Library

The creation of the “Enzo Melegari” Human Rights Library is the result of an agreement between UFPB and the Latin American Lay Movement (MLAL), an international NGO for cooperation based in Verona, Italy.

The library is named Enzo Melegari, in memory of the former president of the Lay Movement of Latin America.

Its collection is available to students, professors and researchers of UFPB, interested in deepening their knowledge in ​​Human Rights.

Collection

– The library has a collection of more than 2000 texts, including books, magazines, booklets, documents, monographs, dissertations, cd-roms and videos.

– The books can be consulted through the library system of the UFPB, at www.biblioteca.ufpb.br

– Their loans is available at NCDH headquarters.

Responsible Librarian

Ângela Maria de Almeida Gouveia

Enzo Melegari (1946-2002)

Born in Verona, Italy, he was raised in a family with deep catholic beliefs that marked his personal and professional choices throughout his life.
In the sixties, he was one of the first to refuse military service due to a nonviolent position, inspired by evangelical principles. But the gesture contributed to that, in the early seventies, the Italian parliament promulgated the law of “objection of conscience”, which allowed the replacement of military service with volunteer civilian service.

Afterwards, like other young Catholics, he followed the path of international volunteerism, experimenting with the ideals of the so-called “third-worldism”, one of the deep and transversal ideological currents of the youth movements of that time. In 1974, he worked in Venezuela as a researcher at the University of Caracas in an MLAL project in collaboration with labor unions from that country.

When he returned to Italy, he took an management position in MLAL and became an intellectual and moral reference for the organization for which he worked for, with little interruptions, throughout his life. As manager of MLAL, he promoted and participated in several campaigns of international solidarity: for the Amazon and its people, for post-revolution Nicaragua, against child labor, for homeless children of Brazil and Peru; thinking of a project to allow the dialogue between the two antipodes of age: children and the elderly; reviving of the Study Center of the MLAL, and care for the publications on the most relevant and urgent issues of the Latin American agenda; publishing of the book Solidarity at the Crossroads; visiting almost all the countries of Latin America, following the projects of MLAL; founding IFORM, an agency for training and evaluation; and participating, since 1995, in the construction of SPICES, the International School and Development Cooperation.

In 2000, he was elected president of the MLAL, a position for which he was unanimously reappointed to in April 2002; but he fell ill suddenly when he was in full activity and prevented him from continuing the new projects.

Enzo has always been ahead of his time, never involved in small, petty, intrigues or personal quarrels; was an intellectual of Christian volunteerism. Deeply Catholic, an identity he never lost, which he expressed discreetly, as one does with deep convictions that mark their lives. He knew how to listen, was patient enough to remain silent through hours of meetings and assemblies, to then elaborate and systematize the proposals of others; he rarely spoke or wrote in the first person (perhaps for an excess of modesty), but always as a spokesperson, although with personal and original touches, of humor, feelings, concerns and proposals from the movement.

Enzo was one of the mentors of the project UNI-CIDADANIA: he collaborated in its idealization, fought for it to be approved and always accompanied it with great interest and affection. In March 2002, a few weeks before his passing, he came purposely to Recife to discuss with the project’s coordination the directions it should take.