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By Priscila Néri | November 23rd, 2010
Posted from Brazil, where WITNESS attended the Seminar
Megaevents: Urban Impacts and Human Rights Violations? as a part
of our global campaign on
Forced Evictions in the name of Development.
*** For the past 20 years, the roughly 1000 families that live in
Vila Autódromo, a low-income community in western Rio de Janeiro, have
been fighting off eviction.
First, in the early 90s, they were told they had to leave because they
posed environmental and aesthetic harm? to the city of Rio and because
they had built their homes on environmentally protected lands. This was
right around the time that high luxury buildings started emerging in the
surrounding Barra da Tijuca neighborhood.
Next, after a period of heavy rain and flooding, they were told they had
to leave because they had built their homes on environmentally hazardous
lands.
Then, they were told they had to leave to make way for the infrastructure
the city was building to host the Pan-American Games in 2007.
Each time, Vila Autódromo fought back with legal recourses, community
mobilization, protests. So far, these families have been able to stay in
their homes.
Other communities including families from urban slums in Rio like Canal
do Anil and Canal do Cortado were not as fortunate, facing armed riot
police and bulldozers in violent forceful evictions carried out in 2007
in complete disregard of local and domestic legislation including the Brazilian
Constitution and The City Statute of Brazil.
And just last year, Vila Autódromo learned that it is, once again, on
a list of communities set for removal. This time, to make room for stadiums
and other sports facilities that Rio plans to build in order to host the
2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
So Vila Autódromo is fighting once more.
Unfortunately, the story of Vila Autódromo is not unique.
Earlier this month in São Paulo, more than 100 people from across Brazil
came together in a 2-day seminar and strategy session focused on the urban
impacts and human rights violations that are already happening and are
likely to increase as a result of the megaevents Brazil is hosting in
the coming years (which include not only the 2014 World Cup and the 2016
Olympics, but the Military World Games in 2011, the Rio+20 Earth Summit
in 2012, and the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013). Organized by the students
from the Right to the City research group of the University of São Paulo
Law School and by the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing,
Raquel Rolnik, the seminar ended with a rallying call for nation-wide mobilization
to ensure that all rights are protected in preparing for these megaevents
(see videos and pictures from the seminar here).
The forced removal of poor communities and urban slums to make way for
more lucrative types of real estate and development on coveted city lands
is not a new phenomenon in Brazil, nor is it exclusive to sports megaevents.
However, megaevents in general and sports megaevents in particular
present a uniquely complex and challenging set of conditions. Here are
some of them:
Challenge #1: Love for football vs the rights of the poor
How you can one be against the World Cup in Brazil, the country of football
The question was posed to me by a taxi driver in Rio. As you may have heard,
football is really popular in Brazil. As a Brazilian, I too carry that
pesky gene that makes my heart race and palms sweat whenever the national
team enters the field for a World Cup game.
The fact that the World Cup is being hosted in Brazil again after 60 years
is an enormous source of excitement, enthusiasm, patriotism. On the day
the announcement was made, thousands of people gathered in public places
like Copacabana beach to watch the broadcast live on enormous screens
the party afterwards lasted for hours. President Lula and football legend
Pelé cried. The euphoria is exacerbated by local authorities and by predominant
media outlets like TV Globo, which constantly reiterate the pride and honor
of hosting such an event Rio is finally, as Professor Sassia Sasken would
note, a global city! At first glance, there really is very little room
to bring up anything other than that, or at least thats how it seems.
Challenge #2: States of exception to protect the rights of games
FIFA and the IOC often require host countries to enact special legislation
for the event that can override existing laws and protections by, for example:
exempt these international entities from legal liability resulting from
the games
establish specific regulations to ensure that only products and services
of the events corporate sponsors are available throughout the events
spaces
create so-called exclusion zones? around the sports facilities in which
the citys residents cannot circulate
ban public protests or demonstrations in and around the event
Journalists covering the event are also required to refrain from damaging
the image? [of FIFA and the Olympics]. This exceptional legal framework
often allows governments and private entities to get away with abuses of
power that would normally be punishable by the host countrys existing
laws and policies.
Like forced evictions. More than 1.25 million people were uprooted from
their homes in Beijing to make way for the 2008 Olympic Games roughly
10% of the citys total population! The same happened in the lead up to
the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. And even more recently, in India, the
Commonwealth Games displaced roughly 250,000 people from their homes, according
to the Housing and Land Rights Network. Most affected are poor communities,
women, ethnic minorities, and other groups with a history of systematic
exclusion and discrimination.
Challenge #3: Megaevents and public resources: socializing costs, privatizing
benefits
It is the rule, not the exception, that megaevents cost a lot of money.
Often, theyre financed with public money (despite government promises
to the contrary) and, too often, they go over budget. For the 2007 Pan-American
Games, for example, the total budget estimate the city of Rio was projecting
in the selection stage was R$ 390 million (USD $203 million). The event
ended up costing R$ 3.58 billion (USD $2.08 billion), a 1000% increase
that was financed primarily with government resources.
For the upcoming World Cup, despite new promises that new construction
and infrastructure for the games would be paid for by the private sector,
the Brazilian Socio-Economic Development Bank (BNDES) has already set aside
up to R$ 15 billion in credit lines to finance stadiums and other infrastructure
for the megaevents (ironically, nearly half of BNDES money comes from
the FAT, a compulsory tax on workers salaries that is supposed to fund
worker assistance programs like unemployment insurance).
In a country where inequality is paramount and the social needs are significant,
spending billions on stadiums instead of hospitals or schools is certainly
questionable. A Datafolha poll showed that 57% of Brazilians are against
the use of public money for the construction of stadiums for the 2014 World
Cup. What ends up happening, as one researcher put it, is the socializing
of the costs [of hosting a megaevent] with the privatizing of the benefits.?
Challenge #4: But megaevents create jobs and stimulate the economy!?
You will hear this a lot when governments are selling the idea of hosting
a megaevent. However, different studies have shown that, time after time,
poor communities rarely benefit the jobs created are often poor quality,
temporary, dangerous. Communities forcibly evicted usually end up living
in worse conditions farther from the city centers that are home to greater
employment options, schools, hospitals. Meanwhile, the greatest benefactors
are the private investors that hold broadcasting rights to the events,
other corporate sponsors, construction companies, and real estate developers
sectors whose interests overlap sometimes too comfortably with those
of politicians and other publicly elected officials.
Challenge #5: The Right to the City vs. megaevents
The Right to the City calls for:
fair and democratic distribution of the citys spaces and services
sustainable management of the citys natural resources
participatory construction of urban processes like planning, budgeting,
etc.
enjoyment of everyones human rights towards collective well-being and
social justice
By privileging select economic interests over the rights of low-income
communities, megaevents threaten the Right to the City by making urban
spaces less accessible to the poor and more exclusive and luxurious to
the rich. Neighborhoods become more expensive, real estate speculation
profits, and the poorer segments are pushed farther and farther to the
outskirts of the urban perimeters.
Brazilian civil society unites to take on the challenge
One thing is certain: The World Cup and Olympics are happening in Brazil,
there is no turning back. The challenge now is ensuring the full protection
of rights in the lead up to the events, as well as during and after. The
challenge is also ensuring that resources spent on these events leave real
and tangible positive legacies for the population as a whole, and that
the sharing of the benefits? actually happens for the collective majority
and not for a select minority.
No one know yet how many families are at risk of eviction due to the World
Cup and Olympics, but social movements, civil society networks and NGOs
in Brazil are uniting to monitor these megaevents and call for Zero Evictions
in the 12 cities that have already been selected to host games and other
related activities the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel
Rolnik, is also adding her voice to the call (for more on the Special Rapporteurs
perspective on this, read this report on megaevents and the right to adequate
housing).
How WITNESS fits in
As part of our global campaign on Forced Evictions in the Name of Development,
WITNESS is working with the Habitat International Coalition in Latin America
and national networks in Brazil to map strategic opportunities for using
video for advocacy at the local, national and regional levels in the lead
up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Well be posting new updates,
videos, and interviews here in the coming months so stay tuned for more
on this campaign. In the meantime, if you know of examples in which video
and other new media tools were used to protect rights during megaevents,
let us know in the comments field below!
***
{For their contributions to this post, a huge thanks to Inalva Mendes
Brito from Vila Autódromo, Regina Ferreira and Benedito Barbosa from Fórum
Nacional da Reforma Urbana, Lorena Zárate from the Habitat International
Coalition, Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik and her amazing team, Orlando
Alves dos Santos Junior from Plataforma Dhesca, Erick Omena, Christopher
Gaffney, Guilherme Marques (Soninho), Julia Moretti, and all the participants
of the Megaevents: Urban Impacts and Human Rights Violations? Seminar
that took place in São Paulo, Brazil, on November 8-9 2010}
Source:
The Witness Blog
By Priscila Néri | November 23rd, 2010
Posted from Brazil, where WITNESS attended the Seminar
Megaevents: Urban Impacts and Human Rights Violations? as a part
of our global campaign on
Forced Evictions in the name of Development.
*** For the past 20 years, the roughly 1000 families that live in
Vila Autódromo, a low-income community in western Rio de Janeiro, have
been fighting off eviction.
First, in the early 90s, they were told they had to leave because they
posed environmental and aesthetic harm? to the city of Rio and because
they had built their homes on environmentally protected lands. This was
right around the time that high luxury buildings started emerging in the
surrounding Barra da Tijuca neighborhood.
Next, after a period of heavy rain and flooding, they were told they had
to leave because they had built their homes on environmentally hazardous
lands.
Then, they were told they had to leave to make way for the infrastructure
the city was building to host the Pan-American Games in 2007.
Each time, Vila Autódromo fought back with legal recourses, community
mobilization, protests. So far, these families have been able to stay in
their homes.
Other communities including families from urban slums in Rio like Canal
do Anil and Canal do Cortado were not as fortunate, facing armed riot
police and bulldozers in violent forceful evictions carried out in 2007
in complete disregard of local and domestic legislation including the Brazilian
Constitution and The City Statute of Brazil.
And just last year, Vila Autódromo learned that it is, once again, on
a list of communities set for removal. This time, to make room for stadiums
and other sports facilities that Rio plans to build in order to host the
2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
So Vila Autódromo is fighting once more.
Unfortunately, the story of Vila Autódromo is not unique.
Earlier this month in São Paulo, more than 100 people from across Brazil
came together in a 2-day seminar and strategy session focused on the urban
impacts and human rights violations that are already happening and are
likely to increase as a result of the megaevents Brazil is hosting in
the coming years (which include not only the 2014 World Cup and the 2016
Olympics, but the Military World Games in 2011, the Rio+20 Earth Summit
in 2012, and the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013). Organized by the students
from the Right to the City research group of the University of São Paulo
Law School and by the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing,
Raquel Rolnik, the seminar ended with a rallying call for nation-wide mobilization
to ensure that all rights are protected in preparing for these megaevents
(see videos and pictures from the seminar here).
The forced removal of poor communities and urban slums to make way for
more lucrative types of real estate and development on coveted city lands
is not a new phenomenon in Brazil, nor is it exclusive to sports megaevents.
However, megaevents in general and sports megaevents in particular
present a uniquely complex and challenging set of conditions. Here are
some of them:
Challenge #1: Love for football vs the rights of the poor
How you can one be against the World Cup in Brazil, the country of football
The question was posed to me by a taxi driver in Rio. As you may have heard,
football is really popular in Brazil. As a Brazilian, I too carry that
pesky gene that makes my heart race and palms sweat whenever the national
team enters the field for a World Cup game.
The fact that the World Cup is being hosted in Brazil again after 60 years
is an enormous source of excitement, enthusiasm, patriotism. On the day
the announcement was made, thousands of people gathered in public places
like Copacabana beach to watch the broadcast live on enormous screens
the party afterwards lasted for hours. President Lula and football legend
Pelé cried. The euphoria is exacerbated by local authorities and by predominant
media outlets like TV Globo, which constantly reiterate the pride and honor
of hosting such an event Rio is finally, as Professor Sassia Sasken would
note, a global city! At first glance, there really is very little room
to bring up anything other than that, or at least thats how it seems.
Challenge #2: States of exception to protect the rights of games
FIFA and the IOC often require host countries to enact special legislation
for the event that can override existing laws and protections by, for example:
exempt these international entities from legal liability resulting from
the games
establish specific regulations to ensure that only products and services
of the events corporate sponsors are available throughout the events
spaces
create so-called exclusion zones? around the sports facilities in which
the citys residents cannot circulate
ban public protests or demonstrations in and around the event
Journalists covering the event are also required to refrain from damaging
the image? [of FIFA and the Olympics]. This exceptional legal framework
often allows governments and private entities to get away with abuses of
power that would normally be punishable by the host countrys existing
laws and policies.
Like forced evictions. More than 1.25 million people were uprooted from
their homes in Beijing to make way for the 2008 Olympic Games roughly
10% of the citys total population! The same happened in the lead up to
the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. And even more recently, in India, the
Commonwealth Games displaced roughly 250,000 people from their homes, according
to the Housing and Land Rights Network. Most affected are poor communities,
women, ethnic minorities, and other groups with a history of systematic
exclusion and discrimination.
Challenge #3: Megaevents and public resources: socializing costs, privatizing
benefits
It is the rule, not the exception, that megaevents cost a lot of money.
Often, theyre financed with public money (despite government promises
to the contrary) and, too often, they go over budget. For the 2007 Pan-American
Games, for example, the total budget estimate the city of Rio was projecting
in the selection stage was R$ 390 million (USD $203 million). The event
ended up costing R$ 3.58 billion (USD $2.08 billion), a 1000% increase
that was financed primarily with government resources.
For the upcoming World Cup, despite new promises that new construction
and infrastructure for the games would be paid for by the private sector,
the Brazilian Socio-Economic Development Bank (BNDES) has already set aside
up to R$ 15 billion in credit lines to finance stadiums and other infrastructure
for the megaevents (ironically, nearly half of BNDES money comes from
the FAT, a compulsory tax on workers salaries that is supposed to fund
worker assistance programs like unemployment insurance).
In a country where inequality is paramount and the social needs are significant,
spending billions on stadiums instead of hospitals or schools is certainly
questionable. A Datafolha poll showed that 57% of Brazilians are against
the use of public money for the construction of stadiums for the 2014 World
Cup. What ends up happening, as one researcher put it, is the socializing
of the costs [of hosting a megaevent] with the privatizing of the benefits.?
Challenge #4: But megaevents create jobs and stimulate the economy!?
You will hear this a lot when governments are selling the idea of hosting
a megaevent. However, different studies have shown that, time after time,
poor communities rarely benefit the jobs created are often poor quality,
temporary, dangerous. Communities forcibly evicted usually end up living
in worse conditions farther from the city centers that are home to greater
employment options, schools, hospitals. Meanwhile, the greatest benefactors
are the private investors that hold broadcasting rights to the events,
other corporate sponsors, construction companies, and real estate developers
sectors whose interests overlap sometimes too comfortably with those
of politicians and other publicly elected officials.
Challenge #5: The Right to the City vs. megaevents
The Right to the City calls for:
fair and democratic distribution of the citys spaces and services
sustainable management of the citys natural resources
participatory construction of urban processes like planning, budgeting,
etc.
enjoyment of everyones human rights towards collective well-being and
social justice
By privileging select economic interests over the rights of low-income
communities, megaevents threaten the Right to the City by making urban
spaces less accessible to the poor and more exclusive and luxurious to
the rich. Neighborhoods become more expensive, real estate speculation
profits, and the poorer segments are pushed farther and farther to the
outskirts of the urban perimeters.
Brazilian civil society unites to take on the challenge
One thing is certain: The World Cup and Olympics are happening in Brazil,
there is no turning back. The challenge now is ensuring the full protection
of rights in the lead up to the events, as well as during and after. The
challenge is also ensuring that resources spent on these events leave real
and tangible positive legacies for the population as a whole, and that
the sharing of the benefits? actually happens for the collective majority
and not for a select minority.
No one know yet how many families are at risk of eviction due to the World
Cup and Olympics, but social movements, civil society networks and NGOs
in Brazil are uniting to monitor these megaevents and call for Zero Evictions
in the 12 cities that have already been selected to host games and other
related activities the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel
Rolnik, is also adding her voice to the call (for more on the Special Rapporteurs
perspective on this, read this report on megaevents and the right to adequate
housing).
How WITNESS fits in
As part of our global campaign on Forced Evictions in the Name of Development,
WITNESS is working with the Habitat International Coalition in Latin America
and national networks in Brazil to map strategic opportunities for using
video for advocacy at the local, national and regional levels in the lead
up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Well be posting new updates,
videos, and interviews here in the coming months so stay tuned for more
on this campaign. In the meantime, if you know of examples in which video
and other new media tools were used to protect rights during megaevents,
let us know in the comments field below!
***
{For their contributions to this post, a huge thanks to Inalva Mendes
Brito from Vila Autódromo, Regina Ferreira and Benedito Barbosa from Fórum
Nacional da Reforma Urbana, Lorena Zárate from the Habitat International
Coalition, Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik and her amazing team, Orlando
Alves dos Santos Junior from Plataforma Dhesca, Erick Omena, Christopher
Gaffney, Guilherme Marques (Soninho), Julia Moretti, and all the participants
of the Megaevents: Urban Impacts and Human Rights Violations? Seminar
that took place in São Paulo, Brazil, on November 8-9 2010}
Source:
The Witness Blog
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