Chile still needs to “experience” human rights, says Constituent Assembly president

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president of the assembly in charge of drafting the new Chilean Constitution, Elisa Loncon, on Tuesday (10) said that “there is still a long way to go to experience human rights” as a fundamental principle of social life in the country.

The Mapuche academic, who made these statements during a conference of the United Nations regional office for Human Rights (HR), pointed out that the Constitutional Convention, which since July 4 has been working on the drafting of the new Fundamental Law, provides an opportunity to advance in this direction.

Loncon added that today there is “greater awareness of civil and political rights” as a result of the human rights violations that occurred during the 2019 protests, in addition to the demands of the country’s indigenous peoples.

“The protests made it possible for Chile to be discussing a new Fundamental Charter,” emphasized Loncon, who seeks to promote a “coordination for better living” that allows for a “balanced relationship between the human being with the community and with Mother Earth”.

But the task is not easy, said the president, who pointed out that one of the issues demanding attention is “to ensure that the Constitution incorporates social rights” that are “implementable at the highest possible level,” thus preventing the document from becoming a “catalog of rights” that cannot be implemented due to lack of political and economic conditions.

RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

With respect to indigenous community rights, Loncon acknowledged that the scenario is favorable, although “risks of lack of understanding” persist as to what these rights actually are, both in terms of their content and their expansion to the rest of society.

“Education is required, which we hope will be present in the constitutional discussion, to understand that the rights of the native nations are not privileges, as conservative sectors point out, but rights for which there is national and international recognition and which have been historically denied by the sectors that have managed politics,” she said.

Along the same lines, Loncon declared that the rights of the Afro-descendant tribal people in Chile are in a worse situation, inasmuch as they have not achieved representation through reserved seats as opposed to the 10 native peoples present in the convention through this mechanism, who have 17 seats out of a total of 155.

TOWARDS AN “INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY”

Loncon also pointed out that the constituent body’s mission is to “build an inclusive democracy,” an issue that in practice would be the “most democratic and participatory dream” it could deliver the country.

UN expert Tania Abdo, who also participated in the event, explained that a rights-based Constitution requires a paradigm shift in order to “mainstream a philosophy, a way of thinking throughout the document.”

Finally, the head of UN Human Rights in South America Jan Jarab characterized the constituent process as a “historic opportunity” to reaffirm Chile’s commitments to human rights and accelerate its path towards sustainable development.

The creation of the constituent body, which was proposed to ease the wave of protests that erupted in late 2019 – the biggest social crisis in Chile’s 31 years of democracy – is expected to culminate in 2022 with the holding of a plebiscite to ratify the new text.