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As the February 7 date for general elections in Haiti approaches, various preelection situation reports are being prepared. The six-nation group that has assumed responsibility for stabilizing the country, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Canada, Chile and France will send an evaluation team this Sunday.
And Brazil will send its own, consisting of José Eduardo Martins Felício, a diplomat, and professor Ricardo Seitenfus, an expert in International Relations. According to Seitenfus, Haiti has to be rebuilt from the ground up. "It is one of the world's poorest nations and a regular succession of crises and problems just makes it poorer year by year. This perverse cycle must be broken. What Haiti needs is social and political peace, and a legitimate government," he says. The professor goes on to emphasis that Haiti is going to need long-term assistance, especially from Brazil and other Latin American countries. "After the election the international community must realize that the new government will need a helping hand with infrastructure, from telecommunications to urban garbage collection." UN Councils Brazil and the United Nations have signed a memorandum of understanding that will result in the creation of Economic and Social Development Councils (CDE) throughout Latin America based on the Brazilian experience with such councils over the last three years. The UN calls the CDEs "A new democratic institution for promoting dialogue and participatory governance..." According to Fernando Schimidt, a special aide for international relations at the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential office in Brazilian capital Brasília, the memorandum is recognition by the UN of the efficiency of the Brazilian CDEs. ABr
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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.
This Professor has emphasised that Haiti is going to need long-term assistance especially from Brazil and other Latin American countries and to a certain extent i do agree with him.
Nevetheless lets not forget that, only this week, the Haiti Government released information to the World Media to say that Colombians are in Haiti causing chaos in its country and is responsible for many of the recent kidnappings - ransoms of high profile families, drug trafficking and is also responsible for polital instability?
Maybe Brazil should be involved and other Latin American countries, but to involve Colombians would be like putting salt in wounds which are raw and still open.
Why does it appear that wherever Colombians go they leave this trail of untold misary and destruction as they do not seem to be happy people at all?
Colombia is a rich country that has large amounts of natural resources and if this was untilized correctly could easiy develop its country and feed its people but has somehow choosen to produce HUGE amounts of drugs (cocaine) which is causing so much instability in the world. I do not understand this kind of thinking and neither do i want to because i don't want to get into this warped kind of logic.
At least this professor is thinking in the right direction and is a breath of fresh air as it is nice to come across people who strive for positive changes simply for the good of mankind.
This just goes to show that if Brazilians put thier Brains together constructively, they could easily turn things around and resolve these social unjustices?
Thanks Professorfor giving sound practical sense....