São Paulo Center for the Study of Violence (NEV/USP)

The Center for the Study of Violence of the University of São Paulo (NEV/USP) is one of the Research Support Centers of USP. Since 1987, NEV/USP has been developing researches and training researchers having as one of its main features the interdisciplinary approach in discussing the relationships between violence, democracy and human rights.

Throughout its 20 years of existence, NEV/USP has developed a series of research projects and extension programs funded by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Committee of the Red Cross, CNPq and FAPESP, and has also entered into agreements with UN agencies (WHO/PAHO, UNDP), European Union, and in Brazil, with the Ministries of Health and Justice and the Secretariat of Human Rights. 

Currently NEV/USP is engaged in investigating what kind of democracy and governance is being developed in Brazil, especially considering the current context where: gross human rights violations persist; territories are dominated by the organized crime; the presence of corruption is systemic; homicide rates are still high; impunity is high; access to some civil rights is limited; the culture of human rights, supportive to the Rule of Law, is often absent.

In October 2000, NEV/USP was awarded with FAPESP’s Special Program, becoming one of the ten Research, Innovation and Diffusion Centers (CEPID). As a CEPID, NEV/USP’s functions of research and intervention became more institutionalized, establishing to this end a line of action that puts together the vocation of scientific research center with the growing experience of intervention, whether in training human resources qualified to the professional work in judicial and promotion of human rights agencies, and in the formulation and implementation of public policies for human rights and violence decrease.