The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) undertook an extensive fact-finding mission within Brazil during 2002. This COHRE report concludes that the status of the right to adequate housing in Brazil is a study of contrasts. While many Brazilians reside in adequate housing, far too many live in wholly unacceptable conditions — dwelling in slums (favelas), squatting in large tenement buildings (cortiços) or simply homeless. Furthermore, while Brazil has adopted and implemented some of the best housing rights legislation, it has failed to ensure that everyone within its jurisdiction has realised their right to adequate housing. Indeed, the comparative analysis in this report highlights marked disparities between the various states of Brazil, as well as on gender, racial and ethnic lines. In its conclusions, the report makes concrete recommendations to the Government of Brazil, in particular that it exercise its constitutional powers to ensure that the right to adequate housing is respected, protected and fulfilled without discrimination — for everyone, everywhere within Brazil.
Housing Rights in
The COHRE Americas Programme, based in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is responsible for COHRE’s activities in the Western Hemisphere, including monitoring the status of housing rights, conducting trainings and other educational projects, and assisting locally-based organisations and individuals who seek to enforce their housing rights. The COHRE U.S. Office works in conjunction with the COHRE Americas Programme in utilising the Inter-American human rights system, and in particular the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in order to better promote and protect economic, social and cultural rights, with a particular focus on the right to adequate housing — throughout the Americas Region.
International Secretariat
Americas Programme
U.S. Office
83 Rue de Montbrillant
Rua Demétrio Ribeiro 990/conj 305
8 N. 2nd Avenue East
1202 Geneva, Switzerland
90010-313 Porto Alegre
Suite 208
Tel: +41.22.734.1028
Rio Grande do Sul
Duluth, MN 55802, U.S.A.
Fax: +41.22.733.8336
Brazil
Tel/fax: +1.218.733.1370
E-mail: cohre@cohre.org
Tel/fax: + 55.51.3212.1904
E-mail: bret_thiele@yahoo.com
www.cohre.org
E-mail: cohreamericas@cohre.org
gomez_mayra@yahoo.com
M I S S I O N
COHRE is an international human rights non-governmental organisation with its International Secretariat based in Geneva, Switzerland. COHRE undertakes a wide variety of activities supporting the full realisation of housing rights for everyone, everywhere. In this regard, COHRE actively campaigns against and opposes forced evictions wherever they occur or are planned, and works in all regions of the world toward the realisation of the right to adequate housing.
R E P O R T
brazil
Gross Inequalities and Inconsistencies
COHRE Americas Programme