COMMITMENT 4

To foster social integration, the protection of human rights and the elimination of any form of discrimination Programme Active Community

Starting in 1999, Programme Active Community has become the main instrument of action of the Executive Secretariat of Programme Solidarity Community, created in 19995 and which will be described later on. Active Community appears as a new strategy of the federal government, in partnership with the states, municipalities and organisations within society, to foster the development of deprived towns and communities all over the country. This new conception starts form the idea that only integrated and sustainable local development may overcome poverty and social exclusion.

Within this new paradigm, based upon the identification of shortages and economic and social potentialities of poor municipalities, to draw a local plan of action, funds will be better utilised, and there will also be income generation in the process of development. According to this conception, in addition to protection, these communities need social promotion by means of partnerships among governmental and non-governmental partners. These partnerships will leverage new funds. The programme is still in its initial stage, in circa 300 municipalities.

 The social integration of people of African descent

The last country to abolish slavery, in 1888, Brazil entered the Twentieth Century bearing the heavy heritage of slavery. Free but having no rights, former slaves and their descendants made up the first large mass of excluded Brazilians. Until the 1940s, this large contingent of people at the margin of society was not even noticed by Brazilian society. It did not exist within the Constitution and was not covered by public policies. It was simply ignored.

This heritage has been charging its price to date. One may not deal with indigence and exclusion in Brazil without taking into account the racial variable: although half of the Brazilian population is white, 69% of the poor and paupers are black or half-caste. Among this group, the level of schooling is two years lower than among the white population.

Three centuries of close contact with slavery brought about a mentality of indifference vis-à-vis of inequality, violence and exclusion, which have immobilised the black population in the lower part of the Brazilian social pyramid. It was only in the second half of the Twentieth Century that this mentality started being challenged by a new middle class and by the urban popular masses.

Even so, the process has been slow, partly due to the unwritten policy of dissimulation of problems, sheltered by the myth of Brazilian racial democracy. In an unheard of manner, starting in 1995, the State began acknowledging racism among the variables underlying the country’s structural unbalances, such as the inequality in the distribution of income and opportunities.

The introduction of the racial variable in the debate of the Brazilian social issue allowed the identification of areas of action of the State apt to respond to the specific claims of African descendants, such as justice and human rights, culture, education and health, in addition to the special case of the remnants of quilombos -communities established in the Nineteenth Century by runaway or recently freed slaves.

Justice and security - As far as justice and security are concerned, the following mechanisms are being put in place: a) the information system for the protection of the rights of the black population, with the participation of the National Secretariat for Human Rights, councils of the black community and organisations in charge of public policies at the three levels of government; d) specialised offices for assisting victims of racial crimes, in the different states of the Federation; c) data bases on the status of the black population, covering specific aspects, such as access to the labour market.

On May 13th, 1997, on the 109th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, a law was enacted setting forth-harsh penalties for the crime of racism.

Culture - The National Centre for Information and Reference on Black Culture will be created, within a new conception of culture for development, which takes into account the regional diversity, the potentiality for market participation, the national and international partnerships and, above all, the need for overcoming the structural inequalities brought about by the different forms of discrimination and debasement of the black population. Having its headquarters in Brasilia, the Centre is an initiative that meets an old claim of the black population, of researchers and of the tourism sector.

The Afro-Brazilian Culture Programme forecasts, among other activities, the upgrading of collections and the restoration of assets of the historical, artistic and archaeological Afro-Brazilian heritage. Still in the field of culture, in 1996, the slave leader Zumbi dos Palmares was included in the Pantheon of national heroes.

Education - The national curricular parameters now include, in their cross themes, guidelines for the appropriate way of dealing with the Brazilian multiple-character culture and of the black population in particular. The appropriate agencies have commenced production of new sets of didactic material for elementary schools that promote the values of racial equality and tolerance; and a literacy programme, in areas where the black population is highly concentrated, and a programme for the construction of schools, in communities that remain in former quilombos, are being implemented.

The recognition of black women - A specific programme meant to promote the recognition of black women’s economic, political and cultural role in Brazil is being developed, a programme involving research and systematisation of their history to be publicised in data bases. Training exchanges will ensure the participation of Brazilian black women in the main international forums, such as the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and the Related Intolerance, to be held in Geneva, in 2001, and the follow-up activities related to the 1995 Beijing Conference.

Health - The technical and scientific knowledge on health issues specific of the black population are being widened and consolidated, through the financing of clinical and epidemiological research activities. Based upon these studies, differentiated strategies have already been put into practice, such as the preparation and implementation of a national programme for the control of falciform anaemia, a disease typical of black populations.

Quilombos - The Constitution of 1988 recognised the right of the remnants of quilombos to the land they occupy, as a function of the importance of preserving the set of values and traditions maintained by those communities. Most of the existing areas - 724 communities - have already been registered for receiving final titles of possession of the land by the descendants of slaves. Sustainable development projects are being prepared, in a partnership of several government organisations with private initiative and with non-governmental organisations, to be put in place in those communities.

A country having the largest black population out of Africa, only now Brazil begins building a national-development agenda that contemplates the active participation of blacks. More and more the perception is disseminated that the Brazilian exclusion also has a colour, and that an agenda meant to tackle inequalities also has to do with the social fitting of Afro-Brazilians and of the indigenous peoples, as well as with the valorisation of Brazil’s cultural diversity.

In government’s social agenda, the indigenous-people issue has its importance guaranteed. It is translated into the determination to ensure the collective rights of indigenous societies, beginning with those concerning the economic and environmental preservation, and bearing duly in mind the ethnic, cultural and linguistic peculiar traits of each group.

The Brazilian indigenous population is currently estimated at circa 350 thousand people. The rates of demographic growth among the Indians, in the last three decades, have been circa 10% above the average rate of growth of the population as a whole. In 1970, the indigenous population was estimated at a little over 100 thousand people.

To ensure the physical and cultural integrity of indigenous societies, the policy implemented after 1995 is based upon two axes: the demarcation of lands and universal access to public health and education services - including specific and inter-cultural schooling.

The demarcation of indigenous lands - During the last five years, government has issued 105 legal deeds recognising those lands. The total area that was regularised - 32 million hectares - is four times larger than the territory of Austria. It corresponds to a little over one third of the total recognised indigenous land in Brazil (97,2 million hectares)- which, in turn, represent 11% of the 8.5 million square kilometres national territory. This effort surpasses what all previous governments did.

Education - For the first time in history, the Ministry of Education is developing actions apt to ensure a school of Indians and for Indians. The most important initiative in this direction has been the definition of curricular parameters specially geared to indigenous schools, which so far were guided by curricula that had nothing or very little to do with their history and their culture. The effort of adapting the curricula to indigenous schools was carried out in a manner apt to preserve and value the mother tongue and the cultural traditions of Indians. There is also an ongoing project aimed at training and developing indigenous teachers.

Health - Indigenous health, the activities related to which were split between the National Foundation for Indians - FUNAI, an organisation of the Ministry of Justice, and the national Health Foundation - FUNASA, of the Ministry of Health, became FUNASA’s exclusive attribution. FUNASA currently counts on a budget three times bigger than the sum of the previous resources, to provide full health care to indigenous peoples.

By the end of 2000, over R$ 100 million will have been invested in medical and sanitary assistance to indigenous communities, for a population estimated at 350 thousand Indians of 215 ethnic groups. Assistance will be provided by means of the creation of Special Indigenous Sanitary Districts, which will take into account the ethnic, cultural, social and sanitary specificity of those communities, distributed over 24 states of the Federation and circa 2.500 Brazilian municipalities.

The Indian Act - These measures also encompass the concern over the urgent surpassing of the individual tutelage relation model, which maintains Indians as elements peripheral to citizenship, moving to a model of tutelage of collective rights, as enshrined in the Constitution. That is why a new Indian Act is been tabled for discussion. It represents the consolidation of a strategy based upon the premises of full citizenship, of respect for the ethnic identity and of support for projects concerned with the future of native populations.

The current government has articulated, for the first time, the public security policy with the defence of citizenship and of human rights. Another pioneer initiative was the launching, in May 1996, of the National Human-Right Programme. The main activity now has to do with the mobilisation of civil society to share the urgent task of incorporating to the every-day life of a growing number of Brazilians the spirit and the word of the National Human-Right Programme.

To do so, this programme has established as a priority, among other initiatives: a) to approve the draft constitutional amendment tabled by Government, in 1996, transferring to the federal courts the jurisdiction over crimes against human rights; b) to approve the bill that transfers to ordinary courts the jurisdiction over any crimes committed by members of the military police; c) to approve the legislation that widens the possibility of application of cumulative penalties; d) to propose and cause to approve the reform of the Council for the Defence of the Rights of Human Beings, in order to increase the participation of civil society in that body, and to improve its partnership with the State; e) to broaden the Witness Protection Programme, in partnership with the state governments and social organisations, in order to fight impunity; f) to upgrade the Programme for the Protection of Victims of Crimes and Their Families, also in a regime of partnership; g) to encourage innovating projects for the recovery of youngsters who have committed crimes without violence, by means of community activities, professional and educational programmes, also lending support to the families and to the victims of the offenders.

Publications

Summary

Commitment 5