|
What is referred to as structural violence is the main reason that Brazilian children and adolescents are assigned to shelters. This is one of the findings of the National Survey of Shelters for Children and Adolescents, conducted by Brazil's IPEA.
The IPEA (Institute of Applied Economic Research) analyzed the profile of the children and youngsters assigned to these institutions and the reason they are there.
Structural violence encompasses a group of factors: unemployment, the family's lack of financial means, parental maladjustment, and mistreatment, among others.
The general coordinator of the study, Enid Rocha, said that "the profile is mainly one of social exclusion."
The majority of children and adolescents assigned to shelters are boys (58.5%), black (63% ), and are in these institutions for reasons related to poverty and material need (24.1%).
In terms of age groups, the IPEA study reveals that the residents of shelters are generally older children, for whom reintegration in the family and adoption are more problematical.
In the 589 federally funded shelters included in the survey, the IPEA confirmed the presence of 20 thousand children and adolescents. The largest concentration is in the Southeastern region and, in terms of states, São Paulo.
Rocha informed that the majority of these children have families (87%), and most of them maintain ties with their families (58.2%), despite the prevailing social belief which considers them orphans.
Notwithstanding the continuity of this relationship, the family's lack of financial means is the reason given for assignment to a shelter, Rocha pointed out.
She went on to comment that Brazilian law does not recognize this as a motive for parents to deposit their children in shelters. "According to the Statute of Children and Adolescents, material need cannot lead to the privation or loss of parental authority."
She observed, however, that the situation of material want, precarious living conditions, and unemployment cannot be dissociated from situations of violence within the family. "It is impossible for us to dissociate these two phenomena," she affirmed.
Rocha indicated the need to impose discipline on admission to the shelters. "The data demonstrate that it behooves us to regulate this entryway, because, according to the Statute (of Children and Adolescents), assignment to a shelter cannot be for reasons of material need, and a shelter is one of the last measures that should be adopted," she explained.
The law determines a series of steps prior to assignment to a shelter, such as, for example, providing guidance to the family and requiring the child to be enrolled at school. When the case involves violence and mistreatment, the aggressor should be removed from the home.
"Our legislation provides for all of this on the grounds of coexistence within the family, to postpone and avert going to a shelter. But what we observe is that there is an indiscrimate application of this measure," she said.
Besides material need, children end up in shelters for reasons of abandonment by parents and guardians (18.8%), domestic violence (11.6%), and drug addiction on the part of parents and guardians (11.3%).
Among the total of children and adolescents covered by the survey, which the IPEA carried out in 2003 in 589 Brazilian shelters, 32.9% had been living in the shelters for a period ranging from two to five years, and only 10.7% could be adopted. The comparison was based on data from the year before.
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.