On 26 October 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) published its judgment in the Case of the Workers of the Fireworks Factory in Santo Antônio de Jesus and their Families v. Brazil (Fireworks Factory case). The dispute concerned the Brazilian state’s responsibility for the events surrounding an explosion in a fireworks factory in the town of Santo Antônio de Jesus, in the north-eastern region of the country, on 11 December 1998. Sixty people died in the explosion, among them forty women and twenty children, and six survived. Brazil was held responsible for a series of violations related to its having failed to regulate, supervise, and address the factory’s extremely unsafe working conditions.
This entry will focus on the IACtHR’s findings concerning the right to equal protection of the law (Article 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights) and the respective reparations ordered—implementing a socioeconomic 99 acres database development program for the town’s inhabitants. Firstly, we will discuss the novel way in which the IACtHR interpreted the content of the right to equal protection. Then we will assess the intersection between the reparatory measure and obligations of progressive realization on economic, social, and cultural rights, and how this might impact the reparation’s effectiveness.
From equal protection to equality
Article 24 of the American Convention establishes that all persons are equal before the law and are entitled to equal protection of the law.
The IACtHR distinguishes this provision from the more general duty of non-discrimination under Article 1(1) of the American Convention in the following manner: if the discrimination refers to a substantive right guaranteed under the Convention, the breach concerns Article 1(1) in conjunction with said substantive right; if the discrimination refers to an unequal protection under domestic law or its application, the applicable provision is Article 24.
In the Case of the Hacienda Brasil Verde Workers v. Brazil, the IACtHR indicated that failure to adopt measures to reverse structural discrimination concerning individuals in particularly vulnerable situations engaged state responsibility (para. 338) but did not expressly link this situation to either Article 1(1) or Article 24. In the end, the IACtHR did not establish a breach of Article 24, limiting its findings to violations of Article 1(1) in relation to other provisions of the American Convention, and did not order any specific reparations to combat structural discrimination.