Human rights

In commemoration of World Refugee Day, Public Services International (PSI) calls for solidarity with the millions of refugees worldwide, underscoring that quality public services are vital in promoting their human rights, inclusion and integration in societies.

The company managing the prison has stated that it does not exercise police powers of enforcement inside the Manaus prison, however this task is stipulated in the contract signed with the government of the state of Amazonas and was observed during visits made by human rights advocates.

The mass slaughter that took place earlier this year in a prison in northern Brazil shows that when prisons are managed by private companies it does not solve the problem but rather contributes to their deterioration.

For some years now, the PSI, along with 50 other civil society organisations, has participated in an international campaign to persuade the UN to formally agree that “the right to peace is a condition for a democratic and equitable order”. On 19 December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly finally approved Resolution 71/189, adopting the Declaration on the Right to Peace proposed by the Human Rights Council.

Click the links bellow to see the 2016 AFT resolutions.

"Unfortunately, if this measure is not reversed, the scenario for the next two decades is disastrous: chaos will be installed in the public health and education systems, while the privatization of the sector will be increased", says Jocelio Drummond, from Public Services International. Protests against the measure were severely repressed.

"This amendment would lock in inadequate and rapidly dwindling expenditure on health care, education and social security, thus putting an entire generation at risk of social protection standards well below those currently in place", says Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) concluded a week-long visit to South Korea and witnessed first-hand the ongoing criminalisation of labour union rights in the country. Here is the ITF president Paddy Crumlin's account of this trip.