On February 11, the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights created a Working Group tasked with analyzing and proposing changes to the National Human Rights Program (PNDH-3, in Portuguese). As of today, not much information is available about its functioning, but what is known is that it will not include representatives of civil society, the legislative or judicial branches among its members.

The Group is composed of 14 representatives from the Executive branch, more specifically from the Secretariats of Global Protection, Policies for Women, Family, Children and Adolescents’ Rights, Youth, Policies for the Promotion and Defense of Persons with Disabilities, Promotion and Defense of the Rights of the Elderly and Executive, the Ministerial Office, the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office and the office of the Special Advisor for International Affairs. The Group may invite representatives of public and private entities involved in the human rights agenda, who will participate in the meetings without the right to vote.

To add to the opacity of the issue, the ordinance prohibits the disclosure of the discussions that take place within the Group before the end of its activities, scheduled for November 1, 2021. It is difficult not to compare this process with the one that preceded the approval of the PNDH-3 in 2009. On that occasion, a National Human Rights Conference was held with the participation of 2,000 people, 27 conferences were held in all the states and the Federal District prior to the national stage and 137 meetings were held prior to the state and district stages.

More than 200 organizations have already requested that the ordinance be annulled as it constitutes “an attack on the Democratic Rule of Law, our Constitution and the National Human Rights Programs established in Brazil.” In the same sense, the opposition deputy Maria do Rosario Nunes (PT) presented a draft legislative decree to revoke it.