The story of Brazil and the transnational human rights movement is as much about the individuals, groups, ideas and practices that connected these two spheres as it is a struggle for their definition. In this context, Brazil and the Transnational Human Rights Movement has explored the multiple meanings of Brazil, of human rights and of democracy that emerged within transnational solidarity and advocacy networks over the course of the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985.

Transnational human rights advocacy and solidarity were radically transformed by the global Cold War. What emerged was a movement that reinterpreted human rights to ‘penetrate the impregnability of state borders, slowly replacing them with the authority of international law’. This movement emerged through extensive and complex advocacy networks and international organisations, and it grew to encompass a broad range of issues such as political repression, torture, social and economic equality, women’s rights, racial and ethnic minority rights, indigenous rights, environmentalism, access to natural resources, sustainable development, the human rights responsibilities of transnational entities, among many others. The human rights paradigms that materialised during this period continue to structure globally evolving human rights discourses and practices today.

Yet the Global South dimensions of this history are markedly absent from mainstream scholarship. One of the objectives of Brazil and the Transnational Human Rights Movement is precisely to address this radically incomplete narrative; simply put, to tell the stories that have not yet been told. On the one hand, this has meant looking beyond the well-established authority institutions like the United Nations and organisations like Amnesty International to focus on the theorisation and promotion of human rights from below (emerging from concrete struggles in the regional and national context) as opposed to human rights from above (emanating from international organisations and national parliaments). On the other hand, it also meant raising the profile of Brazilian actors who have often only ever been remembered for the domestic social and political impacts of their actions, rather than the ways in which they impacted global processes and communities.

Mapping the interactions between Brazilian actors, ideas, histories, narratives and their Western European networks has made it possible to challenge the global, international and/or transnational history of human rights in a number of ways.