Interview with Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro: 'Besides Human Rights, I Don't See a Solution for Serving the Victims'

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro has already taken on numerous roles as a defender of human rights. As an activist against the military dictatorship, he founded the Teotonio Vilela Commission. As an academic, he created the Center for Studies on Violence (NEV) at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), from which he recently retired as a professor of political science. He has also lectured at the universities of Notre Dame, Brown and Columbia (United States), Oxford (United Kingdom) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France). In the Brazilian government, Pinheiro served as Secretary of State for Human Rights during the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and was the rapporteur of the first National Human Rights Plan. More recently, he was a member of, and coordinated, the National Truth Commission. In the United Nations (UN), he has served as special rapporteur for Burundi (1995-1998) and Myanmar (2000-2008) and as the independent expert appointed by Kofi Annan to prepare a report on violence against children around the world, published in 2006. He has also designated and served as rapporteur on children’s rights at the Inter-American Commission of the Organization of American States (OAS). Since 2011 he has served as chairman of the Human Rights Council's independent international commission of inquiry on Syria.Perhaps on account of his vast experience in various different positions, examining such diverse situations, Pinheiro is disinclined to make generalizations and categorical predictions. He does not see anything new in the demonstrations that filled the streets of countries from the Middle East to South America, for example, nor does he consider them a threat to current political models. “This [model of protests, demonstrations] is an old model and in some ways necessary and inevitable, since the political system cannot resolve all the contradictions,” he said in an interview given to Conectas in March this year. “[But] it is not that political parties no longer have any meaning, or that parliaments no longer represent anything.” Neither is the language of law – or of rights – as a means of effecting social change under threat. As far as Pinheiro is concerned, the State is incontournable: “There is no escaping the necessary side of the State, the side that regulates conflicts and assures rights. And the law is an integral part of the negotiations. The solution to conflicts will always have to be something formalized [by the State].”Within the realm of the State and the law, he claims, there is no other language besides the language of human rights, which, “given the universal diversity, can set fundamental standards for human beings to live with dignity and respect”. According to Pinheiro, the importance of human rights lies in their capacity to place the victims of violations at the center. “[This language is centered] not on the discourse of the State, not on nationalism, not on the discourse of competing for power, for reputation or for prestige, but on knowing whether we are really being efficient [in the defense of the victims].”Therefore, he considers the main goal of the human rights movement for the 21st century to be to ensure the monitoring and the real implementation of the norms already established in the international system. Read the full interview below.