According to a fact sheet released by the U.S. Department of State earlier this month, President Obama and Brazilian President Rousseff “reaffirmed their commitment to cooperation on the U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and Promote Equality” during Obama’s recent visit to Brazil.
The Joint Action Plan, launched in 2008, commits both governments to sharing “best practices, resources and information to promote the equality of all racial and ethnic groups” and is overseen by a bi-national steering group. [U.S. Embassy in Brasil]
The State Department’s fact sheet describes the U.S. and Brazil “as strong supporters of the Inter American human rights system” and states that both countries “have provided resources to support the efforts of the Rapporteur on the rights of Afro-descendants and against Racial Discrimination” of the IACHR. [State Dep’t]. Additionally, the Joint Action Plan has included sharing of best practices on issues such as “access to education, equal access to justice, access to health, environmental justice, and economic empowerment.”
In 2010, the IACHR admitted a complaint submitted by a largely African American community in Louisiana that has allegedly been adversely and disproportionately affected by environmental contamination from the large number of industrial facilities operating in their community. The decision in Mossville Environmental Action Now v. United States is apparently the first petition admitted by the Commission to raise the issue of environmental justice in the United States.
Last year, the Commission also admitted a petition against Brazil which alleges that the rights to life, integrity and a healthy environment of several indigenous communities have been violated by severe environmental degradation of their land caused by government-approved development projects and industrial agriculture. The admissibility decision in Raposa Serra Do Sol Indigenous Peoples v. Brazil is available here. For further reading on indigenous communities’ rights in the Americas, see the IACHR’s report Indigenous and Tribal Peoples’ Rights over Their Ancestral Lands and Natural Resources: Norms and Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Human Rights System.
Additional information on civil society’s involvement in the Joint Action Plan is available here from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.