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The ICRC regional delegation in Brasilia
15-05-2011 Overview
The Brasilia delegation covers Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, visiting security detainees and responding to internal strife and social unrest. It promotes the incorporation of international humanitarian law (IHL) into national legislation and into the doctrine, training and operations of the armed forces. It also works with police forces to incorporate international human rights law applicable to the use of force into education, doctrine, training and sanction documents.
In Brazil itself, in some of Rio de Janeiro’s most violence-prone favelas (shanty towns), the ICRC carries out humanitarian activities to reduce the consequences of armed violence in the urban environment. To do so, it works alongside authorities, the Brazilian Red Cross and neighbourhood associations to improve access to first aid and primary health care, provide mental health assistance to the affected population, promote dialogue in public middle schools about basic humanitarian principles and issues related to violence and offer psycho-social support for teenage mothers and their children. The ICRC maintains a confidential dialogue with the armed forces, the civilian and military police, as well as with other weapon bearers (drug trafficking factions and militias) on humanitarian issues in the favelas.
In southern Chile and central and northern Paraguay, the ICRC has strengthened its operational cooperation with local Red Cross branches to respond to the humanitarian consequences of violence. In regions of northern Paraguay, it is helping to ensure that rural communities are trained in basic first aid. In both countries, the ICRC regularly visits people detained in connection with protests over land rights and indigenous issues to monitor their treatment and living conditions, and facilitates contact with their families. The Red Cross of Paraguay manages family visits for ICRC-registered detainees and runs an income-generating craft project for female detainees with the support of the ICRC. In the area of prison health, it continues to support the authorities in order to improve the health of inmates (Paraguay).
The ICRC cooperates with the region’s international humanitarian law (IHL) committees on integrating IHL into domestic legislation. It works with them to mobilize regional support for humanitarian initiatives, for instance, a resolution on disappearance that was brought before a committee of the Organization of American States.
Another example is the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In Argentina, Chile and Uruguay laws were approved to repress grave breaches of IHL. Similar laws are in the parliamentary stage in Brazil and Paraguay.
The regional delegation continues to work with the region’s armed forces on integrating IHL into their doctrine, training and operations, with IHL manuals published or being prepared in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. UN peacekeeper contingents from the region’s armed forces are briefed on ICRC activities elsewhere, particularly in Haiti.
In Paraguay, the ICRC has renewed its cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police, with a view to incorporating human rights norms into police education, doctrine, training and sanction..
Academic institutions and students remain important partners in making IHL known. Some universities in Brazil and Paraguay are integrating IHL into their curricula, with ICRC support. The ICRC also maintains broad contacts with the media across the region, providing an opportunity to explain its mandate, principles and activities.
The region’s National Societies receive training, financial and material support from the ICRC, in coordination with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The aim is to strengthen the Red Cross Societies’ structures and their operational capacities, including reinforcing their ability to deal with situations of violence with at view to implementating a community first-aid training for the Mapuche people of Chile’s Temuco region.
The ICRC also supports national Red Cross societies in responding to natural disasters. Following the heavy rains of January 2011 and landslides in Rio de Janeiro's mountainous region and the February 2010 earthquake in Chile, the ICRC helped the Red Cross restore family links and provided other vital assistance. The ICRC has also shared its safer access and stress management expertise with the health staff of the municipality of Rio in the aftermath of the military and police operation in Complexo do Alemão in late November 2010.
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