Paper short abstract:

Transfer of knowledge for the promotion of Human Rights mobilizes the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro, but the ‘rise’ of Human Rights as threat to police-work puts on stake the construction of ‘ethical’ soldier.

Paper long abstract:

Instead of thinking about human rights as a monolithic encompassing concept, the military soldiers working in a Police Station in a favela, reveal residual and contradictive uses of the notion (in their discourses and in their interaction with their public, namely the urban poor). I often heard the expression 'human rights for humans' implicitly attaching deep ontological differences of what it means 'being human' in Brazil. The police struggle with ambiguous goals, such as the fight of 'internal enemies'- a heritage of the dictatorship- and the respect for human rights-a modern imperative-. In the case of the Pacifying Police Unit, the transfer of international knowledge and the goal to achieve respect for Human Rights has gained specific attention. The struggle to create 'ethical' soldiers is ongoing and strong but with constant cases of abuse and serious violations. In such a context, there is a constant tension between the humanization of violence and the criminalization of rights. While the enterprise of constructing 'ethical', moralizing and civilizing soldiers is an indirect goal of the pacifying process, the 'rise' of Human Rights is still perceived as a threat to police work.

Based on a yearlong ethnography we seek to show how the military police work vis-à-vis the social order and how this order constantly challenges the moral, civilizing enterprise of the pacification process. Human Rights as vacuity seem to capture -at least partly- this discussion, but is the 'ethical' soldier rising?