SUR Journal celebrates 10 years of Conectas

“In making this assessment, there is no doubt that the support and partnership of a wide range of people and institutions was instrumental in this journey.” With these words, Lucia Nader, Juana Kweitel and Marcos Fuchs, directors of Conectas Human Rights, presented the special supplement to the 15th issue of Sur.

 

“None of the initiatives discussed in the articles would have been possible without the participants of the colloquium, the authors of SUR, the exchange students in the Fellowship Program for Portuguese-Speaking Africa and the partners in the Foreign Policy Project and the Justice Program. Nothing would have been accomplished without the support of various donors who, since 2001, have believed in and supported the work of an organization with ambitious and innovative causes. To all, our most heartfelt gratitude,” reads the letter presenting the supplement. In three articles written by former and current directors, Conectas shares its successes, challenges and reflections on the history of the organization since its creation, 10 years ago.

 

 

In the first article, Malak El-Chichini Poppovic, founder and former executive director of Conectas, and Lucia Nader, current executive director, discuss “The Making of an International Organization from/in the South”, sharing the experiences, the lessons learned and the achievements of the organization. Looking back over the history of the organization, the authors present a narrative of contemporary civil society, restoring South-South cooperation in a globalized world, through the process of building an organization capable of uniting efforts to turn rights into reality and overcoming fragmentation, isolation and obstacles.

 

The authors emphasize that the name “Conectas” was chosen to transmit the idea of creating links and bringing together people and organizations. The logo, a compass pointing to the South, illustrates a political option of the organization’s founders to promote South-South cooperation. Malak and Lucia also claim that Conectas was always aware of the existence of many “Souths” and different paths to democracy, but that the intention was (and still is) to bring new voices to the international debate, without excluding the North. Finally, the article goes on to list the main programs and projects of Conectas since its creation in 2001 – some of which are analyzed in more detail in the next two articles.

 

The full article is available here.

 

 

The second article was penned by Oscar Vilhena Vieira, director of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) Law School and founder, former director and current member of the Board of Conectas, and by Eloísa Machado de Almeida, former coordinator of the Justice Program at Conectas and currently a consultant for the organization. They write about “Strategic Advocacy in Human Rights” based on the experience of Conectas, which, since it is located in Brazil, addresses human rights issues on the national and local level. The authors analyze primarily the use of strategic litigation in Brazil, looking back at the origins of public interest litigation and demonstrating the complex effects of the country’s democratization process on human rights advocacy.

 

Oscar and Eloísa claim that, while the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 – referred to as the Citizen’s Constitution – established an extremely generous and extensive bill of rights, it did not incorporate a more contemporary agenda in relation, for example, to the issue of gender. Furthermore, Brazilian federalism has proven, in many cases, to be an obstacle to the full implementation of human rights. Based on these and other arguments, the authors demonstrate that access to justice is no easy task. They recount the history of the Justice Program of Conectas and their advocacy work in the expansion of fundamental rights, including the filing of amicus curiae briefs with the Brazilian Supreme Court.

 

The full article is available here.

 

 

In the third article, Pedro Paulo Poppovic and Juana Kweitel, both of whom have worked as editors of SUR – International Journal on Human Rights, while Juana is currently program director at Conectas, look back on eight years of editing the journal, asking direct questions, such as why and for whom SUR was originally conceived. The authors emphasize that, when it was created in 2004, the journal had a clear purpose: to give a voice to authors from the South and to provide an intellectual arena where the perspectives of North and South could be critically analyzed and debated. This purpose is still relevant, but added to it is the challenge of adapting SUR to a changing political and economic context.

 

Pedro Paulo and Juana also argue that SUR may be considered an example of how an NGO can cope with all the challenges of maintaining and expanding a trilingual journal (Portuguese, Spanish and English) through partnerships and editorial innovations. 

 

The full article is available here.