Human Security as a Tool to Overcome Violence: the Case of Viva Rio

Viva Rio is a non-governmental organization based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, committed to field work, research, advocacy as communication in the areas of urban violence prevention and the promotion of human security.

Viva Rio was created in December 1993 by representatives of diverse sectors of civil society as a direct response to the increasing levels of violence in Rio de Janeiro. Though its work began in response to, and remains deeply engaged with, local problems, the multi factorial nature of human security has led to its involvement at national and – increasingly –international levels.

As part of these efforts, Viva Rio currently oversees over 2.000 local projects in 82 municipalities, aside from its numerous activities at the national and international levels. In 2005, Viva Rio worked together with 1.405 partner organizations, among educational institutes, community associations, community radios, NGOs, churches, Police Units and penitentiaries. In the last three years, the scope of action of Viva Rio has grown from local to regional level, in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Viva Rio’s Work

Viva Rio’s main goal is to promote peace and development at the local level, creating means of overcoming urban armed violence and social exclusion. Viva Rio relies on the idea of human security as a guiding concept. It is believed that “development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing”.

Although there is no simple causality linking poverty and social exclusion to urban armed violence, once violence starts, those three factors reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. To break the cycle, security, social inclusion and development must be integrated in specific policies.

In practice, this means that solutions should combine modernization and democratization of the criminal justice system, with the adoption of preventive strategies aimed at those groups most vulnerable to the dynamics of crime and violence, and the risk factors that aggravate them.

Viva Rio’s purpose is to research, design and test specific solutions that effectively deal with the complex set of problems at stake. Moreover, Viva Rio’s ultimate purpose is to promote solutions deemed successful through advocacy and communication strategies, for them to gain scale, are adopted as public policy and are replicated by agents such as the state, private enterprise or other NGO’s.

Using a public health approach to violence, Viva Rio developed a diagnosis of the urban armed violence epidemic in Latin America. Through this analysis, Viva Rio identified four core aspects:

• Risk Group: Youth is the main risk group for armed violence in Brazil and other Latin American countries. The group is mainly composed by poor teenagers and young males (15 to 24 years of age) that have dropped out of school before completing elementary education. They are the main authors and victims of armed violence.
• Vector: The main vector for the urban violence epidemics in the region is the small arm and light weapon (SALW). Most homicides are committed with the use of firearms. Heavily armed non state actors undermine democracy and civic culture at grassroots level, particularly in poor neighborhoods.
• Critical Areas: The critical areas are favelas and urban peripheries, notorious for the lack of public services, and lack of (investment in) human social and economic capital. A chaotic urbanization process aggravates the problem.
• Security Sector Reform: the Security Sector Reform is critical for efficiency, as well as for integrating security, human rights and development goals.

Under this rationale, Viva Rio has developed and consolidated a broad set of actions and strategies specifically oriented to those issues. Actions have ranged from projects aiming at the reduction of supply and demand of SALW, to police training and reform, income generation and education programs aimed at youth at risk, SALW control campaigns, and conflict mediation centers, among others.

Thematic Focus

Within a human security perspective, Viva Rio’s projects and actions focus on three key themes:

• Youth at Risk, with specific gender-oriented approaches to armed violence;
• Security Sector Reform (SSR);
• Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Control;

Actions

Viva Rio has adopted a three-pronged approach to overcoming urban armed violence:

Policy Oriented Research - Human Security Program: comprehensive policy oriented research, training, and knowledge management on human security issues at both local and regional levels. Main focus: institutional development of police forces; small arms control; youth in armed violence; and gender in armed violence;

Integrated Local Actions: concentration and implementation of human security projects in poor and violent neighborhoods; contributing to the creation of local development platforms, with multiple partnerships, valuing local actors;

Communication: mobilization and advocacy through public campaigns and new technologies, in the organization’s priority areas and target audiences.

Territorial Scope

Even though Viva Rio’s work began in response to, and remains deeply engaged with, local problems, the multi factorial nature of human security issues has led to its involvement at the national and – increasingly – the international levels.

Nowadays, it is understood that Viva Rio’s actions are both local and global. This is so because urban armed violence is at once local and global, i.e., demand for SALW is local and supply is national and global. Thus, solutions must be simultaneously global and local.

Based on grassroots experimentation in Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region, Viva Rio develops actions of national and regional import, in tune with the international agenda for the reduction of urban armed violence.

Human Security as mentioned before is the organization’s guiding concept. An analytical tool used to formulate policies and to execute projects on the ground.

Proposals for South-South Cooperation to Improve Human Security

The conceptual repertoire of human security, as a democratic perspective for overcoming urban violence, certainly represents a powerful point of departure for orienting the work of governments, international and regional organizations, and NGO’s. It provides a globally shared language, still in development, and allows for serious on-the-ground initiatives to dialogue with international efforts to overcome the new threats to peace.
The following topics can be identified as founding principles for the development of activities built around human security in the context of the Southern-Hemisphere:
the problems at stake in the South converge with the need for an agenda of consolidation and strengthening of democracy. This is a key insight of the human security approach: lasting solutions will be those that are both effective in the local context and convergent with existing institutional and socio-political realities.
it is, therefore, crucial to develop and propagate a perspective on security that is at once consistent with democratic values and operational. Without losing sight of the central goal of moving past the current dynamics of violence and conflict, this perspective must guide, in practical terms, the integration of security, human rights and development policies and institutions in each context; consequently, reinforcing and disseminating the conceptual basis of the human security paradigm – as well as helping translate it into practical and operational terms – is a key contribution to developing solutions. The paradigm can be refined by developing more precise definitions for the problems of human security; by establishing a human security perspective that takes into account the historical and present reality of each region; and by specifying with greater clarity the requisite institutional and policy instruments for its effective implementation in the field.