Abstract

Human Rights and Wrongs - 1995

A survey of events in 1995 should include not only the killings of Brazilian street children and attacks on Northeastern Brazilian peasant activists by local police but also the Brazilian central government's response, which offered some room for hope. In the second half of 1995, President Fernando Enrique Cardoso and his Cabinet created a special police division to investigate human tights problems and drafted legislation to provide federal jurisdiction for certain serious abuses. Human rights now permeate political discourse and news reporting to an extent not imaginable even ten years ago. Human rights activism is burgeoning everywhere; it is diverse but increasingly coordinated nationally, regionally and even globally. International security used to be viewed as separate from human rights.