Imagining that foreigners who come to our country are a potential spreader of diseases is the type of thinking that contributes to people's rights being disrespected, especially when international health crises occur. The subject was addressed by professor and researcher Deisy Ventura, from the Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo (USP), one of the guests at the Forum “International Mobility in the 2016st Century: human rights, migrations and policies”, last in 29. The event was held last Tuesday, (XNUMX), at the Unicamp Convention Center.
The researcher criticized the way the international community perceives public health issues, such as Ebola in West Africa, or even the Zika virus in Brazil and its neurological complications, examples of health emergencies declared by the World Health Organization (WHO). “It is curious for us in Brazil to become the center of a crisis, since we have more alarming numbers that seem to constitute a much greater emergency”, highlighted Deisy Ventura.
The relationship with rights violations is clear, according to the researcher. See the case of the asylum seeker who came to Brazil with very severe anemia, which was later proven, and who was treated as an Ebola suspect in 2014. Rights such as the preservation of his identity or even the need for consent to Medical procedures.
“We have already built in our imagination a place of strangeness and discrimination against foreigners and the news of a disease that comes from another place or that a foreigner may bring a disease fits into this space of prior disqualification of the foreigner or immigrant”, observed.
Deisy also stated that the greatest risk of disease spread currently comes from Brazil itself. “Germs, bacteria and viruses circulate without a passport. We are unable to determine who exactly brought or brought an illness. From my point of view this is irrelevant. The perspective we need to have is different, that these health systems are capable of identifying and reporting diseases and offering adequate treatment."
However, the researcher warns of a possible “turn” towards the growth of discrimination, especially because, more recently, Brazilian representations have positioned themselves in new ways in relation to the issue. “There is a growth in the global health security agenda, which now covers around 50 countries. Brazil is not yet part of this agenda, which considers human mobility a risk to global health, but we need to quickly develop studies that demonstrate the impertinence of this hypothesis and re-build our health-related human mobility agenda from the perspective of the rights of the person."
Event
The researcher was part of the first debate panel, which presented an overview of international mobility in the 21st century. Also presenting discussions were professor Rosana Baeninger, from the “Elza Berquó” Population Studies Center (NEPO); Sidney Silva, from the Federal University of Amazonas; and André de Carvalho Ramos, from the USP Law School.
Nepo was the organizer of this edition of the Permanent Forums, together with the Unicamp Institute of Economics. The Permanent Forums program is an initiative of the General Coordination of the University (CGU). Professor José Marcos Pinto da Cunha, CGU advisor, represented general coordinator Alvaro Penteado Crósta at the opening table. He took stock of the program in 2016, highlighting that 17 events were held, reaching at least 2.500 people directly, in addition to the online broadcast on Rádio and TV Unicamp.
One of the organizers and mediators of this edition, Luís Renato Vedovato, professor at the Faculty of Applied Sciences (FCA) at Unicamp, spoke about the importance of the debate on the subject at the university. “It is a topic that nowadays brings passion and hatred, we see the discussion of migration and immigration both in the mouths of those who support it and in the mouths of those who use political arguments to gain advantage, or to gain advantages in elections, we have I see this very often, especially outside Brazil.”
The title of this edition of the event was also the title of the presentation by professor Rosana Baeninger, who also looked back at the history of immigration in the country. “The imaginary that we have built in Brazil is that of the white, European and civilized immigrant”, and today, for the most part, this is no longer the profile of the immigrant who comes to Brazil. She also recalled, among other issues, that immigration “did not end in 1930, Brazil does not have a closed population”.
Still according to Rosana Baeninger, the visibility of international migration as an instrument of political action and the possibility that foreigners can have access to social policies constitute challenges in preparing society to reduce prejudice and xenophobia.
The legal and legislative panorama on mobility was described by professor André Ramos. According to him, there is a “constitutional promise” of equality between Brazilians and foreigners, supposedly also guaranteed by the universality of the person’s rights. “Nothing could be further from reality. There is a historic deficit in the protection of rights in the world when faced with the dilemmas of nationality."
The legal proof of non-compliance with this constitutional promise is the maintenance of the law that created the so-called Foreigner Statute of 1980, which, in the researcher's assessment, is legislation that comes in the course of previous laws and is focused on “security, fear of the other, in the repulsion and restriction of rights and used day in and day out by the Federal Police." An update to a new migration law, on mobility, is stalled without approval in Congress, according to the professor.
Another debate, about recent immigration in the North of Brazil, mainly of people coming from Haiti or Venezuela, was carried out by professor and researcher Sidney Silva. In the afternoon, the forum also discussed human rights and migration and also the protection of refugees. The Forum also marked the launch of the book Haitian Immigration in Brazil with 29 academic articles on the migratory flow since 2010.
