position held by Dr Clare Roberts, former president of the Inter-American Court. Brazil has also taken the lead role in the Inter-American Convention against Discrimination, which is currently under consideration by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This convention attempts to provide minorities with a regional mechanism to redress human rights violations throughout the Americas. Currently, a case of racial discrimination must be tried as a generic human rights violation, because there is no statute that oversees cases of racial discrimination in the OAS. The creation of the Inter-American Convention is a vital step to provide African-descendants and other minorities with a form of redress in countries where national courts have been reluctant to address racial inequities.
Currently every Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas has officially yielded jurisdiction to the Inter-American Court over basic human rights matters. Many indigenous communities have successfully used the Court to influence their governments into granting concessions they would not have otherwise been offered. African-descendant communities are beginning to explore the potential of the Court as an instrument for asserting their legal rights. This ethnic group has much to gain from filing lawsuits on the grounds of racial discrimination, because the act of filing a lawsuit in effect creates a public record that African-descendants consider themselves the victims of racism in their society, thereby negating claims by some governments that black people do not face discrimination. Tapeba and Tremenbe communities from the northern coast were among the first to be colonized and assimilated by the Portuguese. In 1993 the court ruling which expelled Kaiowá and Nandevi Guarani from the state of Mato Grosso do Sul to make way for cattle ranchers was overruled by a regional tribunal; it recognized their original right to the land and ruled that the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), an agency of the Brazilian government created in 1988, should demarcate it. Although most community members did eventually return to their land, the situation in Mato Grosso do Sul remains tense even today, with continual land disputes, death threats and murders of indigenous leaders and community members by assassins ('pistoleiros') hired by local farmers. According to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), Mato Grosso do Sul reported the highest number of murders, general violence, and land disputes from 2003 to 2005. Suicide has also become a serious problem among indigenous communities, and the Kaiowá people in particular, among whom there have been over 150 suicides in recent years. The Kaiowá are nomadic people who have traditionally migrated in search of the land without evil. Thus increases in suicide may be in response to dire living conditions and modern encroachments on their lifestyle as well as an attempt to reach this promised land. At least 17 of the 60 isolated indigenous groups in the Amazon are in danger of extermination as a result of murders and other practices initiated by illegal settlers and agricultural companies.