Oral history interview with Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, 2002

Biographical Note

Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar; Member of the UN Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights

Scope and Contents

Early years: 1944 born in Brazil; law degree from Catholic University in Rio; doctorate from Institut de Hautes Études Politiques in Paris; Career: professor of Political Science at State University of Campinas and University of Sao Paulo in Brazil; research on social history, police repression; 1974-1975 post-doctoral fellow at Yale University Wilson Center; 1987 Center for the Study of Violence at the University of Sao Paulo; 1988-1992 professor at Columbia University; professor at Brown, Notre Dame, Oxford, and Institut de Hautes Études Politiques; 1995 UN special rapporteur to Burundi; UN special rapporteur to Myanmar; 2001-2002 secretary of state for human rights in Brazil; member of the UN Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights; author of Brasil: Um Século de Transformaçôes; Brazil, The International Human Rights System, and The (Un)Rule of Law and The Underprivileged in Latin America. Themes: influenced by Thomas Skidmore and Noberto Bobbio; importance of relocating Office of the High Commissioner to a third-world country; necessity of additional research on poverty, democracy, and implementing human rights standards; structural racism in Brazil; modernity and the lack of traditional society in Brazil; human rights progress in Brazil; admiration for Fernando Henrique

Subjects

• Brazil--Social conditions--20th century.
• Columbia University--Faculty--Interviews.
• Democracy.
• Human rights--Brazil.
• Human rights.
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
• Interviews
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Pinheiro, Paulo Sérgio de M. S.--(Paulo Sérgio de Moraes Sarmento)--Interviews.
• Poverty--Research.
• United Nations--History.
• United Nations--Officials and employees--Interviews.
• United Nations. Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
• Weiss, Thomas G. (Thomas George), 1946- interviewer.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 2003