Human Rights and the Environment Under Attack in Brazil

Renato, social activist and human rights defender, discusses a community's human rights struggle against transnational mining impacts in Eastern Amazon, in the context of President Jair Bolsonaro's human rights policies and the Covid-19 pandemic. Human rights and environmental policies are suffering severe setbacks during Bolsonaro's government and run far from UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, even in the face of strong criticism by civil society organisations, international pressures and bad reputation. Renato focuses on human rights violations and negative social and environmental impacts of mining industries, particularly the multinational company Vale S.A., along the Corridor traced by the Carajás Railroad. He highlights the strategies used by local communities to protect themselves, defend their rights and the environment and win reparation against mining and agribusiness operations.

Renato works as project coordinator of the NGO Justiça nos Trilhos (Justice on the Rails) in Açailândia, state of Maranhão, in Brazilian Eastern Amazon region. Originally from Italy, he has lived and worked in Brazil for the past 29 years. He took part in the Protective Fellowship Scheme for HRDs at risk with his wife Valdênia in 2014-15, after they had suffered life threats while defending human rights in an outskirts community of João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil's Northeast.

Renato has a background in Philosophy and Theology, and he recently graduated in Psychology. He has worked in several low-income outskirts communities in different Brazilian cities, carrying out human rights awareness-raising programmes, networking and community organizing with a view to bringing about social inclusion and full-fledged citizenship of the most marginalized. In those settings, he was part of the creation and strengthening of local Human Rights Centres, in Fortaleza, São Paulo, Santa Rita (PB) and Açailândia (MA).

Renato´s current activity is around the strengthening of communities that are impacted by transnational iron mining industries along the Carajás Railroad Corridor, which crosses the states of Pará and Maranhão, Eastern Amazon. Justiça nos Trilhos, his organization, conducts human rights training programs, legal assistance, advocacy, national and international political incidence and networking around human rights and environmental violations by mining companies, as well as alternative solutions to the expansion of agribusiness, on behalf of vulnerable urban and peasant traditional communities.

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