|
The president of Brazil's Funai (Fundação Nacional do Índio - National Indian Foundation), Mércio Gomes, is participating today in the 61st meeting of the United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in Geneva, where he will present the Indianist policy of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Administration.
Gomes will tell the participants that Brazil has made progress in identifying indigenous lands and that at present 12.5% of the territory is recognized as areas traditionally belonging to indigenous communities.
"But guaranteeing the land is not enough; it is necessary to ensure the self-sustainability of each community through the provision of education, health, and food security," the Funai president contends.
Another point that Gomes will impart at the meeting is that the five guidelines of the Indianist policy of President Lula's Administration are based on the assurance of lands, health, education, ethno-development, and indigenous participation in Brazilian society.
48 indigenous territories, covering an area of 16.5 million hectares, received final ratification during the first two years of the current Administration.
Funai recognized 604 indigenous territories, 480 of which have been demarcated or homologated or are in the process of being demarcated, while 124 are in the process of being identified or recognized. The goal is for all these lands to be identified by the end of 2006.
There are 430 thousand Indians presently living in Brazil. Around 150 thousand are of school age and attend class in their own villages or nearby municipalities.
The federal government transfers funds through the Ministry of Education to enable states and municipalities to act in this area. The system of quotas in federal universities permits 1.3 thousand Indians to attend universities.
The Brazilian government also attempts to provide indigenous peoples with conditions of production and ensure that production increases occur in a manner compatible with the social equilibrium of indigenous communities.
The goal is to achieve self-sustainability and the production of a surplus that permits their inclusion on an equal basis in Brazilian society. "Ethno-development is the greatest challenge facing a development policy on behalf of indigenous peoples," Gomes affirms.
During the meeting a report from the commission that is drafting the Universal Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples will be presented.
According to the president of the Funai, since there is still no consensus, it is likely that the text will remain under debate before being submitted to the UN General Assembly.
"The countries are expected to request more time to discuss the matter and arrive at a consensus," Gomes says.
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.