Views from the Field: In Conversation with the EU Ambassador to Brazil

In recent years Brazil has filled the news, from hosting the World Cup and Olympic Games, to corruption scandals and most recently the President’s impeachment. Behind these events lies an upper middle income country that is still tackling basic development challenges from human rights to deforestation. João Gomes Cravinho, the European Union Ambassador to Brazil, explains how the delegation addresses these issues in a country where the traditional aid donor relationship no longer applies.

Capacity4dev (C4D): Brazil is no longer a traditional developing country, having graduated to middle income status. How does this affect the work that you do in the delegation?

João Gomes Cravinho (JGC): As one often finds in countries that are undergoing processes of change, Brazil is of course a country of contradictions. It changed tremendously for the better over the last twenty years, but there are still large parts of the population struggling with basic development issues such as access to education, health, sanitation, and water. These are big challenges.

Brazil has a population of around 200 million people and it’s graduating. Thus the responsibility for the development of Brazil, lies with Brazil. It lies with its government, its authorities, and its people. We, the European Union, can make a contribution of a different nature; not the traditional development aid that one thinks of with respect to other countries, but more in terms of finding forms of interacting with the Brazilian private sector, with issues related to job creation. These are I think the most important investments that we can make.

That said we do still have some traditional development projects that we are winding down. These originate from before the Agenda for Change, before January 2014. At the same time, we also have regional projects, and projects in the field of human rights; a different area, but where there are interesting challenges for Brazil. 

Therefore I would like to underline that working in Brazil is a very interesting experience. There is no sense of confrontation: there is no sense that in promoting human rights we are somehow working against the authorities; this can happen in many other countries. In Brazil the authorities recognise that there are human rights issues inherited from the country’s history. For example we work with indigenous peoples, prison populations, and afro descendants, who in some parts of the country face particular difficulties and challenges. And we do all of this in a spirit of cooperation, which I think is very well received by the Brazilian authorities. 

Brazil has also recently been through a very public change, with the impeachment of their former president, Dilma Rousseff, and the subsequent end of 12 years of government by the PT [Partido dos Trabalhadores], or the workers party. Now there is a centre right government in place until the end of 2018, when the next elections will take place. In some ways this is a transitional moment, as the current government has a short mandate of only two years and four months, and we don’t know what will happen at the end of 2018.

At the same time, I think that among the political class and the Brazilian analysts, there is a feeling that certain reforms cannot be postponed for much longer. There is a convergence of this moment of political change and transition, with the notion that further Brazilian societal progress will require some tough measures, some difficult choices. It’s a very interesting time to be in Brazil, particularly as Ambassador of the European Union, because there is a lot that we can contribute towards this process, where we can lay important groundwork for the future.

For example, Brazil requires investment and over 60% of foreign direct investment in Brazil comes from the European Union. We are not just a partner for investment, we are the major partner. And that is one of the elements that is required to enable the country to return to a path of growth.

C4D: What types of instruments do you use, how do you actually cooperate with Brazil?

JGC: We have various lines, but I think that if I had to mention one at the moment – a new one coming up – it is the partnership instrument. It is designed precisely for strategic partners like Brazil, for middle income countries with whom we no longer have a traditional aid donor relationship.

We also maintain some of the older instruments. I mentioned human rights, we have the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) which retains all of its validity and usefulness. We also work with NGOs, with local government, so we’re working with a multiplicity of actors. It may not be on the same scale as before, as Brazil is no longer a development assistance partner, but we are still interacting in a manner that I think is extremely useful and has been very well received by Brazilian authorities. 

C4D: In the last few years Brazil has hosted two of the largest sporting events in the world. What role can events like these play in the economy and assisting development?

JGC: I very much believe that these mega events, the World Cup, Olympic Games can have a very positive impact. Again we are talking about massive investments, and these massive investments can be more or less productive. However, I think that what has been learned over many years, and Brazil has understood and applied this, is that these mega events can result in very important spin offs. 

Now this isn’t always easy to explain to the public and Brazil saw big demonstrations, particularly before the World Cup, because stadiums were being built and people did not have proper hospitals. Brazilian people were out in the streets saying FIFA, the International Football Federation, is demanding certain standards for the stadiums. Well we would like FIFA standards for our hospitals. That’s great, because citizens can and should have the opportunity to make demands.

At the same time a legacy was left behind in terms of infrastructure, and this is not a message that is easy to transmit politically. I don’t just mean the stadiums. I mean the access routes, the transport networks, the hotels that make sustainable tourism possible. I was in Rio de Janeiro a couple of weeks ago and it’s benefitted a lot from the infrastructural work that happened for the Olympics.

Is it possible to say that 100% of the money was used well? No, but it never is. I think that overall the impact will be seen – when one looks back in a couple of years – as a very positive one. 

C4D: The Brazilian police force has been called one of the most violent in the world. Are you running any projects with the police or on rule of law?

JGC: Well we’ve been working on the prison system and we’ve been sponsoring an experiment which has been very successful and hopefully will be replicated in other parts of the country. Based in Belo Horizonte, the programme is called APAC [Associação de Proteção e Assistência aos Condenados or the Association for Protection and Assistance to Convicts].

One of the problems in Brazilian prisons is massive overcrowding. The prison population is more than twice, almost three times, the prison capacity. Therefore this programme experiments with a form of self-management of prison premises by inmates, based on mutual respect and responsibility, including external imprisonment, with some prisoners only really going to prison to sleep. So far it’s been very successful. For example, while in the Brazilian regular prison system 85% of prisoners become repeated-offenders after serving their punishments; in the APAC system it is exactly the opposite, with only 15% repeat-offenders and, therefore, 85% of successfully reintegrated citizens.  Obviously it’s not for all types of prisoners, and a lot of care has to go into devising manners in which such a system can operate. 

It won’t solve the whole problem, but it is one way of alleviating the tensions that produce violence, and have produced terrible tragedies in the past. In fact, Member States, such as Italy and Germany are already working on replicating the APAC experience in their countries, while other countries in the region, such as Colombia or Bolivia, are adapting it to their particular situations.

We’ve also been working with different judiciary sectors to promote human rights. Again Brazilians were already concerned about this, we are not bringing this concern in from overseas. In certain aspects we have expertise with which we can support the different parts of the judicial community.

Another aspect is business and human rights. This is a fairly new angle, but it is something that we have some experience of in Europe that we can share. Corporate social responsibility forms a part of this, but above all it is based on the identification of ethical standards for business activities so that they do not infringe on human rights. I believe that this is going to be to be more and more important worldwide as consumers are more conscious of these elements in their purchases. Therefore we’ve been focusing on this when working with the Brazilian private sector, and I was interested to see that they are really keen. Much more so than I would have imagined.

There is a lot of interest because they realise that not only is this ethically important, not only is it important for their companies to be associated with the appropriate standards, but in the future it will be relevant for business purposes; it already is in some cases.

Therefore I’m very pleased to see the way that it’s been possible to interact with different parts of Brazilian society on human rights. 

C4D: On a regional level are you collaborating with any of the delegations to other South American countries? 

JGC: Very much so. Brazil is a regional hub, and therefore we are working in an immediate operational sense with Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In 2017 Uruguay and Chile are expected to graduate from the DAC [Development Assistance Committee] list of ODA [Overseas Development Assistance] countries. This will bring us to a new situation, as we will have to adapt the regional instruments covering those countries.

Another important point is the ongoing negotiations between the European Union and Mercosul [a sub-regional bloc counting Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela as members]. We hope to finalise these in 2017. They will include a sustainable development chapter, which is an indispensable element of our contemporary trade agreement. It will enable us to set out some parameters to cooperate with the other Mercosul countries so that our trade agreements become also an instrument for the promotion of development. 

In general though my staff have a lot of interaction with other delegations. Having said that Brazil is a vast territory, something like 8 million square kilometres or 2.5 times the size of India. So we have plenty to keep us occupied. The country’s size leads to a certain level of regional diversity in Brazil. The populations of the south face completely different challenges from the populations of the north east coast or of the Amazon area, which requires us to tailor our approaches to the different parts of the country. Of course a lot of the land contains forests, but also that requires some attention for environmental and climate change issues.

C4D: Are you working on any programmes for timber regulation?

JGC: One of the big problems with the Amazon, and other important forests, is the illegal timber trade. We don’t have the FLEGT [Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade) programme in Brazil. However, one interesting programme that we have carried out with Brazil is traceability and promotion of use of legal timber. It was a long standing programme with WWF Brazil that we recently closed after 10 years.

It instituted a mechanism for traceability that seriously eroded the capacity of the illegal timber trade. Brazilian construction industries now have to, for example in the state of Sao Paolo, be able to trace the origins of the timber thus ensuring that the illegal timbre trade is losing its customers. This is a very important step forward in the fight against illegal logging.

Please visit the EU Delegation website for more information on their work, or the EIDHR website to find out more about the work the EU is doing to promote human rights. 

You can also read the Voices & Views Football has its Rules: Brazil has its Rights which looks at a human rights campaign the delegation organised around the World Cup in 2014. It also covers the APAC prison system.