GCRF Additional Funding Grant

Working with our original research team from my AHRC-GCRF funded grant AH/S005757/1 ‘The Port-au-Prince-Rio Connection,’ (comprising CI McLaughlin, and two Research Assistants, Resende and Terto Neto), I would use the funds to enhance the impact of the research outcomes 1. 2. and to develop follow-on and knowledge exchange activities with some of the communities most heavily affected by racist police violence in Brazil – as follows: Attend the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) debate on August 23 in Geneva, organised in preparation for issuing a CERD General Comment on racism and the right to health. I have submitted a written statement, and CERD has invited me to present at the debate. In collaboration with Mothers of Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, and the Society for Human Rights in Maranhese (SMDH), Maranh ã o, present a side-event at the CERD session in November 2022, in Geneva. Brazil is required to address CERD at this session to show evidence of its commitment to eliminating racism. It is important that human rights defenders are present, not only to challenge Brazil’s record, but to highlight those aspects that have received less attention in international human right fora to date, in particular the impact of structurally racist policing on a broad spectrum of economic, social and cultural human rights. Such events have the potential to positively impact both the participants from marginalised communities and human rights experts, through knowledge exchange, experts learning from the experience of survivors and survivors learning from their participation in the human rights system. For example, at the end of a side event to the Human Rights Council 50th session aimed at raising awareness of the impact of police violence on the right to mental health, which I organised with SMDH, one of the participants, Bruna da Silva, a survivor activist whose 14-year-old son was killed by police in the Maré in Rio, said ‘I wish had known about human rights before, I always thought of myself as a defender of lives, but human rights is more than that.’ Ana Paula Oliveira founder of Mothers of Manguinhos, said ‘I want to say that you and the entire film crew are doing a very important job. You light a speck of hope in our search for justice, for the end of impunity, for the guarantee of lives in the favelas - which is much needed for this movement that I and other mothers make.’ With the support of SMDH, spend 3 weeks in Brazil’s poorest state (and is where SMDH does much if its work) to screen the film Right Now I Want to Scream, which is about police violence and was produced in collaboration with residents of Rio’s favelas; meet with human rights defenders from indigenous communities to exchange knowledge about the impact of police violence on human rights in racially marginalised communities; learn from local communities about the relationship between agribusiness expansion, loss of environmental protections in the Amazon, and violent attacks on the human rights of residents (Dom Phillips and Bruna Pereira are the most high profile of numerous victims). Because of our experience in using participatory film practices which give co-ownership of research outputs to participants, we have been invited by SMDH to discuss the possibility of working with local groups, using participatory film practices, in order to research and raise awareness of these issues. If the discussions go well, we may consider applying for an AHRC or ERC grant in collaboration with Brazilian researchers. 3. Maranhão, which is in the Amazon region of Brazil and is 4. 5. Maranhão Edit filmed interview material from the trips to and Geneva, adding visuals and sound score, to create content for the webpage, https://itstayswithyou.com/, to enhance communication of the research findings. Drawing on the research findings from our AHRC funded project, the insights gained from interviews I conducted with Tendayi Achiume and Tlaleng Mofokeng (the UN Special Rapporteurs on contemporary forms of racism and on the right to health respectively), and from audience responses to the screenings of Right Now I Want to Scream, I will write a journal article for submission to Race and Class, Race and Justice, or the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. It will address the use of excessive force to police racially marginalised communities, and its impact on a broad spectrum of human rights, and consider the extent to which the international human rights community has failed to effectively address the structural discrimination and inequalities that give rise to such grossly different levels of oppression. In order to be able to project the depth and range of the research outcomes from my AHRC funded project AH/S005757/1, in a way that is persuasive to policymakers, I need to ground the findings in an up- to-date analysis of theories of colonialism and structural racism and their impact on current policing practices. This will take dedicated time to research. The article will form the basis of a literature review for a grant application.