|
A move by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice during Carnaval is aimed at raising the awareness of sex professionals when it comes to the trafficking of women.
The initiative marks the beginning of another phase of the Program to Prevent and Combat Human Traffic, which is focused on certain Brazilian states and specific segments of the population.
According to Marina Oliveira, coordinator of the program in the Ministry, the intention is to make clear to the potential targets of human traffic decoys the risks they are running.
The information appears on the wrappers of condoms distributed by the government. Ceará was the state chosen to launch this phase. Around 20 thousand condoms furnished by the Ministry of Health were sent to Fortaleza and cities in the interior of the state.
"Besides alerting to the risks, there is information about where to go to seek help or lodge complaints. The women are lured under the pretext of a better life, guaranteed employment, and a bigger salary, as well as the chance for social inclusion," Oliveira explained.
She informed that a diagnosis conducted by the Ministry identified Ceará as one of the main sources of women who are shipped abroad for purposes of sexual exploitation.
The survey also discovered a considerable number of victims in the states of Goiás, Rio, and São Paulo. The principal reception points include Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and countries that share borders with Brazil, such as Surinam, Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia.
Combatting international human traffic is one of the priorities of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Administration in the overall campaign against criminal organizations.
In October, 2004, the Minister of Justice, Márcio Thomaz Bastos, launched the national campaign against human traffic.
One of the measures was to place educational inserts in passports and condom packages, together with radio announcements and posters in airports, Federal Police superintendencies, and locales where large crowds circulate.
Translation: David Silberstein
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.