Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, Latin American Region · 27 November, 2018

The 100 Brasilia Rules are being updated to guarantee effective access to justice for people in vulnerable conditions

The Ibero-American Judicial Summit and the EUROsociAL+ Programme will draw up an annotated version that will include jurisprudential references from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights

The 100 Brasilia Rules were approved at the 14th Ibero-American Judicial Summit, which took place in Brasilia in March 2008. Even at that time they had the technical support of EUROsociAL, which was then in its early stages. A decade later, the Follow-up Commission to the Brasilia Rules of the Ibero-American Judicial Summit and the EUROsociAL+ Programme (in its third stage) will once again collaborate in preparing and informing on an annotated version of the Brasilia Rules, which has reviewed 73 of its 100 principles, which will serve as technical support to legal operators to ensure effective access to justice for people in vulnerable conditions.

The text will include jurisprudential references from both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the most important national and international regulations on which the Brasilia Rules were based.

The collaboration between the Ibero-American Judicial Summit and the European Union programme, EUROsociAL+, was formalised at the headquarters of the General Council of the Judiciary in an act that was attended by: the observer of the governing body of judges and the coordinator of the Follow-up Commission, Juan Martínez Moya; the director of FIIAPP, Anna Terrón Cusí, and; the director of the International Relations Service of the CGPJ, Pedro Félix Álvarez de Benito.

The Brasilia Rules aim to guarantee the conditions for effective access to justice for people in vulnerable conditions, without any discrimination, encompassing the set of policies, measures, facilities and supports that allow these people to fully enjoy the services of the judicial system.

The EUROsociAL+ Programme has been accompanying the implementation of these principles at both the regional and national levels:

  1. Regionally, with the Ibero-American Judicial Summit in elaborating the aforementioned commented guide and a regional manual for the building public policies on access to justice for people in vulnerable conditions; and with the Inter-American Association of Public Defenders (AIDEF), in access to justice for victims of institutional violence deprived of freedom.
  2. At the national level, by accompanying the implementation of the Brasilia Rules in Mexico, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

Country: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, Latin American Region
SDG: Peace, justice and strong institutions
Policy area: Democratic governance policies