April 17 National Human Rights Institute (Federal District)

This nongovernmental organization focuses on the defense and promotion of human rights, especially for rural workers in agrarian reform areas.

The Institute’s objectives include: safeguarding human rights, considered universal and indivisible; training and capacity-building for professionals to work in the human rights field; legal aid and research and studies on human development; and building collective spaces for empowering the social movements’ struggle for human rights.

The organization offers grassroots legal aid and analysis and monitoring of cases involving rural workers. It also networks with other social movements, NGOs, universities, local and State forums, and local and State agencies and authorities to promote and defend the rights of these workers, acting in the intermediation and resolution of rural land conflicts.

The work also includes denouncing human rights violations, plus seminars and workshops on agrarian reform issues.

The Project

With the proposed project, “Legal Aid for the Human Rights of Rural Workers in Agrarian Reform Areas in the Federal District and Surrounding Territory”, the NGO intends to provide rural works in camps and settlements with the conditions and tools to guarantee the enforcement of their social, economic, and environmental human rights, in compliance with the Brazilian National Constitution.

The initiative is intended: to democratize access to justice, legal knowledge, and information, thereby allowing an understanding of the political and socio-cultural processes currently under way in the Federal District (Brasilia) and surrounding area; to train workers with a critical awareness and knowledge of their rights, for full exercise of their citizenship; and finally, to ensure peaceful resolution of agrarian and land conflicts.