Q - Good afternoon Mr Hoffmann. Thanks for agreeing to this interview. To start, can we just ask you to tell us a little about your background working in Brazil?
A – Of course. I taught at the Law Department of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), one of Brazil’s semi-private and semi-public universities. During that time I co-managed a human rights centre within the department which involved engagement in some clinical activities. That was my second stint in Brazil – my first stint was studying for my masters. And prior to the masters, I interned at the Centre for International Justice, and at Human Rights Watch, back in the 1990s.
Q – Why is it Brazil that you keep going back to?
A – Mainly for personal reasons. My wife is Brazilian, and we met at the LSE. I didn’t speak Portuguese at that time, so the internship was a way to learn the language.
Q - Raposa Serra do Sol is a 1.7 million hectare indigenous reservation on the frontier between Brazil and Guyana/Venezuela, home to 20,000 indigenous people (mostly Macaxi). In 2008 and 2009, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that the reserve should be inhabited only by indigenous people. Army officials have criticized the existence of the reservation on the grounds that it is a threat to national security. In this situation, how do we balance this case of human rights and national security?
A – I think that here it is important to distinguish between old-style national security and human security. Security comes out of the responsibility to protect, and relates the sovereignty of a national community. Human security is a concept more widely defined, including things such as protection against disease.
To give a concrete case of the issues raised. Take the Amazon region of Brazil, which is vast, inaccessible and hard to control. We shouldn’t overestimate the degree to which this area can be monitored. In Brazil the idea grew up that the world wanted the Amazon, and wanted to take it from Brazil. There is a discourse that the Amazon is something wanted by many others and must be protected. This discourse has been strengthened during the period of dictatorship, and the idea still holds sway in the army. My colleagues who have worked with the Brazilian army on other security issues have said that there are contingency plans in place in case of an American takeover attempt of the Amazon. The public opinion and civil society think that this is a slightly ridiculous idea, but the shielded Brazilian army maintains the discourse.
Those who believe in this idea see both environmental and international projects in the Amazon area, as well as the indigenous question as cloaks for that ‘silent takeover’ attempt. The truth is often that certain scientific staff may be numerous in certain areas. But of course it is unfounded.
On the political front, Brazil’s relationship with Venezuela is delicate. Unlike the relationship between Venezuela and Colombia, where there are no security issues between these two countries. The Brazilian army’s obsession with securing the Amazon is much more down to this myth of the West wanting to take over the Amazon, so the army is not a real stakeholder.
The real issue are the potential rights conflicts: between the group rights of indigenous people and the general social and economic rights in relation to other native populations. The Amazon isn’t just made up of forest and a few indigenous populations, there is in fact a sizeable Brazilian population there. They are often immigrants who have been there for some time. In fact there have always been large-scale economic migrations in Brazil, mostly from the North East. The garimpeiros (gold-seekers, a term used to denote any kind of poor Northeasterner) migrate to the new ‘agricultural frontier’, moving into the region. There are also the caboclos, mixed ethnic populations who have been there since colonisation. Caboclos aren’t indigenous populations or organised into tribal societies. The term connotes river-dwellers, who should be treated as semi-indigenous, engaging in small-scale trade and leading in sedentary lifestyles.
There are therefore these three groups: ‘genuine’ indigenous population, the garimpeiros and the caboclos. The reservation issue has been about the fact that the land is used by all three groups, and being put to different uses. For example, the land is used as free land, for gold seeking, for more organised resource extraction, as well as illegal deforestation. In terms of organised resource destruction: landowners often pair up with the garimpeiros and the caboclo population, promising them jobs and an infrastructure; neither of which are forthcoming in most cases.
So here we have a real conflict between the use of natural resources for individual survival and indigenous group rights. It’s a conflict we saw in the US and Canada in the 1990s, with the end result in Canada being a semi-autonomous administration. But the conflicts are harsher in Brazil. There are often big business interests involved and in the background, but the conflict is played out between two sets of poor people; the indigenous population and the caboclos, both equally in need of protection.
Q – Your insights into Brazil are fascinating. It is clearly a country that is important to you. Do you have any plans to go back there?
A – Yes, I retain a visiting professorship at the university. In my opinion, Brazil is very much a country on the rise, both economically and in other ways. I am retaining a lot of interest in Brazil.
Q - In Copenhagen, the climate change summit is taking place. There is widespread scepticism that a deal can be reached. Given the slow progress, do you believe that issues relating to climate change should be couched in the language of human rights in order to give the climate change movement greater drive? Or is this simply an example of human rights fetishism or human rights ‘abuse’?
A – Well, to give my off-the-cuff reaction, it seems to me that this has to be seen in conjunction with the issue of rights-based development and sustainable development.  In the developing community, relatively regardless of climate change, there has been a long debate about what rights-based development means. The traditional developing actors are not from human rights backgrounds and define rights-based development at the very most as development that is compatible with human rights standards.
But from the human rights perspective; rights-based development could be more than just compatibility. It could mean much more: empowering not only individuals but especially communities (through a collective, group rights approach) to define, through the vehicle of enforceable rights, their own local developmental needs. That’s something that the developmental community has difficulty with, because its actors are not from a rights background. This more radical reading would suggest that it’s a much less decentralised process; not just one model, but leaving it to the communities. What is concentrated on is establishing an enforceable rights infrastructure where communities can empower themselves.
This gains added currency in light of Copenhagen. The global South do wish to retain the type of development we’ve seen so far (actors such as China) which is burdening the North more. Although this is probably legitimate from the historical perspective, it doesn’t entertain an entirely different model of development. For example, we can clearly see that China is concerned with ‘buying off’ their rising middle class by consumption patterns that are like those we see in Europe of the US. They are concerned that if they can’t provide these, then the whole Chinese model is endangered.
No matter whether Copenhagen concretely fails or succeeds; what makes climate change different from any other debate are the objective constraints. We have to think how the world is going to organise itself. Here, investing early on into bringing about rights based development and having a rights based logic alongside enforceable mechanisms is crucial for avoiding chaos and allowing local, decentralised climate change initiative to become possible. It is better if people can take responsibility for their own situations, which is possible as long as there is a rights infrastructure where you can prevent external actors from misappropriating resources from localities.
Critics of this approach argue that it is irrational, that there will be objective needs and we need to counter them. This is echoed in the different context of the UK in the critique of the Human Rights Act. If we have an objective security threat, we can’t leave the individual community the full set of rights, because they’ll derail the process. It depends on your outlook, and this question is really a battle of the minds. If you don’t think that the world works via some ‘master plan’ – and in my view there is no such ‘master plan’, then the rights-based logic is the way forward.
Q - David Kennedy from Harvard Law School argues that human rights cannot necessarily be a tool for global governance. He challenges those ‘who treat human rights as an object of devotion rather than calculation’. Do you see the role of human rights as simply standing on the sidelines and speaking the truth, or that they will be playing an ever-greater role?
A – Yes, Kennedy has described human rights as ‘dead’ as a critical project. I personally have been critical of the ‘easy universalist’ position. There is a real problem in the traditional pre-9/11 tradition, with a sense of self-righteousness, self-centredness, and a sort of tunnel vision. The question of foundation was left to moral philosophers who would deal with it in a very academic ‘ivory tower’ way. When I was working with Human Rights Watch in Brazil there was a lot of unease and concern about the levels of police violence. Their tactic involved good fact-finding and presentation, followed by finger-pointing and referral to international treaties and some constitutional rights, as well as pressuring elite political actors to change the situation. Throughout the facts were allowed to speak for themselves. But what did this tactic say to the violent policemen? How does it speak to the perpetrators, or the families of the victims? I am critical of this ‘standard’ attitude to human rights.
The difference between myself and David Kennedy, is that he sees human rights as something at best as a strategic discourse, but not in itself worthwhile. To my mind there are two levels of thinking. The first level is that of pragmatic analysis of human rights. No matter how anyone stands on human rights, they are a fact of the world. The discourse of human rights is being used everywhere, although not always in the way that we think it should be. Ordinary people can be part of this discourse and asserting their rights, using them in ordinary contexts where people feel oppressed. The pragmatic approach of human rights is to look at them as something that is effectively used.
The second level of thinking is at a more individual level, and it is the problem of how to deal with the cultural diversity and the fact that human rights might be superficially spoken in many cases. does human rights language divert attention from other more important discourses?
Ultimately, there can’t be one ‘master narrative’ on human rights. Personally I am sceptical of the moral philosophical theories of human rights, because that is what they try to do. What makes us human rights defenders is something deep down and ultimately not shareable. Why one individual wants to be a human rights defender can only be to a certain extent communicable. I can use my human rights discourse because I believe that it is the right way to frame an issue, but I need to acknowledge that the people spoken to may react in unforeseen ways. I can use language to advance a particular goal, but I must acknowledge that I can’t control it, it is a dynamic process. Human rights are not just a snapshot; their meaning unfolds over time in the discourse. It means concretely as an ethical attitude to try and direct the anthropological gaze, to as ‘Why am I believing in this?’
Q – The hot topic of the moment is the Conservative Party’s proposal to abolish the Human Rights Act if they win the next election. What are your views on this subject?
A – I think that this is the typical reaction of those who believe that the image of their own cultural context is the one that invented human rights, and take it for granted that we are ‘for’ human rights. The Conservative reaction is a profound paradox. The British Conservatives have an ambivalent relationship with the state; a libertarian streak which should make them ‘pro’ human rights. After 9/11 came the renaissance of the forceful state which defends itself. The Conservatives are very on board with that, seeing any kind of constraint of these powers as bad. It’s the same story with euro-criticism; anything that constrains the sovereignty of the UK is seen as bad.
The critique which must be taken much more seriously is that offered by some judges, which is concerned with the over-crowding of the courts, and this perception that they are being forced into a particular line and logic. I don’t have too much sympathy here either. The problem is that the use of social rights (for example the right to health) can have unintended consequences which can be negative: burdening budgets, distorting central healthcare planning and leading to queue-jumping. Clearly, litigation can have negative consequences. It is a question of the basic understanding of how the state should work.
The question is whether the European Convention on Human Rights should just be public policy to avoid errors of public administration, or whether those rights mean more, as in Britain being a rights-based polity. What is truly bad is to take the tabloid approach and select some absurd rights-based decisions and then try to derail the Human Rights Act.
The question is; what is our fundamental attitude to human rights, and how much are we prepared to stand up for them in terms of being curtailed by them. Is it more important for people to have these rights, or to implement public policy in the smoothest way? I personally tent to the human rights side, but I don’t want to seem too ‘radical’. But this debate is one which is simply not being had. The question of the Human Rights Act is about more than just a few token abuses.