In this week's News from Brazil:
Law
is making a difference in the fight against domestic violence
Two
years after the launching of the Maria da Penha Law, a milestone in the
fight to combat violence against women, the majority of Brazilians say
they are familiar with the law. Organizations which work to
promote
women’s rights have taken advantage of this occasion to
disseminate
data about the implementation of the law and to present a document with
recommendations to the public powers.
“The law is making a
difference. Even though the women don’t know how it
functions, at
least they know it exists,” said the biochemical pharmacist
Maria da
Penha, for whom the law is named. Maria da Penha became a
parapalegic
after having been shot by her husband in 1983 and spent many years
fighting for justice.
The study Ibope/Themis- Legal Advisory and
Gender Studies, which had the support of the Special Secretariat for
Policies for Women (SPM), revealed positive numbers in the evaluation
of the implementation of the law in the country. Of the 2002
people
interviewed in 142 Brazilian municipalities, 68% affirmed that they had
at least heard of the Maria da Penha law; 83% approved its efficacy.
According
to the study, 33% of those interviewed believe that the law punishes
domestic violence; 21% think that the law can eliminate or diminish
violence against women; 13% think the law has helped to resolve the
problem of violence. The perception that the law places the
aggressor
in jail was found in 20% of those interviewed. However, 5%
believe
that the law has not resolved the problems of women who suffer violence
and 6% believe that the law doesn’t work because it is not
well known.
In
the first six months of 2008, the Center for Women’s Services
documented 121,891 clients served, signifying an increase of 107.9% in
relation to the same period of 2007. Among the factors which
contributed to this increase are a greater awareness of the law,
technological improvements, perfecting the system and the training of
attendants.
The reports of physical violence was the greatest, with
5879 cases-- four of them resulting in homicide. The other
reports
were caused by other types of violence, including psychological,
sexual, moral, and patrimonial, as well as homicide attempts, private
incarcerations, and threats.
One journey today in Brasilia
culminated in the delivery to the president of the Supreme Federal
Tribunal, Gilmar Mendes, a document with recommendations elaborated by
the Popular Legal Prosecutors (PLPs). These prosecutors are
community
leaders who participate in legal courses and are educated about the
structure of the State and in Law, especially the principal laws
relating to the issues of human rights for women. They also
promote
the exercise of citizenship.
Maria da Penha, who currently is an
honorary collaborator with the Coordination of Public Policies for
Women in the City Hall of Fortaleza (in the state of Ceara), was
present for the occasion. She emphasized that there needs to
be a
standardization of information about the law so that it can have
greater effectiveness.
It is also necessary to invest: “The capitals
already have a good structure, but the cities located in the
agricultural zones need more resources to build a
structure.” In 2008,
the federal government invested R$10 million reais to support the
creation of new courts, centers, and state prosecutor’s
offices which
specialize in serving women, as well as R$7 million reais in the
creation of resource centers, re-equipping shelters, and other services
for women which contribute to the full application of the law.
Source: Aditial, August 7, 2008
Bolsa
Familia: More than 170 thousand children with low school attendance
The
Ministry of Education (MEC) publicized a report which reveals the
principal causes which led students benefitting from the Bolsa Familia
(program which provides a stipend to families on the condition that
their children attend school and be vaccinated) to miss school during
the months of February and March of 2008. Among the reasons
are:
illness among the students, negligence of the parents, premature
pregnancy, begging, child labor, and domestic violence. There
were
172, 452 children and adolescents with low school attendance during
this period.
The federal government has been monitoring the
school attendance of children and adolescents who benefit from the
Bolsa Familia since 2005. In 2007, the Ministry added a
control whose
effectiveness are not yet determined: every time a child registered in
the program misses more than 85% of school days, the school has to note
the reason for the lack of attendance. In this latest report,
more
than half of these notations are classified as “without an
identified
motive”. This indicates a problem needing to be
solved but there
remains doubt over whether the school really does not know why the
student is missing or whether the school is simply not interested in
reporting it.
Sao Paulo is the state that leads the ranking with
the greatest number of students with low attendance. There
were 54,464
in the first bimester of the school year, of which 34,531 were
classified as having unidentified motives, and 6,321 were caused by
parental negligence. In second place was Minas Gerais, with
17,783
recorded, and Ceara was in third place, with 10,844. The
families who
do not comply with the minimum required attendance of 85% for students
between the ages of 6 and 15 are subjected to sanctions which range
from warnings to loss of the stipend. In February and March
of this
year, 1.2% of the beneficiaries in this age group had low attendance.
Since
2007, MEC’s Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy,
and
Diversity (Secad) has carried out the Projeto Presença, an
online
system which monitors the causes of student absences. The
system is
used by more than 12 thousand people, by school employees and municipal
and state secretaries of education who have been trained in all of the
country’s 5,564 municipalities to operate the system of
sending data
through the internet. Now, the challenge is to guarantee that
the
data, with a nominal list of students who are victims of various rights
violations, does not merely become another set of statistics.
In
accordance with the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education,
the control of school attendance is the responsibility of the
school.
In spite of these, according to article 56 of the Statute of Children
and Adolescents, the directors of elementary schools are obligated to
communicate with the Guardianship Council any cases that involve
maltreatment of their students, repeated unjustified absences, truancy,
and high levels of grade repetition. However, the lack of
preparation
of the educational system to deal with these problems make it difficult
to fulfill the law.
The MEC is trying to change this reality.
In 2007, the Ministry trained 700 professors to deal, in the classroom,
with physical and psychological violence, negligence, sexual
exploitation, and child labor. The project Schools Which
Protect
received an investment of R$3.7 million reais in 2007. In
2008, the
budget projected R$6.5 million reais, but up to the end of the first
semester, nothing was spent and there is still no word on when the
program will be re-instituted.
Source: Adital, August 8, 2008
