dialogue with the human rights defense field, we understand the need to support the strengthening of civil society organizations, social movements, collectives and grassroots groups.
The Covid-19 pandemic and its effects constitute the most recent threat to the lives of the Brazilian population. In addition to the health crisis that unequally impacts the most vulnerable, we are experiencing an economic and political crisis that puts the sustainability of organizations working in this field at risk. The challenges of this period will be even greater and impose the duty to fight for a configuration in which physical, material and symbolic violence is not normalized, nor are the setbacks and ineffectiveness of rights that affect women, LGBTQIA+ people, traditional peoples and communities, among others.
As a result, the Brazil Fund's activities are currently focused on supporting institutional strengthening. This means, among other strategies, enabling material structure and basic working conditions, ensuring the sustainability of activities to promote social justice by civil society. This work is being done through public notices: institutional strengthening for organizations to combat racism from below; the 2021 notice – Follow with Rights, to support groups, collectives and grassroots organizations that work on various thematic axes, such as the rights of women, youth, indigenous peoples, quilombola populations, rural workers, refugees and others; and the LGBTQIA+ Defending Rights notice, aimed at groups with specific work in this segment of the population.
These experiences, as well as the national meeting, demonstrate the strategic role of philanthropy for social justice in strengthening self-organization and the protagonism of populations in defending their causes.
O Brazil Fund, as well as other funds and foundations that make grantmaking in Brazil they have a role that goes beyond financial support: they are strategic actors in maintaining and expanding democracy. And in this sense, the Philanthropy Network for Social Justice, which brings together and promotes the articulation of most of these actors, also plays a fundamental role in overcoming challenges in the field of philanthropy and social investment in the country.
On December 10th, it is necessary to reaffirm this commitment to strengthening human rights groups and organizations. This cause will only be victorious with the strengthening of a broad group of organizations in society, capable of articulating and resisting the growing violations imposed by the current political scenario.
