2016-08-24
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In July, the General Coordinator of the Witness Protection Service of the Special Secretariat for Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice and Citizenship (SEDH/MJC), Wellington Pantaleão, and the Advisor to the SEDH Office of the General Coordinator, Pedro Angoti, went on an official mission to Europe, to learn about protection policies in place in the European Union and to present the Protection Program for Witnesses and Victims under Threat (Provita).
The mission was part of the European Union-Brazil Sector Dialogues Support Project, an initiative led by the European Union Delegation to Brazil (DELBRA) and the Ministério do Planejamento, Desenvolvimento e Gestão (MP) [Ministry of Planning, Development and Management].
In the United Kingdom, the delegates met with the Chief of the British Police for Victims and Witnesses, Ms. Baljit Wirk. They also met with the Head of the Strategy Center against Organized Crime of the National Crime Agency (NCA), James Athorn, and with the Head of the Victims' Commissioner of the British Ministry of Justice, Baroness Newlove.
In the Netherlands, the delegates were welcomed by Pablo Romero and Leonardo Fernandes, Secretary and Political Attaché of the Brazilian Embassy in The Hague, respectively. At the International Criminal Court (ICC), the delegates met with Anne-Aurore Bertrand, Cooperation Advisor and International Relations for the Court, Antônia de Sousa, Associate Cooperation Officer in the Office of the Prosecutor and with Gerhard Von Rooyen, Harri Moilanen and Natacha Schauder, ICC Victims and Witnesses Unit representatives.
According to Pedro Angoti, since Provita is different from other protection programs and in view of the results obtained since its inception in 1999, SDH decided to present the program to European entities to inaugurate the first cooperation effort with a specific focus on this initiative.
“In these nearly 20 years of operation, it was possible to expand the service network and provide protection to about ten thousand people. The form of protection provided by Provita is unique in the world, since its main purpose is the promotion and defense of human rights, giving witnesses the required conditions to become reintegrated into society and resume an autonomous life. Since Provita is not a police-based program, the understanding is that discretion and implementation strategies are sufficient to keep victims and witnesses protected. In all these years, no witness was found by their enemies, a fact which demonstrates the effectiveness of the policy”, he said.
Also according to him, the mission was very important, because it helped "expand their knowledge of how witnesses were treated inside Europe and opened the possibility to incorporate into the Brazilian policies some of the measures in place in the institutions they visited. One such measure was, for example, to improve communication channels between program personnel and users, and public authorities."
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