A new report by a group of UN experts shows the dramatic impact of systemic racism in law enforcement in Brazil and lays out recommendations for public security policies that abide by the law, uphold rights, and protect all.
The International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement (EMLER)—created in 2021 in response to a global outcry over the police killing of George Floyd in the US a year before—gathered more than 100 testimonies from victims of police violence, their families, and affected communities during a 12-day visit to Brazil in 2023.
Human Rights Watch had joined forces with scores of organizations in urging successive Brazilian administrations to invite the expert panel to visit Brazil. The government later said that it had invited EMLER in response to civil society requests.
The EMLER report is a sobering read, as it highlights the structures of racism that millions of Black Brazilians painfully experience daily. But it also shows a path forward, through the adoption of a human rights-based approach to public security.
On October 2, the experts shared their findings during the 57th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. In a statement at the session, Human Rights Watch called on the Brazilian government to take urgent measures to end a history of police brutality against people of African descent.
The representative of the Brazilian government at the session said the report was “an opportunity” to “coordinate efforts and find solutions” to address police violence and promised to thoroughly examine EMLER’s recommendations.
The EMLER final report, which cites Human Rights Watch research, echoes our longstanding recommendations to adopt a national strategy to “drastically reduce the number of killings by law enforcement” and ensure “prompt, effective, and independent investigations” in all cases of excessive use of force.
Every year, police officers kill more than 6,000 people in Brazil, with people of African descent being three times more likely to become a victim than white individuals. The cases of violence are not isolated, the experts noted, but “show an alarming pattern” and have resulted in “deep and generalized erosion” and “profound lack of trust” in law enforcement, particularly among “marginalized communities.”
Human Rights Watch has documented how police abuse and the resulting breaking of trust have undermined public security in Brazil. The mistrust makes communities less willing to collaborate in criminal investigations and fuels a cycle of violence that endangers both civilians and police officers. Widespread impunity for police abuses compounds the problem.
Citing our research, UN experts highlighted “serious gaps” in the investigations. Police killings in Brazil are investigated by police themselves, which, they noted, “compromises the credibility and impartiality of the investigations.” In addition, forensic experts are often part of the civil police itself — a system that also undermines independence.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has also ordered that killings by police be investigated by “an independent body, distinct from the public force involved in the incident,” with the support of forensic experts “unrelated” to the law enforcement agency that allegedly committed the abuse. Human Rights Watch has urged the National Council of Prosecutor’s Offices to approve a resolution that would ensure that prosecutors lead investigations into all killings by security forces.
In a written submission to EMLER, Human Rights Watch described police practices to cover up illegal use of lethal force, such as the removal of victims’ clothing, planting false evidence, intimidating witnesses, and taking the bodies of victims to the hospital and claiming they were merely injured as a ruse to destroy crime scene evidence. We also explained how investigators often fail to examine the crime scene, interview witnesses, properly question police officers involved in shootings, or conduct adequate autopsies.
A key step forward would be for Brazil to implement the Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death, which sets out guidelines for investigating suspicious deaths, and other international standards, a recommendation endorsed by EMLER. The EMLER report also calls for the establishment of well-resourced specialized prosecutor units to improve oversight over police in Brazil. Human Rights Watch has argued that such units would allow prosecutors to develop expertise in cases of police killings and shield them from the risk of retaliation for investigating abuses by police officers in their jurisdiction.
The need to reform police also includes better support for officers to fulfill their duties to protect the public. As the independent experts noted, the number of police officers who died by suicide increased 26 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year. Human Rights Watch has also recommended improving psychological care for police.
The independent experts also highlighted Brazil’s abusive “war on drugs,” which has been used as justification for deadly raids in communities across the country, fueling the overrepresentation of people of African descent in prison and poor conditions in detention—concerns that Human Rights Watch has long shared.
Brazilian authorities should address “entrenched discrimination in law enforcement and the criminal justice system” identified by the UN experts. Their report offers helpful recommendations to implement public security policies that are not only fair, but also more effective.
