The Broader Effects of the Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Abstract

The chapter assesses the broader effects of the Brazilian Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (PPDDH). In Sect. 8.2, it summarizes interviewees’ responses and questions who, other than human rights defenders, benefit from the PPDDH. In Sect. 8.3, it identifies ways in which the PPDDH contributes to the broader fight for human rights according to human rights defenders themselves, organized civil society, and state actors. It divides the interviewees into three groups to assess the perceptions of (1) protected human rights defenders, (2) civil society actors, and (3) state officials. In Sect. 8.4, it conducts a broader analysis of the effects of the PPDDH, reanalysing several responses from interviewees previously quoted in Chap. 7 in the context of the feedback from interviewees discussed in Sect. 8.2, to ask whether the PPDDH is bolstering human rights activism, empowering organized civil society (OCS), redressing the balance of power between dominant and dominated sectors, and helping change the workings of the Brazilian state. The final section presents a number of important findings that have been discovered as a result of this analysis and answers the research question: What kind of change—if any—has the creation of the PPDDH produced in the situation of human rights and human rights defenders?