Covid-19 as an issue of memory, truth, and justice: an interview with Deisy Ventura (original) (raw)

LexAtlas C19 - Brazil - The Timeline of the Federal Government's Strategy to spread Covid-19

2021

Study prepared within the scope of research project ""RIGHTS IN THE PANDEMIC - Mapping the impact of Covid-19 on human rights in Brazil" of the Centre for Studies and Research on Health Law (CEPEDISA) of the School of Public Health (FSP) of the University of São Paulo (USP)", updated at the request of the parliamentary committee of inquiry created by Federal Senate Requests 1371 and 1372, of 2021, by means of Official Letter 57/2021-CPIPANDEMIA.

COVID-19 magnifies the vulnerabilities: The Brazilian case

International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 2021

This paper discusses inequalities of the health system in Brazil and advocates that now, more than ever in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world needs to put in place a more collaborative and egalitarian way of financing health research and investments in public health systems. The role of the state and institutions in the design of public policies for the realization of social rights is debated in the face of the economic and political crisis. Here we draw upon Martha Fineman's vulnerability theory and Thomas Pogge's view on justice with regard to health.

THE CHALLENGES OF BRAZILIAN FEDERALISM AND THE DEFENCE OF FREEDOMS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Freedom v. Risk. Social Control and the Idea of Law in the Covid-19 Emergency, 2023

The federalist ideology had a great impact on the world, mainly in Latin American countries, during the 19th Century due to the influence of the United States of America. Despite the decrease in the number of federations during the 20th Century, its importance can be observed by the fact that about 40% of the world population is governed by some form of Federalism. Countries adopting the federalist structure generally have large territories or a population composed of several ethnic and idiomatic groups, allowing the national government to adapt to the specific demands of each population. In this sense, it is observed that there is no single model of federation, and each State builds its own federative system. The liberal spirit that permeates the historical dynamics of the federalist ideology aims to avoid a concentration of powers, proposing a decentralised organisation and favouring democracy. The challenges that democracies and federations face, due to the political, economic and social transformations that have generated the worldwide wave of “autocratisation”, have been amplified by the health emergency situation, caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic. In Brazil, the government’s work to contain the outbreak of Covid-19 has put individual liberties, social rights and the structure of federalism back to the test. Facing the health emergency in Brazil and in other countries around the world, as evidenced in the webinar «Freedom v. Risk: social control and the idea of law in the Covid-19 emergency», organised by the Dipartimento di Scienze giuridiche della Università degli Studi di Firenze, has encouraged the rethinking of some debates, from a pandemic perspective, such as the restriction of fundamental rights, the resurgence of executive power, the possibility of introducing modalities of the State of Exception, and a new Constituent Assembly.

Ethics and Responsibility in Facing COVID-19 in the Context of Brazilian Public Agents

Revista Latinoamericana de Bioética

The year 2020 will be remembered as the year in which a pandemic caused by the SARSCoV- 2 virus precipitated a major disruption in the functioning of contemporary societies. A global event with peculiar regional consequences. It is in this context that we will discuss the ethical aspects of the actions under the responsibility of public officials, namely the ones on national Brazilian relevance for the confrontation of COVID-19. The analysis of the pandemic’s effects in Brazil should be based not only on the events triggered at the current moment, whose transience is still an insufficiently known factor, but also on the social, political, and historically economic determinants that heavily interfere in the present events, as well as in the post epidemic future, highlighting the possible scenarios that the political normative, governmental, social, and economic choices underway point to. The tragedy of our time once again presents us with a challenge that is not new, the challenge of...

Brazil’s war on COVID-19: Crisis, not conflict—Doctors, not generals

Dialogues in Human Geography, 2020

This commentary first documents the ways in which President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration has evoked securitized discursive strategies that frame Brazil’s national response to COVID-19 as a matter of defense instead of public health. We then ask: What does it mean to talk about the virus and the ways to address it through war-framings? We argue that the Bolsonaro administration has framed the COVID-19 pandemic as an extra-territorial threat in an effort to create internal stability while failing to handle the matter effectively. Such politically motivated spatial framings inhibit an effective response in Brazil and pose a severe threat to public health. Once COVID-19 becomes securitized, the response is framed by the military bureaucracy rather than public health authorities, resulting in dangerous consequences.

Human Rights in Times of the Pandemic: A Dialogue on Migration and Indigenous Rights in Brazil before the Regional Inter-American System

The Age of Human Rights Journal

This paper using the deductive method of approach based on regional scope for the protection of human rights, aims to demonstrate that the Brazilian state actions took during the pandemic, in terms of strategies, policies and measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic had severe consequences specially for indigenous and migrants population in Brazil, increasing the level of vulnerability of that population in its territory. It will also consider that in spite of adhering the unconditional observance of inter-American and international standards on human rights, the Brazilian government ignored such agreements and therefore causing social economic losses and about hundreds of deaths.

Covid-19 and its Paradoxes: An Economic-Bioethical Analysis of the Brazilian Reality Philos Int J Covid-19 and its Paradoxes: An Economic-Bioethical Analysis of the Brazilian Reality

philosophy international journal, 2022

Brazil was one of the countries that was most impacted by the pandemic, both in the epidemiological aspect and in the economic causes. The federal government's lack of social responsibility in dealing responsibly and seriously with the effects of COVID-19 has thrown Brazil, one of the largest economies in the world, down a slippery slope. Our work makes a bibliographical review in the light of numbers and economic data from the beginning of the pandemic that portray how a country marked by a large gap of social inequality, the irresponsibility of the federal government only increased the gap between social classes, that is, excluded even more millions of people from the market of goods and services. Bioethics allied with economic thought showed itself to be a great intellectual tool, in order to show perspectives so that Brazil can overcome this unfair reality aggravated by the pandemic.

Covid-19 and its Paradoxes: An Economic-Bioethical Analysis of the Brazilian Reality

Philosophy International Journal

Brazil was one of the countries that was most impacted by the pandemic, both in the epidemiological aspect and in the economic causes. The federal government's lack of social responsibility in dealing responsibly and seriously with the effects of COVID-19 has thrown Brazil, one of the largest economies in the world, down a slippery slope. Our work makes a bibliographical review in the light of numbers and economic data from the beginning of the pandemic that portray how a country marked by a large gap of social inequality, the irresponsibility of the federal government only increased the gap between social classes, that is, excluded even more millions of people from the market of goods and services. Bioethics allied with economic thought showed itself to be a great intellectual tool, in order to show perspectives so that Brazil can overcome this unfair reality aggravated by the pandemic.

Border Regimes and Pandemic Law in Time of COVID-19: A View from Brazil

AJIL unbound, 2020

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on migrants and refugees the world over. Their pre-existing vulnerabilities were immediately exacerbated as national health systems were often overwhelmed and many disease control measures were either inaccessible to them or had disproportionate socioeconomic effects. But migrants and refugees have also been framed as prima facie causes for the transboundary spread of the virus, and public health exception and derogation clauses in both national and international refugee and human rights instruments have been used to block their entry, suspend asylum processing, or trigger deportations. Taking the example of Brazil as a point of departure, the present contribution argues that (for at least some states) the appearance of the virus seems to have served as a legal carte blanche for fundamentally reconfiguring or closing down border regimes. More specifically, we argue that the strategic mainstreaming of global health regulations into border regimes points to the emergence of a "pandemic law" that encroaches upon already fragile transnational legal regime complexes, with the potential to upend or hollow out existing frameworks for migrant and refugee protection. Legal Long Games and International Regime Complexity COVID-19 has hit Brazil hard, both in terms of infection and mortality rates and in relation to the immediate and foreseeable mid-and longer-term economic consequences. 1 In the context of migrants and refugees, however, the government appears to have embraced the pandemic as offering a new legal passageway enabling the circumvention of both international law and domestic obligations relating to refugees and migrant populations. Once the pandemic emerged, Brazil's federal government quickly identified internationally sanctioned public health exceptions-both in the national Migration Law and in Article 33.2 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees-as presumptive grounds for not just border closures but also summary deportations of migrants and refugees without regard for the non-refoulement principle. For a government otherwise at the forefront of COVID-negationism, World Health Organization (WHO)-mandated disease control measures seemed to offer themselves as a powerful tool to undermine international human rights and refugee law.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the disaster of the response of a right-wing government in Brazil

One Health & Implementation Research, 2021

COVID-19 left a trail of millions of cases and thousands of deaths in Brazil. In the last two years, the country has undergone enormous changes that have brought about a remarkable deterioration in the lives of Brazilians. Brazil registered the second highest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world, second only to the USA. The Brazilian federal government's policy to fight the epidemic was catastrophic! Now, we are faced with a massive economic decline, the return of hunger to a vast swathe of the poor, a disastrous rise in unemployment, and a concerted attack on science and education, two sectors meant to mitigate the epidemic. Not applicable.