Disarmamentists and foreign funding: NGOs that guide security in BR

Governments can only make the right decisions if they have accurate information. Traditionally, Brazilian public managers trusted bodies created for this purpose, such as IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) and Ipea (Institute of Economic Research). For better or worse, public universities also fulfilled the role of producing knowledge and helping governments choose public policies based on reality.

But, in recent years, another type of entity has started to occupy this space in the public debate: non-governmental organizations. Many of them have a million dollar budget. The problem is that, financed by private companies, foreign governments and international mega-foundations, these organizations do not always have the good of the Brazilian population as a priority.

And one of the most visible areas of this influence is public safety.

When the Ministry of Justice decided to create a work group to address disarmament, at the beginning of the year, the Igarapé Institute and the Sou da Paz Institute were the only civil society bodies invited to participate — represented by researchers Carolina Taboada and Felippe Angeli, respectively.

In common, the NGOs have the disarmament cause as their guiding principle and a large budget, which has multiplied in recent years thanks to contributions from foreign foundations.

Igarapé quadruples revenue in ten years

Created in 2011 by activist Ilona Szabó, the Igarapé Institute has the disarmament and legalization of drugs among its priorities. The organization saw its revenue more than quadruple in a decade (taking absolute values ​​into account). In 2012, the value was R$2 million. In 2022, it was R$9 million.

Currently, Igarapé receives resources from the governments of Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States, in addition to the European Union and the United Nations. Large private companies, such as Grupo Iguatemi, Google and Uber also appear on the list of donors. Furthermore, Open Society, owned by mega-billionaire George Soros — which has as one of its priorities the legalization of drugs around the world — is a long-time partner of Igarapé.

The institute’s research director, Melina Risso, was director of the Sou da Paz Institute and is also a member of the Brazilian Public Security Forum. Together, Ilona and Melina are the authors of a book (“Public Security to Change the Game”) that received a preface from Minister Luís Roberto Barroso, of the STF.

The Sou da Paz Institute received R$12.8 million in 2022. Of this amount, two thirds came from outside Brazil. In absolute values, revenue almost doubled in a decade: in 2012, the value was R$6.8 million.

Sou da Paz’s financiers include Itaú, Gol, and the government of the State of São Paulo — in addition to the omnipresent Open Society, the Ford Foundation and the OAK Foundation, all based abroad. The executive director of Sou da Paz, lawyer and sociologist Carolina Ricardo, was a Consultant for the World Bank and the International Development Bank.

In the United States, non-governmental entities are entitled to tax exemption (equivalent to Brazilian OSCIPs), but there they cannot act in the electoral process or lobby Congress. In Brazil, Sou da Paz is proud to do exactly that. In its 2022 annual report, for example, the NGO described how it tried to prevent the bill from being processed in the Senate (PL 3,723/2019) that regulates gun ownership for hunters, shooters and collectors (CACs). “We work to increase the political cost of approving the project and to denounce the negative impacts on public safety,” says the document.

Budgets multiply

Another NGO that has influenced the government is Redes da Maré, based in Complexo da Maré, in Rio de Janeiro.

In March, the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, visited the site, which is in an area controlled by criminal factions. Dino stated that the NGO Redes da Maré contributed ideas to the portfolio. The entity also benefits from contributions from abroad. The NGO had revenue of R$15.2 million in 2023.

As Redes da Maré does not publish its financial statements consistently, it is not possible to know whether the NGO has also seen its revenues multiply in recent years. But in other pro-disarmament NGOs, the progression was clear. Viva Rio went from R$8.9 million in 2011 to R$21 million in 2021. The Brazilian Public Security Forum went from R$2.4 million in 2011 to R$5 million in 2021. Conectas Human Rights had revenue of R$1.6 million in 2011 and R$9.6 million in 2021.

Disproportion of forces

One of the problems with the growing influence of these pro-disarmament entities is the imbalance in the public debate. Organizations opposed to disarmament have much more difficulty obtaining financing.

Another consequence is the distortion of reality. An IPEA researcher or a university professor is, in theory, guided by the search for facts, wherever they lead. NGO researchers do not have this freedom. Precisely because they have a disarmamentist preconception, these groups would not change their position even if the evidence said otherwise. And if they did, they would lose a lot of their funding.

Criminal Justice Prosecutor and master from the University of Girona, in Spain, Luciano Lara says that the correlation between legal weapons and violence, presented by these NGOs, is fictitious. “The data they present is all questionable and formed in an unclear way. What they do is already aimed at achieving the result they want and saying ‘more guns, more crimes’. But they forget to say ‘more illegal weapons, more crimes’”, says Luciano.

The prosecutor recalls that the thesis that a large number of weapons are lost and end up in the hands of criminals also does not hold water. “The Lula government carried out the PF Recad (re-registration program) and showed that 99.65% of the weapons sold under the Bolsonaro government were re-registered. So, there is no way to say that weapons sold to CACs went to organized crime”, he says.

Furthermore, the crime rate in Brazil fell during the Bolsonaro government (in a comparison between 2018 and 2022), precisely when the Executive adopted a more favorable stance on weapons.

For Fabrício Rebelo, responsible for Cepedes (Center for Research in Law and Security), the economic disproportion between pro-disarmament and anti-disarmament organizations prevents a frank debate on the topic.

Rebelo recalls that, in 2005, the NGO Viva Rio was prevented by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) from participating in the referendum campaign on disarmament, precisely because it received foreign funding (at the time, from the Ford Foundation). “It is an unequal discussion, because, on the one hand, there are entities heavily financed by large corporations engaged in a progressive agenda, with resources to produce the most absurd studies and disseminate them as if they were truths, while, on the other, it is not possible to space not even for the release of official data, which would be enough to dismantle the entire anti-gun narrative”, he says.