International Human Rights Monitor (IHRM) is a new human rights NGO that is interested in integrating insights from academic research into policy debates on human rights.’ Recently, IHRM has received a large grant from an anonymous donor who is interested in promoting human rights as efficiently as possible. Specifically, the donor has told IHRM that they do not care about where the money goes, but they want it to be spent on a sub-issue with (1) a strong international law foundation, and (2) the potential for an NGO like IHRM to make a real impact and improve outcomes.
Your team has been selected to participate in an IHRM-wide pitch competition about how to spend this seed money. You will select a specific area of international human rights law.
Our group is exploring the complicated world of Brazilian land rights for Indigenous groups. This is an important area of international law because Indigenous people throughout time have been forcefully removed from their native land. This results in indigenous people becoming refugees, indigenous lives lost, and an erasure of culture.One of the main challenges related to this convention is that states continue to violate the declared rights that Indigenous People have to remain on their native land, yet states continue to remove these people from their lands to extract resources that will give them economic profit. We are focusing on the forced removal of Indigenous peoples in Brazil.
The international laws in play are the protections for indigenous peoples and the right to property. There are concerted efforts to weaken or destroy any protections for indigenous lands to allow for land grabbing. This is in direct contention with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN DRIP) and the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). The rights prescribed by the UN DRIP would require Brazil to change its course and add protections in its legal system. There is also the possibility to present a case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) against Brazil, just as the Xucuru people did in 2018.
A legal system that is flirting with an anti-Indigenous legal theory called “marco temporal”, which would cap recognized indigenous territory at the territory under indigenous ownership in 1988, when Brazil ratified their constitution. As reported by Al Jazeera, the “marco temporal” originated from a case regarding displaced indigenous people in Santa Catarina who were“Pushed out by tobacco farmers, members of the Xokleng people appealed to the state government for help reclaiming their land. The state government had refused them, on the basis that they were not there in 1988” (Al Jazeera 2023). There is a fear that if made law the “marco temporal” would entice more violence against indigenous people in pursuit of the profitable crime of land grabbing. There is an outcry from indigenous organizations for the UN to denounce the violence against indigenous people and warn them about the consequences of the “marco temporal” bill (Aquino 2023). The “marco temporal” legal theory has lost in Brazil’s supreme court but is kept alive by the powerful agricultural lobby that was instrumental in getting the bill passed in Brazil’s lower house of congress. This is the uphill battle facing indigenous organizations to fight a coalition of agricultural players in Brazil that stand to make immense profits from weakened protections on indigenous lands. The reason these lands are so valuable is that they are often bordering farmers in rural areas, where farmers stand to gain a lot from displacing their native neighbors. It would increase their field sizes, there could be valuable resources in the land, and with weakened protections they could stand to eventually “legally” own the land they stole. Thankfully there is strong case law from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACtHR) that defines indigenous land as being uncapped by any temporal limits. It even goes as far to consider lands that indigenous groups do not formally hold a title for to be considered in their possession. It all culminates in a clear understanding that the “marco temporal” is a ploy by powerful actors in the agricultural sector in Brazil to try to profit off the misery of indigenous peoples.
Our proposed policy intervention is to work with Brazilian advocacy groups that promote and support Indigenous land rights to lobby those in the Brazilian legislature to vote against current legislation that will strip away Indigenous rights.The pressure on the politicians of Brazil could have them shape legislation that meets the legal requirements of indigenous land rights as prescribed by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.
Social Science Assessment. The social science assessment expands on some of the insights developed in the textbook in Chapters 3 and 4. Why do countries break international law in this issue area? When is rule-breaking punished? Is there existing scholarship that studies this issue? If not, is there related scholarship? Citations are-also crucial for this section. You should be drawing on political science scholarship to formulate your arguments.