Gustavo Capdevila - Brazil’s special secretary for Human Rights, Paulo Vannuchi, presented a proposal to the UN Human Rights Council calling for the definition of concrete human rights goals, with varying deadlines, to eradicate some of the restrictions on people’s freedoms and safeguards.
The Brazilian official pointed out that countries have widely different legislation on human rights issues.
At a meeting convened in November by the Chinese Society for Human Rights Studies, Vannuchi discovered that modern China Vannuchi discovered that modern China, founded in 1949 with the triumph of the revolution led by Mao Zedong, is founded on a theoretical base that envisages abolishing the death penalty in the future.
Thus China, which employs the death penalty, and Brazil, which does not, agree on its long term eradication although they differ in the possibility of its immediate abolition, Vannuchi said.
Therefore, the Human Rights Council, as the highest UN human rights body, should open a debate on capital punishment with a view to adopting a decision, in 10 or 20 years if necessary, to "establish a world without the death penalty", Vannuchi told IPS.
But he acknowledged that abolishing capital punishment "is not enough".
Brazil and some other countries that do not have the death penalty on their books "face the very complex problem of extrajudicial killings", or summary executions perpetrated by police forces or death squads, he said.
In addition to abolition of capital punishment, other goals could be included to make up a basket of human rights issues, he said.
The first such measure might be the struggle against racism. Beginning with the UN, it could spread to legislation in every country, following the example of Brazil and other countries which have already defined racism as a crime.
People complaining, for example, "I was the target of aggression because I am black", could then demand redress from the law, which would pass sentence accordingly, the official said.
The basket of human rights would include discrimination on the grounds of religion, gender or sexual orientation. Discrimination on the basis of sexual preference has been brought up at the UN, but is still considered taboo, Vannuchi said.
"There are fundamentalists everywhere," in many Islamic countries and also in Christian ones, who look on sexual diversity as a sin, he said. The Brazilian government’s position is very clear, because the Human Rights Secretariat has a "Brazil Free of Homophobia" programme, he said.
A support network has been set up in Brazil to uphold this principle, and gay pride marches involving up to a million people are regularly held to defend it, Vannuchi said.
He also proposed that the UN make a commitment that after a given lapse of time, the global body will no longer tolerate torture or forced disappearances.
In February, a convention against forced disappearance adopted by the UN General Assembly was signed in Paris, the expert said. The treaty, sponsored by France and Argentina, began to be mooted in 1981, when many Argentines were living in exile in France, he said.
The treaty’s aim is not just to address pending issues in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and other countries where thousands of people fell victim to forced disappearance under military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, but to create a framework to prevent such human rights violations in the future, he said.
Vannuchi proposed that the Human Rights Council, whose fourth session began this week, create a working group to prepare a plan with specific human rights targets, to be pursued in parallel to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs were adopted by the UN member countries in September 2000. The eight goals to be fulfilled by 2015 include drastically reducing poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and promoting gender equality.
Setting specific human rights goals should promote a degree of international openness that would reinforce the effort to achieve the MDGs, in Vannuchi’s view.
He said the MDGs were important because, for the first time in history, countries had committed themselves to concrete development goals, even if they are not all able to achieve them, because of domestic events, conflict situations or developments in the global economy itself.
The Brazilian proposal is for the new human rights goals to be launched next year, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948.
This initiative by the Brazilian delegation will attempt to rein in what they see as the Human Rights Council’s tendency to indulge in rhetorical debates on issues more suited to the UN Security Council, and devote itself instead to concrete goals.
Vannuchi described the case of Brazil, where efforts to reach the MDGs have resulted in a confluence of purpose between different sectors committed to their achievement, including trade unions, non-governmental organisations, the business community and universities. (END/2007)