Article
How Many More Brazilian Environmental Defenders Have to Perish Before We Act? President Lula's Challenge to Protect Environmental Quilombola Defenders
William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review
(2023)
Abstract
The Global South has been historically marginalized and continues to suffer from systemic oppression, impeding the realization of their human rights. Afro-descendants and other minority populations in the Global South live in disproportionately environmentally unsafe conditions and are disproportionately more vulnerable to climate change and environ- mental harm. One of those populations are Quilombolas. Quilombolas are Brazilian Afro-descendant communities who continue to fight to pro- tect their community rights to ancestral lands, natural resources, and survival as a people. The Brazilian government under former Brazilian President Bolsonaro engaged in a persistent and systematic campaign to target, attack, and kill defenders, including Quilombola defenders, who sought to protect the environment and human rights. His government engaged in the systematic deforestation and extraction of natural re- sources in the Amazon. It is up to Brazil’s re-elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his new administration to ensure that the Amazon is protected, and that human rights defenders, including Quilombola de- fenders, are protected and are able to have justice and accountability for their human rights violations. We must hold the Brazilian state and private actors responsible for human rights violations through the existing rights-based framework through the newly ratified Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environ- mental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (“Escazú Agree- ment”) and the Esperanza Protocol.
Keywords
- International Environmental Law; International Human Rights Law; Environmental Defenders; Human Rights Defenders; International Law
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring 2023
Citation Information
Sarah Dávila A.. "How Many More Brazilian Environmental Defenders Have to Perish Before We Act? President Lula's Challenge to Protect Environmental Quilombola Defenders" William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review (2023) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sarahdavilaruhaak/41/