Announcing a practical tool to protect peoples, rights and territories in Brazil
4 März 2026
Ronilson Costa, of Fern Brazilian NGO partner Comissão Pastoral da Terra (Pastoral Land Commission), writes about the context that gave rise to an innovative tool for defending rights.
Brazil’s history is marked by recurrent human rights violations that affect Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities and peasant populations. In recent decades, conflicts arising from territorial disputes and various forms of violence have resulted not only in the loss of human lives, but also in systematic attempts to undermine social organisation and the assertion of rights. These social processes aim to defend these populations’ ways of life, and to preserve the ecosystems in which they live and on which they depend for their social, cultural and economic wellbeing. They are indispensable in a democracy.
According to data released by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), on average, one million people living in rural areas are caught up in rights violations and violence each year. Each year, approximately two thousand incidents are reported and denounced to public agencies and civil society, highlighting the severity and persistence of the problem in rural Brazil.
The CPT, present in all regions of the country through its rural workers, closely monitors these communities’ reality. For decades, the institution has joined forces to support their struggle for a dignified life and the defence of their sacred territories, helping their voices to reach national and international audiences, both to denounce the violations that they have suffered and to proclaim and affirm life and resistance. Peoples, communities, and popular movements have engaged in an immeasurable effort to ensure that public policies are adopted efficiently in order to guarantee the right to claim land, protect already inhabited territories, and ensure the permanence of those who are on the land so that they do not become slave labour in other regions.
In this context, the Socio-Environmental Platform emerged – the result of years of careful dialogue and coordination between social organisations in Brazil and abroad that work to promote and defend human and environmental rights. It is a tool designed to systematise and disseminate reliable information about rights violations affecting rural, riverine and forest peoples, as well as their territories, which are often impacted by the intensive exploitation of agricultural commodities for the purpose of capital accumulation.
By overlaying geospatial evidence of deforestation and forest degradation with evidence of social and environmental conflict, land tenure and other pertinent concerns (e.g. water usage and pesticide exposure), the Platform offers a visual tool to support the practical implementation of a range of due diligence legislation. There are no more excuses for failing to carry out due diligence.
On 27 April in Brasília, the Platform will be made available to society, in Brazil and abroad, with the aim of strengthening coordination and mobilisation efforts that demand more incisive action from governments in fulfilling their duty of care towards public and private companies. The aim is to ensure the protection of the ancestral rights of peoples, respect for their ways of life and the integrity of their territories.
Image: Oliver Kornblihtt/Mídia NINJA
Kategorien: News, Forest Watch, Partner Voices, Brazil
