August 5th, 2026, marked the opening of the fourth edition of the Rio School on Global Governance, Democracy and Human Rights, one of the initiatives of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on EU-LA Global Challenges (CEJM), co-funded by the European Union. Professor Paula Wojcikiewicz Almeida, director of the CEJM, gave the opening lecture, in which she introduced the CEJM’s main activities and the course’s programme, which will include guest lectures from renowned academics and practitioners from national and international partner institutions.

The Rio School is a four-month in-person programme, taught in English, aimed at expanding knowledge on International Organizations’ practices on Global Governance. The course addresses a variety of topics within the Centre’s main research areas. It intends to shed light on the understanding of the European Union’s role as a global regulator, its emergence as a normative actor, the normative authority of new subjects and non-State actors in shaping international organizations’ law and their relevance to global governance. It assesses multilevel and informal decision-making mechanisms in the European and international spheres and their impact on global regulation.

The Rio School offers students the opportunity to learn from globally renowned lecturers and practitioners on the main practice fields in international law and international relations. By combining theory and practice methodology, the course’s curriculum proposes a North-South critical view on current approaches to global governance and aims to increase awareness of the European Union's and Brazil’s common interests and shared values.

It received over 150 applications. The selected students come from various fields, such as Law, International Relations, Economics, and Public Management, from domestic and international institutions, including 25 exchange students from FGV Rio Law of eight different nationalities.