RIGHTS-BRAZIL: High Correlation Between Skin Colour, Poverty

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 20 2000 (IPS) - People with dark skin in Brazil suffer a highly unequal level of development, a disproportionate poverty rate and difficulties of social ascent, as reflected by the fact that not a single member of the diplomatic corps is of African descent, activists complain.

The fight against discrimination has picked up steam in Latin America’s giant in the runup to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, to be held next year in South Africa, and as part of the debate on the inclusion of economic and social rights in the government’s National Programme on Human Rights.

A recent study found a close correlation between poverty and dark skin colour in Brazil, pointing to a high level of racial discrimination.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI), which measures life expectancy, school enrollment and per capita income, ranked Brazil 79th among 174 countries classified in 1999, with an HDI of 0.739.

But while Brazil, one of the world’s 10 largest economies, has a relatively low ranking, the HDI for people of African descent (a category comprising all those who described themselves as “black” or “brown” in the last census) would stand at 0.671 — even lower than that of the population of South Africa, which freed itself of a racist political regime in 1994.

According to a study by the Federation of Entities of Social Assistance and Education, Brazilians of African descent would thus rank 108th, compared to a ranking of 49th for people who figure in the census as “white.”

Andrea Coutro, with the Centre for the Articulation of Marginalised Populations (CEAP), said Brazil’s latest census estimated people of African descent at 45.2 percent of a total population of 167 million, while 54 percent described themselves as “white”, and only 0.8 percent as “yellow” (including the 0.2 percent of the population counted as indigenous).

Such distinctions are complex in a country with such a highly racially mixed population.

The gap between “whites” and people of African descent in this country is twice as wide as the gap in the United States, a country notorious for its racial tension, pointed out economist Marcelo Paixao, the chief author of the study by the Federation of Entities of Social Assistance and Education.

Depending on the source of the estimate, one-third to half of the population in Brazil lives below the poverty line. A presidential adviser, Vilmar Faria, says 13.9 percent of Brazilians — in other words, around 21 million people — live in extreme poverty. The campaign against hunger, meanwhile, refers to 32 million chronically malnourished people.

Faria also recognises that 69 percent of the poor in Brazil are “black” or “brown”.

The fact that a disproportionate percentage of the poor in Brazil are dark-skinned means the fight against racial discrimination inevitably overlaps with the struggle for social rights. The National Movement for Human Rights (MNDH) recognises that in its attempt to get the government programme for human rights to incorporate its proposals.

The international secretary of the MNDH, Pierre Roy, a Catholic priest from Haiti who has been working in Brazil for eight years, says the top priority is to bring the black population’s access to public services into line with that of whites, in order to eventually improve conditions for everyone.

According to official statistics, only 26 and 49.7 percent of Brazilians of African descent have adequate housing and basic sanitation, respectively, compared to 54 and 73.6 percent of those counted by the census as white.

The gap in living conditions is also reflected by the infant mortality rate, which stands at 62 per 1,000 live births among Afro-Brazilians and 37 per 1,000 among whites, according to the latest figures, from 1996. A similar difference is seen in education, with the illiteracy rate among blacks twice as high as that of whites.

Affirmative action programmes, such as reserving 40 percent of places in public universities or setting hiring quotas for people of colour, figure among the proposals that organisations of civil society are pushing to get included in the programme that the government is preparing to study in 2001, which is to incorporate economic, social and cultural rights.

An effective human rights and anti-poverty plan must be focused on people of African descent, stressed Coutro, at the Centre for the Articulation of Marginalised Populations (CEAP).

The executive secretary of CEAP, Ivanir dos Santos, said that demanding that quotas be set, even small or unfeasible ones, was a “means to trigger a debate and lay bare the existing discrimination.”

For example, it would be enough simply to demand that a five percent quota be set for people of colour on Brazil’s diplomatic corps to highlight the existing discrimination, because there has never yet been even a single black ambassador, he pointed out.

Similar discrimination exists in the navy and the air force, which demand a high level of technical training, added Dos Santos.

Women were successful in getting a 30 percent quota reserved for female candidates in elections “because it favours the middle class,” said Dos Santos, who argued that a similar measure for blacks in universities or certain professions ran up against heavy opposition because it would in effect benefit the poor.

Besides affirmative action-style measures, non-governmental organisations want the government’s new National Programme on Human Rights to go beyond mere lip service and good intentions.

The new plan must replace the current vague promises to “support and stimulate” equality with “concrete targets and timeframes” for securing that objective, said Roy, who inaugurated the MNDH office in Rio de Janeiro early this week.

Other demands by activists are that a “living” minimum monthly salary be set, six times the current 151 reals (84 dollars); broader land reform with more credit available to beneficiaries; and access by blacks to social security, of which most are now deprived because they work in the informal sector of the economy.

Human rights groups point out that although Brazil is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the government has failed to deliver either of the two reports due on its progress in adopting policies advocating such rights.

Moreover, the government as well as organisations of civil society have limited their focus so far on advocating political and civil rights, something that “has to change, because without solutions for the grave social problems, like extreme poverty, human rights cannot exist,” said Roy.