The media opacity surrounding the actions of community leaders and non-governmental organizations in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic has led the União das Favelas, which includes the CUFA and the UNAS, to develop its own means and forms of communication. These are animated by a resistance movement that responds to the country’s shortage or even lack of public policy initiatives to address hunger. Using their own media resources, they have drawn attention to efforts that seek recognition of their fundamental rights. These Brazilian NGOs were created not by an institution located outside the community but instead by members of the community itself, who decided not to wait passively for aid to come from the outside world. Undertaking their own struggle for recognition, they seek to get beyond the media’s simplistic politics of pity.
- favelas
- politics of pity
- struggle for recognition
- humanitarian ethics
- under-representation