Between Obligation and Implementation: Racialized Police Violence and Human Rights Compliance in Brazil

Abstract

This thesis examines the extent to which domestic institutional structures in Brazil hinder the implementation of international and regional human rights obligations relating to racialized police violence. Taking Brazil as a single-country case study, with particular attention to Rio de Janeiro, it analyses the gap between the State’s formal human rights commitments and their domestic realization in relation to police lethality affecting Black communities in favelas and urban peripheries.
Methodologically, the thesis combines legal doctrinal analysis with a socio-legal and critical interpretive approach. It draws on United Nations human rights standards and the Inter-American human rights system to identify the obligations governing the right to life, the use of force, prevention, investigation, accountability, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition.
The thesis argues that the central problem is not the absence of legal standards, but their partial, uneven, and selective implementation. Through the analysis of historical patterns of racialized social control, investigative failure, weak oversight, and broader domestic responses, it demonstrates that formal recognition of human rights obligations has not been sufficient to transform institutional practice. Necropolitics is used as an interpretive lens to understand why formal human rights protections coexist with the continued exposure of Black and poor populations to police violence and premature death.
The thesis concludes that international and regional human rights law provides an important framework for contesting police violence and articulating accountability, but its effectiveness depends on domestic institutional conditions capable of transforming racialized and militarized public security practices.

Popular Abstract

This thesis looks at police violence in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro, and asks why it continues even though Brazil has laws and human rights obligations that should protect people from this kind of violence.
The thesis focuses on police killings that disproportionately affect Black and poor communities living in favelas and urban peripheries. It argues that the problem is not simply that Brazil lacks legal rules. Brazil has constitutional protections and is bound by international and regional human rights standards. However, these protections are not always implemented effectively in practice.
The thesis shows that police violence in Brazil is connected to deeper historical and institutional patterns, including slavery, racial inequality, the criminalization of Black communities, and the militarization of public security. It also discusses how failures in investigation, weak oversight, and limited accountability make it difficult to prevent repeated violence.
By using the idea of necropolitics, the thesis explains how some groups can be formally protected by law while still being more exposed to police violence and premature death in everyday life. It concludes that human rights law is important because it provides standards for protection and accountability, but legal recognition alone is not enough. For these rights to become effective, Brazil must transform the racialized and militarized practices that continue to shape public security.

• author: de Freitas Barbosa, Clara
• supervisor: Christine Evans
• organization: Department of Law; Faculty of Law
• course: JAMM07 20261
• year: 2026
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Law and Political Science
• keywords: Police violence, Brazil, right to life, human rights implementation, Inter-American human rights system, accountability, necropolitics.
• language: English
• id: 9232094
• date added to LUP: 2026-06-15 09:14:37
• date last changed: 2026-06-15 09:14:37