Popular World Cup Committee of Pernambuco

Promoting strategies to guarantee the right to the city, in the context of mega-events and mega-projects in the metropolitan region of Recife, through coordination with civil society organizations and affected families, disseminating information about the influence this process has had on the model of the city, public policies and access to rights, production of information and collective confrontations against rights violations against families and local social organizations as well as the construction of a public collective confrontation agenda against rights violations, extralegal exceptions and other goals in the field of the right to the city.

– Situational diagnostics on expropriations carried out in locations in Pernambuco related to World Cup projects: mapping of the expropriations, evaluation of the housing conditions, analysis of the legal processes of expropriation; report on the main problems faced by the population, resolution strategies and actors involved;

– Strengthening and dissemination of the #NósValemosMais (We are worth more) campaign: production of videos that show the violations suffered by families because of the World Cup; coordination with partnering networks for greater dissemination, exhibition and propagation of the videos through alternative media;

– Participation in the First Encounter of those Affected by Mega-Events and Mega-Projects in Brazil.

It is necessary to understand that the mega-events and mega-projects are not isolated phenomena, but permanent results of the reorganization of urban space and a part of a global panorama. There is a model of the city that is based on a political reorientation that intensifies the establishment of a regime where extralegal exceptions are normal and solidifies the commercialization of these cities.

In Recife’s case, as a host to the FIFA World Cup, there has been a dynamic of compression of low-income areas in the capital and decompression of space and real estate speculation to other municipalities. The World Cup construction projects removed more than two thousand families in the cities of Recife, Camaragiba and São Lourenço. Another example of this exceptional regime can be observed in the São Francisco area, in the city of Camaragiba, where 129 families were expropriated due to the construction of an Integrated Terminal and the extension of the Cup-hosting city. These families, who have been in the area more than thirty years, have experienced a clear violation of the right to housing, since the expropriations are being carried out with indemnities that do not guarantee the families access to other, equivalent housing; there is also the case of many families being removed without any indemnities at all.

The Popular World Cup Committee of Pernambuco looks to develop the monitoring and social control of procedures, initiatives, projects and actions involving public resources through the participation of organized civil society, along with the detection, denunciation and minimization of human rights violations stemming from the mega-event.

The Committee participates in the National Network of Popular World Cup Committees (ANCOP) whose members also consist of arenas such as the Northeastern State and National Forum of Urban Reform, Brazilian Platform for Human, Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights (DHESCA), the Metropolis Observatory and the Brazilian Association of Non Governmental Organizations (ABONG).