From human rights to “righteous humans”: Brazilian foreign policy in the Bolsonaro era

Abstract

This article questions the widely accepted belief that the institutionalization of human rights norms automatically results in their advancement and safeguarding. Instead, it proposes an alternative view, suggesting that the international human rights framework is intricately entangled with politicization. Focusing on the case of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency in Brazil, we argue that human rights bodies may serve antihuman-rights policies and propaganda. The article is divided into three sections, analyzing Bolsonaro’s and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo’s rhetoric on human rights, its direct echo in Brazil’s votes in the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the resistance to Bolsonaro’s policies by various actors in the international arena of human rights. We draw on existing scholarship, extensive corpus of speeches, reports, and media coverage to examine the Bolsonaro phenomenon and the limits and fragility of the international human rights regime and diplomacy in responding to it.