In a recently circulated report, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) assumes an unprecedented approach for dealing with the poverty faced by Brazilian children, including not only rent per capita indicators but also, the fulfillment of fundamental rights guaranteed by the law.  The document shows that “purely” monetary poverty has decreased in the last decade; yet, deprivation of one or more rights has not declined in the same way. However, according to the report, 18 million children and adolescents (34% of the total) live in families without enough income to cover the basic food basket (less than 71 Euros a month in urban areas and 55 Euros in rural ones).

When only accounting for the deprivation of rights that fall into the six categories of education, information, child labor, housing, water, and sanitation, 26.7 million children and adolescents (49.7% of the total) have one or more of their rights denied. The report bases its information on the 2015 “Encuesta nacional sobre domicilios (PNAD),” a survey regarding Brazilian dwellings. UNICEF adds that, besides consider the influence that race and the country’s regions have, public policies that seek to deal with childhood poverty must also account for assistance to mothers, fathers, and other guardians.

The following provides some points highlighted by the report: 

1.- Children’s “most denied right” is that of access to a sewage system. Therefore, in including deprivations considered “intermediate” and “extreme,” sanitation (with indicators such as the existence of toilets and sewage collection network) is what affects the largest number of children and adolescents (13.3 million), followed by education (8.8 million), and water (7.6 million). The largest problem is that of the disposal of human waste, since 22% of those under the age of 18 live in houses with rudimentary pits.

2-. For black boys and girls, the rate of deprivation of rights exceeds the national average and even surpasses 50%. Sanitation itself reflects the differences that can be seen in other respects: among children and adolescents deprived of sanitation, 70% are black. In terms of the denied rights considered in the study, the rights of black boys and girls are deprived 58% of the time, compared to that of white children’s 38% (in Brazil the average rate is 49.7%). In the field of education, there are 545 thousand illiterate black children, ages 8 to 17 years, while the number is only 207 thousand for whites.

3-. The urban Southeast versus the rural North. In general, children and adolescents living in rural areas have more denied rights than those in urban areas; and the inhabitants of the North and Northeast regions face more deprivation than those of the South and Southeast. But there are exceptions: in terms of housing, (adequate number of people per bedroom, appropriate materials in the ceilings and walls, etc.), the North is ahead, followed by the Southeast and the Northeast. Meanwhile, the percentage of children who have their rights violated doubles in the countryside (87.5%) as compared to those in cities (41.6%).

4. School and work are challenges coming from the past. One fifth of Brazilians between the ages of 4 and 17 have been denied their right to education. In addition, 6.2% of children and adolescents in the country are involved in child domestic or paid work. Even when this type of activity is illegal, as is the case for children ages 5 to 9 (3% or 425 thousand children in this segment work), and 10 to 13 (7.4%). The workload is heavier for girls, with the exception of paid work among adolescents, in which case it is higher among boys. Being black or living in the North or Northeast implies a higher incidence of child labor.

Remarque. Brazil is sparsely populated with a population density of 24.66 people per square kilometer, which ranks 170th in the world. The largest city is Sao Paulo with more than 11.9 million residents and a metropolitan population of 21.1 million. The results of the last census indicated that 92 million (48%) Brazilians are white, 83 million (44%) brown, 13 million (7%) black, 1.1 million (0.50%) yellow and 536,000 (0.25%) indigenous. This method of classifying race is controversial and criticized within Brazil.