“Unicamp and Human Rights: research and actions” is the first symposium promoted bye the Steering Committee of the “University Pact for the Promotion of Valuing Respect for Diversity, Culture of Peace and Human Rights”, with the aim of supporting actions and research relating to human rights carried out in all areas of knowledge within Unicamp. “We are bringing together people who work on the topic to get to know each other and establish a dialogue, in order to strengthen research. We need to value this work because we are living in a clear moment of attacks on human rights in various parts of the world and society needs to be enlightened about how much it already benefits or can benefit from these rights”, says professor Néri de Barros Almeida, coordinator of the Committee Manager.
The event held on Thursday and Friday, at the Convention Center, included research communications from students, postgraduate students, researchers, professors and also employees presenting new proposals for the management of the University.
“This appreciation of the work of employees, who invest intellectual energy in solving management problems, also helps to value the academic work environment by promoting greater confidence in the delegation of autonomy in tasks, which has an important effect on reducing hierarchies and, thus, , in the humanization of everyday life”, observes Néri de Barros.
Professor Marcelo Knobel, rector of Unicamp, considers that the University, in its more than 50 years, may not have adequately addressed a series of issues related to citizenship and human rights. “We need to move the University towards debate and effective actions. We are articulating an Executive Directorate for Citizenship and Human Rights around five actions: creating the Human Rights Observatory within the University Pact proposed by the federal government; structuring the Diversity and Equity Coordination, already approved by the University Council on the occasion of the implementation of ethnic-racial quotas; implementing the Permanent Accessibility Committee, bringing together the degrees of the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair; and a coordinator to combat discrimination based on gender and sexuality and sexual violence.”
Marcelo Knobel also paid attention to the worrying situation we face in the country today, aggravated by the climate of the elections for president, governors and federal and state deputies. “I would even say it is a slightly scary situation. The outlook is for a very uncertain future, difficult from a perspective, which has an influence on the University. But, at this moment, I think the issue of preserving citizen rights and democracy as the greatest asset of our society is more important. We have 30 years of Constitution, that is, the democratization of the country is very recent and the stability of this democracy is still very fragile. I want to remind everyone to make a conscious choice, thinking about candidates who respect these values, which are fundamental for the public university and the country as a whole.”
How to teach human rights?
The opening lecture of the seminar was given by professor Sérgio Adorno, coordinator of the Center for Violence Studies (NEV) at USP, who spoke about education for human rights. “One of the questions is how to teach human rights. Our university professors are accustomed to a certain way of disseminating principles, values, and research results, and our academic habits are not always the best for human rights education. How to reach, for example, the social groups most vulnerable to violations and make them understand that human rights are a form of protection and not aggression. It is very common, in different audiences, for someone to always say that human rights are for the defense of criminals – this issue that seemed outdated is brought back to the debate.”
By the way, Adorno responded to a spectator's question about why there was a setback in human rights in these 30 years of the Constitution. “I am not one of those who think that there have been no advances in human rights, we have had moments of great advances. I studied the issue during the governments of Fernando Henrique and Lula. Both welcomed the recommendation of the Vienna Declaration [1993] to produce national human rights programs and monitor them – this should be continued. In a strategy that is, in my mistaken opinion, the Dilma government fragmented the initiative into different policies, such as women and racism, which could have worked if there had been a very solid substrate of recognition of human rights in Brazilian society. But this fragmentation allowed reactive forces from the past to return, there was a deconstruction of government action.”
Sérgio Adorno, upon leaving the Convention Center, also commented on worrying data from the polls for the presidential elections, which show strong support for the candidate who opposes human rights among university and high school students. “We are probably failing in the training of these students, not providing human rights learning as it should be done. But let us also not forget that during Nazism, many of the officers who committed serious human rights violations held doctoral degrees. So, it is not an unknown phenomenon: there is a kind of mismatch between training and morality. It's a phenomenon that I've been wanting to study, because it's really worrying. The hypothesis is that we are providing an education that did not sufficiently problematize socially rooted authoritarianism and somehow allowed all these things to happen.”
