The present dissertation aims to demonstrate that within its contentious jurisdiction,
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court) manifests a process of social
environmentalism in its jurisprudence. The case study was combined with bibliographic
and documentary reviews as a research methodology. The case object of the study is
the case of the Xucuru People vs Brazil. In the first chapter, the concept of socio-
environmentalism is constructed (Souza Filho, 2002; Santilli, 2005; Diegues, 2008),
which will be used to understand the socio-environmental effect of the Inter-American
Court. To this end, the historical approach to the origin of the socio-environmental
movement, its impact on Brazilian legislation, and how socio-environmental conflicts
give rise to the perspective of socio-environmental justice in Brazil are made. The
socio-environmental issue originates in the colonisation period, from how the territory
was exploited and the labour of traditional communities and populations. However, the
socio-environmental movement is only consigned from the articulation of
environmental and social movements in Brazil, in the period after the Military Regime
that preceded the constituent assembly. The period of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil
was marked by the predatory exploitation of the Amazon, affecting traditional
populations and communities. After this period, the rubber tappers' movement, led by
Chico Mendes, stood out for presenting a path of development in the Amazon region
that was not predatory development. From this intersection of the articulation between
social movements and environmental movements, new rights were born, which broke
with the exacerbated protection of individual rights and included, in the constitutional
text, social rights and collective rights. Finally, the origin of the concept of Socio-
Environmental Justice is discussed, which understands traditional communities as
agents of conflict, considering that they are agents who have another relationship with
nature, in which what is human and what is a natural resource is not divided – and,
therefore, they need to be actors of Socio-Environmental Justice, starring in the
agenda. The second chapter deals with the history of the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights and the techniques used by this Court to protect the environment, given
the limitation of its jurisdiction. To this end, the techniques of "greening" are analysed
(MAZZUOLI; TEIXEIRA, 2017), used by other International Courts, to demonstrate that
the effect on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is not a matter of greening its
decisions, but instead of a socio-environmental approach in the construction of its
Jurisprudence, based on the concept of Socio-Environmental Justice (Moreira, 2017).
In the third chapter, the paradigm case is presented, a dispute in the Court of Human
Rights between the Xucuru People and Brazi, a signatory member state of the Court's
contentious jurisdiction. The dispute has as its object the demarcation of the lands of
the Xucuru People, who do not respect the principle of speed, and, in the face of
legislative changes in the country, had the demarcation process postponed several
times. Given the legislative change, which made it possible for third parties to contest
the demarcation, conflicts arose over the land object of the demarcation. The Inter-
American Court of Human Rights judgment was signed in 2018 and, as of the date of
the judgment, the indigenous landfill had not suffered total disintrusion, and could not
fully enjoy its territory. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognised Brazil's
obligation to end the demarcation process with the full disintrusion of indigenous
territory from the perspective of communal property, recognising that the demarcated
lands must belong entirely to the Xucuru People; in addition to recognising Brazil's duty
to indemnify the Xucuru People for the unjustified extension of the process of
demarcation of the territory of the Xucuru People.
|
