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KIDS IN BRAZIL
Great law not enough
Brazil is celebrating the 14th anniversary of its
Child and Adolescent Statute. Before this statute, 30 percent of
Brazilian school age children were not in the classroom. Today that
number has dropped to 3 percent. For the law to be really effective,
however, it's believed that there should be room for NGOs to help
authorities.
Minister Nilmário Miranda, who heads Brazil's Special
Secretariat for Human Rights, says that much progress has been made in
the 14 years that the Brazilian ECA (Estatuto da Criança e do
Adolescente — Child and Adolescent Statute) has been in existence, but
problems remain in dealing with youths involved in criminal activities.
“We belong to a tradition of repression. People think
that tossing bad kids into jail resolves the problem,” declared the
Minister, speaking at the opening of the First National Youth Conference
in Brasilia, July 13.
The ECA prescribes the following measures in cases of
youth crime: a warning, mandatory reparation of damages, community
service, assisted liberty (parole), semiliberty or incarceration in an
educational institution. Nilson Alves, director of citizenship and youth
projects at Unicef, says that discussions on lowering the age of
criminal responsibility or harsher sentencing miss the point. He says it
is important to apply the socio-educational measures in the ECA. “That
is the only way a youth can be reintegrated into society,” he declares.
Edson Seda, one of the authors of the ECA, says all
that has to be done is put the document into practice. “During the XXI
century, Brazilians will become aware of the fact that children should
not be beaten, parents are supposed to protect their children, local
authorities should assist parents and, finally, the right place for a
child is in school,” he says. Seda says the ECA has made some progress.
Before the ECA, 30 percent of Brazilian school age children were not in
the classroom. Today that number is 3 percent. But, he says, for the ECA
to be really effective, there has to be room for NGOs to function along
with federal, state and municipal authorities.
Unicef says that the Brazilian ECA is one of the most
advanced in the world. But it will become reality only when remaining
disparities are overcome and each and every one of the 61 million boys
and girls in the country have equal opportunities.
ECA's role
At a meeting organized by the NGO Visão Mundial (World Vision), a number
of youths were invited to comment on their lives and the role of the
Brazilian Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA). Known as the First Youth
Conference, it was part of celebrations of the 14th anniversary of the
ECA.
Lourisvanda Alves de Souza, 18, from Bodocó,
Pernambuco, told the meeting that she heard of the ECA only last year at
another youth conference. She declared that what she has observed is
that many laws just exist on paper. “The laws are not part of our lives,
although they deal with our rights and obligations,” she said.
Dayana da Silva, 15, from Rio de Janeiro, reported
that the ECA actually changed her family's life. When her older brothers
got involved with drugs, her mother went to a youth tutelage board (Conselho
Tutelar), which was set up by the ECA, and got assistance. Today, Dayana
and her younger sister study, while her brothers abandoned drugs, got
married and have jobs.
At the conference, it was announced that one million
copies of the ECA will be distributed in schools and other civil
organizations. Meanwhile, the secretariat has set up a partnership
effort with the Federal Police to disarm youths, making it possible for
them to grow up in an environment where there is less violence and more
peace.
Brazil example
The director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Brazil,
Armand Pereira, thought it would be ideal if Brazil could assign
priority to reducing child labor in the 5-13 age bracket. He spoke
recently at the opening of the seminar “Child Labor at the Start of the
21st Century: Analysis of Data and Prospects.”
A study by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics (IBGE) on child labor in Brazil found that there are 1.5
million working children and adolescents in the 5-13 age bracket,
another 1.5 million in the 14-15 group, and 2.4 million adolescents
between 16 and 17 irregularly inserted in the labor market. In Pereira's
view, this study, which covered the period 1992-2002, and the media
played a fundamental role in advancing the process of eradicating child
labor in the country.
According to Pereira, “there are programs to delay the
entry of young people in these age groups into the workplace, through
the distribution of grants for them to stay in school and not go to
work.”
The Ministry of Social Development's Program for the
Eradication of Child Labor (Peti) currently benefits 810 thousand
children in 2,606 Brazilian municipalities. The Peti is meant to
eliminate what are considered the worst forms of child labor, those
regarded as dangerous, burdensome, unhealthful, or degrading, such as in
charcoal kilns, brickyards, sugarcane fields, and tobacco plantations.
The program pays a grant to families with children between 7 and 15 who
are involved in these types of work. In return, the family must pledge
to remove the children from work and enroll them in school. The National
Coordinator of the ILO's International Program for the Elimination of
Child Labor, Pedro Américo Furtado de Oliveira, told the seminar that
Brazil was one of the first countries to establish a program to combat
child labor and is recognized as a model for Latin America and the
world, because of the policies that were developed.
Oliveira recalled that “Brazil developed the Program
for the Eradication of Child Labor (Peti), created by the Ministry of
Social Development in 1996, even before it ratified the two ILO
conventions that deal with child labor, in 2000 and 2001.”
Luciana Vasconcelos Translated from the Portuguese
by Allen Bennett.
15 July 2004
http://www.brazzil.com/2004/html/articles/jul04/p129jul04.htm
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