ly reluctant to enforce discrimination cases, because discrimination is difficult for court employees to identify as a crime. Punishment for discrimination is so severe that judges are reluctant to recommend the required sentencing. Further, there is such a lack of understanding of racial discrimination by the court that, if an individual can demonstrate some non-European ancestry or connection to a person of another racial group via marriage – a standard that many Brazilians meet – the aggressor of a racist attack is exonerated. Despite advances in documenting racial discrimination, bringing forward cases of discrimination is often futile under the current system because there are seldom any convictions. In a study of 22 states by the Catholic University of São Paulo only 394 of 651 discrimination cases were brought to trial, and there was not a single conviction for racial discrimination among the cases presented to the court. Senator Paulo Paim has been a major advocate for a Statute for Racial Equality in Brazil. This statute sets mandatory guidelines for sentencing and strengthens criminal penalties for committing racist acts. The statute, however, continues to face major challenges in the Brazilian parliament. Although it passed the lower house, it is unlikely that it will become law in the near future because of the increasing debate on issues of race in Brazil.
Nevertheless racial discrimination continued to receive more recognition and remediation attempts from the 'Lula' government in 2007. For example, a quota law still under consideration will institute a system of racial preferences for the civil service, private sector and universities. Currently Afro-Brazilians represent only 16 percent of the university population. During 2006-7 more than 30 universities voluntarily implemented a quota system.
Brazil has taken a leadership role in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights at the Organization of American States (OAS). Brazil is the sole supporter of the Special Rapporteur for African Descendants, a 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