Last week, I2UD’s Senior Research Associate, Dr. Biorn Maybury-Lewis, and his colleague, Dr. Sônia Ranincheski, a political scientist at the University of Brasília, published an online book in Brazil entitled Human Rights Challenges in Contemporary Brazil. With one of the greatest income disparities in the world, Brazil provides a particularly sharp lens through which to explore the economic, political and social forces that push and pull people into cities. Harsh working conditions and conflicts over land in rural areas have propelled waves of migrants into cities, where they meet with urban challenges of disenfranchisement, unemployment, among graver human rights abuses. The book explores these themes, particular to Brazil but echoed in many other countries worldwide, in five sections:
- Overview of Brazil’s contemporary human rights challenges
- The agricultural frontier in Brazil’s Central West region and its human rights impacts
- Urban human rights issues, particularly the sociological problem of tolerance for police violence
- The persisting problem of slavery in rural Brazil
- The human rights of Brazil’s indigenous peoples