Newsletter #55 – Strengthening human rights organisations

I would like to start this message welcoming you to Brazil Human Rights Fund´s Newsletter #55 by inviting you to read our 2020 Activity Report. It has just been published –  click here to go straight to it – and outlines all our actions throughout last year. But, more than that, it is a record of the reflections and the practices that have led the foundation to the current moment.

And the current moment is unique in Brazil Fund´s history. Through the work carried out in 2020 we learned that there was an urgent need to support human rights organisations, groups and collectives, that have been deeply affected by the social crisis the country is experiencing. So, the central objectives of a part of our current programmes are aimed at institutional support, in other words, at strengthening existing structures and making it possible for these grassroots groups to maintain and continue their work, defending rights.

The results of these calls for applications – 2021 – Moving Forward with Rights and LGBTQIA+ Defending Rights – were recently announced. Forty human rights organisations around the country will receive institutional support.

Brazil Fund has maintained a strategy of joining forces with grassroots social movements in tackling the violations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. We are currently engaged in fundraising for the campaign Tem Gente Com Fome (People are Going Hungry), mobilised by the Coalizão Negra Por Direitos (The Black Coalition for Rights), who are raising funds to provide food for over 220 thousand families in extremely vulnerable conditions. They are also putting pressure on public authorities for decent emergency aid and widespread vaccination.

We responded to the upsurge in extreme violence against indigenous people and the dispute for their land, including demarcation, with Emergency Support – SOS Amazônia. COIAB (Coordination of Indigenous Organisations in Brazilian Amazônia), the largest indigenous organisation in the northern region, is a partner in this programme, approving requests for aid for the urgent defence of land and peoples. Support is for indigenous organisations in the Amazon region.

In addition, Brazil Fund is soon to launch a further emergency rapid response fund, in partnership with APIB (Articulation of the Indigenous People of Brazil) that will support indigenous leaders who are under threat throughout the country, including in urban locations. Meanwhile non-indigenous human rights defenders can access a specific emergency fund for their protection, available on our site.

Through these actions, we are trying, to the best of our ability, to help to strengthen organised civil society and the fight for basic rights which we cannot give up on at such a critical time in our country. This work is carried out with continuous dialogue with movements and organisations, so our actions are an effective response to the needs of those we are supporting and are absolutely transparent. In addition to the 2020 Activity Report, I invite you to also follow Brazil Fund´s work on our site.

Together we move forward.

Thank you so much.

Ana Valéria Araújo
Superintendent at Brazil Fund