Dandara Sousa de Oliveira
Dandara Oliveira featured as panelist on "LGBTQI+ Rights Around the World" on Sunday 29 September, dedicated date of the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival 2019 to "LGBTQI+ Rights in Ireland and Around the World"
Dandara Sousa de Oliveira is a trans woman human rights defender from the State of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon. With a background in law, her environmental activism began with the first social interventions against the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Complex in the Xingu River. She is Secretary General of the Altamira Black Movement, focused on the confrontation of racism, extermination, criminalization, feminicide and discrimination of Amazon blackness, especially in the context of capitalist developmental projects; and the Executive Coordinator of the LesBiTrans Amazonian Collective, the first group of social struggle in the LGBTQI+ activism formed in the city of Altamira with international reach and visibility. Dandara is also the National Rapporteur on Human Rights of the DhESCA Platform, on the agenda of “Racism, Public Security and Lethal Violence”, being the first transgender woman in Brazil to occupy this position.
The challenges and threats faced by human rights defenders in Brazil remain very high, particularly for those working on issues of land, environment, indigenous peoples, LGBTi rights, corruption and impunity. Many HRDs have experienced death threats, physical attacks, arbitrary arrests and lawsuits. The high number of killings is of particular concern and takes place against a background of widespread impunity.
