March 27, 2003  The Hon. Paulo Sèrgio Pinheiro, Brazil's former secretary of state for human rights and an international leader for human rights, is a visiting professor at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies during the spring of 2003. Pinheiro joins two other distinguished international human rights advocates currently in residence at the Institute—the Chinese prodemocracy advocate Xu Wenli and Czech human rights and free speech proponent Jiri Dienstbier.

Upon Professor Pinheiro's arrival at Brown in February, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed him as an independent expert (at the level of assistant secretary-general) to prepare a study on violence against children. During the next two years, he will work in collaboration with the UN Children's Fund, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the World Health Organization to coordinate as an independent expert on a vigorous analysis of systemic failures to protect the world's children from harm due to poverty, conflict, and human rights abuses.

On April 22, Professor Pinheiro will participate with Jiri Dienstbier, Xu Wenli, and Watson Institute and Brown faculty in a workshop to consider critical themes on human rights monitoring, democratic transitions, and postconflict state-building. A public session featuring all three visitors will be held that day; more information about time and location will be forthcoming.

While at the Watson Institute, Professor Pinheiro is teaching a senior seminar on "The Struggle for Human Rights in Brazil: Democracy without Citizenship." He is also organizing with Professor David Lindstrom, director of Brown's Center for Latin American Studies, a one-day conference to assess protection in the two decades since political transitions to democracy in Latin America.

Before entering public service, Professor Pinheiro taught political science at the University of São Paulo, where he was the director of the Center for the Study of Violence. He also has taught at Columbia, Notre Dame, and Oxford Universities, as well as the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. From 1995 to 1999, he served as a UN special rapporteur on Burundi, and since December 2000, he has been the UN special rapporteur on Myanmar. (See March 26, 2003, New York Times article, "Bugged U.N. Envoy Urges Myanmar to Free Prisoners," [Reuters]) He is also a member and the current chairperson of the UN Subcommission for the promotion and protection for human rights, Geneva.

For his efforts on behalf of those who have been silenced by civil unrest and human rights violations, Professor Pinheiro has received numerous acknowledgements, including the Ordre National du Mérite by the French government.