|
 The Brazilian Foreign Office has held earlier this month (July 17 and 18) at Itamaraty Palace, in Rio de Janeiro, the 1st Conference on Brazilian Communities Abroad. The objective of the event was to expand the debate on Brazilian immigration and discuss public policies to aid these Brazilians, who total over 3 million on all continents.
Over the last six years, Brazil has been trying to expand its consular network, mainly to provide greater support to Brazilian immigrants, which are now spread all around the world.
One of the countries that received a Brazilian consulate was Lebanon, an Arab country that concentrates the greatest Brazilian population in the Middle East, with around 5,000 people.
For this reason, among the authorities and representatives of organizations that provide support to Brazilians abroad, the Brazilian consul to Beirut, Michael Gepp, was also invited.
According to him, the situation of the Brazilians in the Arab country is very different from that of Brazilians living in the United States or Europe. "We have no Brazilians who travel to Lebanon searching for a job," said Gepp.
One of the main reasons for Brazilians to travel to Lebanon is to visit relatives, as in Brazil there are around 8 million Lebanese and descendants. "For this reason, the Brazilian population fluctuates very much," stated the consul-general.
Another differential of the Brazilians who live in Lebanon with regard to the communities in other countries is the question of illegality. "No Brazilian traveling to Lebanon is illegal in the country," said Gepp.
Another point is the question of money transfers of Brazilian immigrants, which also does not take place in the Arab country. "It is a Brazilian community that is slightly different from those of other countries, but I think our presence in this meeting is important," he said.
The concern of the government of Brazil with its immigrants caused the Itamaraty to open an Under Secretariat-General for Brazilian Communities Abroad, in 2006. The organization is in charge of the event, which counts on the support of Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation (Funag), also connected to the ministry.
Specialists and government authorities have discussed themes like migration and international law, migratory control, the profile of Brazilian communities abroad, political representation of the Brazilian Diaspora, government activities regarding Brazilian communities in the labor, social security and education areas, money transfer and the government policy for the Brazilian Diaspora.
Representatives of the Brazilian communities in the United States, where the biggest Brazilian community overseas is concentrated, Europe, South America and Japan have exchanged experiences and chose topics that were discussed in plenary sessions.
Anba
 |
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.