Legal Practice & Activism
In collaboration with Kari and Lucas, her colleagues in our legal team, Carol determines AmazoniAlerta’s legal strategy. It aims to protect and promote the safety, rights and lands of our local community partners in the Amazon and in the long term, contribute strategically to the advancement of Indigenous rights at the national and international level.
Carol is a highly experienced Indigenist, adept in both the practice and theory of human rights and constitutional law as applied to Indigenous rights and issues in Brazil and is a specialist in the rights of indigenous peoples living in isolation. Recently Carol has been developing a profound interest in the Rights of Nature legal theory movement. She is part of the Multispecies Rights Observatory and is passionate about the increasingly urgent need to conserve and regenerate Brazil’s socio-natural wealth in its multiple biomes.
Carol observes that, “in addition to suffering greatly from the impacts of climate change, indigenous peoples are those who conserve nature the most, because they know that they are part of it. They teach us that any solution for the continuity of human life on the planet necessarily involves serious consideration and commitment to the other beings with whom we inhabit the Earth. So we need to seek climate justice in which those who pollute the most are more responsible for mitigating the impacts on those who suffer the most.”
Alongside her work with AmazoniAlerta Carol is also a legal advisor to Opi (Observatory of Human Rights of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples) where Bruno Pereira, the Brazilian indigenist who was murdered with British journalist Dom Philips in the Vale do Javari. Carol is the personal lawyer to Bruno’s family and continues to advocate for justice on their and Bruno’s behalf. It is a case whose outcome Carol believes will be a defining issue for Brazil, globally: “Brazil is one of the countries that kills the most human rights defenders, including indigenous and environmental defenders. The way in which Brazil brings justice to Bruno will show the world the importance that the country gives to the defenders of those who protect the forest the most: the indigenous people.”
Alongside Lucas Cravo, Carol is also a partner at Cravo e Santana – Advocacia, a public interest law firm. CS – Advocacia specializes in strategic litigation and advocacy for civil society organizations in defence of fundamental rights, before the justice system, government institutions and international human rights protection systems.
Carol serves on several key official Brazilian governmental working groups and bodies that advance Indigenous rights in Brazil on critical legal and political fronts. She is a member of the working group ‘Indigenous Rights: Access to Justice and Procedural Singularities’ of the National Council of Justice, where she helped draft Resolution No. 454/2022 that establishes guidelines and procedures to effectuate the guarantee of the right to access to the legal process for indigenous people. She is also a member of the Committee for the ‘Promotion of Indigenous Participation in the Electoral Process of the Superior Electoral Court’. Carol is a guest expert of the Situation Room established by the Supreme Federal Court in ADPF 709, an ongoing constitutional law process. Specialist in International Monitoring of the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Carol was recently appointed as board member of the Environmental Assets Company of the State of Pará, which aims to trade carbon credits in a socially responsible manner. Pará will host COP 30 at its capital Belém in November 2025.
Previous experience
Previously Carol worked at FUNAI, the Brazilian body that establishes and carries out policies relating to Indigenous peoples, for over 10 years. She was Chief of Staff of the Attorney General’s Office of the Court of Accounts of the State of Paraná between 2005 and 2007.
Qualifications & Teaching
Carol has a Ph.D. in Law and a Masters Degree in State Theory and Constitutional Law from University of Brasília. Her PhD thesis, which can be read here (In Portuguese), focuses on the annulment of the territorial demarcation of Guyraroká indigenous territorial rights in Brazil in 2014 by the Supreme Court using the Marcol Temporal legal argument as part of wider assault on the constitutional rights of Indigenous peoples. She is also accredited as a specialist in Environmental Law in Practice by the School of the Judiciary of the State of Rio de Janeiro.
As a Professor of Undergraduate Law at the Faculty of Ilhéus-BA and Unime/Anhanguera of Itabuna-BA), taught Constitutional Law, State Theor, and Human Rights between 2012 and 2014.
Carol is the author of multiple opinions and academic articles published in many national and international journals and of four books on various legal subjects which can be previewed here.
Awards
In 2023, as part of Opi’s legal team, Carol received an Innovare Award, one of the top Brazilian Legal awards, in the Advocacy category for advancing “Access to justice for isolated indigenous peoples”.
