Secretary defends education about human rights

Special Secretary for Human Rights Rogério Sottili expressed concern for proposals debated in Congress to lower the age of legal responsability, to repeal the Disarmament Statute, and to reformulate the concept of slave-like labor. The latter aims to exclude the terms "exhausting work hours" and "degrading labor" of the slave labor crime's definition.

For the Secretary, these bills are a severe setback to human rights policies. "By weakening the government in the first year of the term, several important issues for human rights have been discussed again. Then it all became very nebulous," said Sottili in an exclusive interview for Agência Brasil.

To combat these setbacks, which disrespect rights and increase intolerance, Sottili defends developing education policies about human rights. He mentioned a project conceived in partnership with the Education Ministry to encourage respect for differences at school as a way to combat intolerance and prejudice. "We need to develop an education policy about human rights. A policy aimed at schools, with new values, to respect diversity," he declared. According to him, the measure shall be implemented later this year in at least 200 municipalities.

About the hotline Disque 100, created seven years ago to file complaints about human rights violations, the secretary considers it one of the most important instruments for promoting human rights, because, according to him, as it is a channel to receive complaints, it also becomes a channel of protection. And raises alerts for the government on all initiatives of public policy that should be adopted to quell this violence.

Sottili reports that the 2015 indicators showed a clipping that violence in Brazil has color, age, gender. And he also pointed out that the range of the elderly has recorded the largest rise in complaints, mostly related to negligence or financial and economic exploitation.

Translated by Amarílis Anchieta