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YouTubeUnited Nations in Brazil opposes lowering the legal age of majority
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Photo: Chris Devers (flickr.com/cdevers) |
The UN in Brazil released this Monday (11) a statement which demonstrates "concern" over the proceedings of a Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PAC 171/1993) within the National Congress which calls for lowering the legal age of majority from 18 years of age to 16, and has sparked the debate nationwide on the topic. According to the UN, if infractions committed by adolescents and young people are regarded strictly as a matter of public safety and not as an indicator of limited access to fundamental rights, citizenship, and justice, "the problem of violence in Brazil will be exacerbated, with grave consequences in the present and the future."
The United Nations emphasized, along with other information, that the population of adolescents and young people, especially those black and poor, is being systematically killed in this Country. "This situation puts Brazil in second place in the world in total number of adolescent homicides, behind Nigeria," the statement claimed, reminding us that of the 21 million adolescents that live in Brazil, only 0.013% committed life-threatening acts. "Adolescents are very much more victims than perpetrators of violence," says the UN in Brazil.
See the full statement (below) or as a PDF by clicking here.
STATEMENT ON THE PROPOSED LOWERED AGE OF MAJORITY BY THE UN SYSTEM IN BRAZIL
The UN System in Brazil is attentively monitoring the proceedings of a Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PAC 171/1993) within the National Congress which calls for lowering the age of penal majority from 18 years of age to 16, which has sparked the debate nationwide on this topic.
The UN System condemns any form of violence, including those forms carried out by adolescents and young people. However, it is greatly disconcerting that people claim that adolescents should be singled out, in a cycle of continual violations of rights, as the group responsible for the alarming statistics of violence in the Country.
Official data indicates that, of the 21 million adolescents who live in Brazil, only 0.013% have committed life-threatening acts 1 . Adolescents are very much more victims than perpetrators of violence. Statistics show that the population of adolescents and young people, especially those black and poor, is being systematically killed in this Country. This situation puts Brazil in second place in the world in total number of adolescent homicides, behind Nigeria 2 .
Homicide is the cause of 36.5% of adolescent death by non-natural causes, while for the general population, this type of death constitutes 4.8% of the total number. Between 2006 and 2012 alone, at least 33 thousand adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 were murdered in Brazil 3 . In the vast majority of cases, the victims were teenagers living in conditions of poverty on the outskirts of big cities.
The UN System warns that, if infractions committed by adolescents and young people are regarded strictly as a matter of public safety and not as an indicator of limited access to fundamental rights, citizenship, and justice, the problem of violence in Brazil will be exacerbated, with grave consequences in the present and the future.
The Brazilian prison system already faces huge challenges in reinstating adults back into society. Putting young adults between 16 and 17 into overcrowded prisons will expose them to the direct influence of factions of organized crime. An effective solution for acts of violence committed by adolescents and young people must involve an analysis of causes of violence and the adoption of an integrated approach in relation to the problems thereof 4 .
Investing in the youth population is the key to its development. It will be difficult to achieve social and economic progress in the coming years without certain investments in what is the largest youth population in history: there are more than 1.8 billion adolescents and young people (10 to 24 years old), and in Brazil this number surpasses 51 million 5 . This unprecedented quantity of young people in Brazil and in the world - aptly called the "demographic bonus" - provides a unique opportunity to achieve development in all sustainable dimensions. For this to be achieved, States and societies must recognize the youth's potential and ensure that the means for the present of future contributions of this constituency have a positive impact on its trajectories, its families, communities, and countries.
There is an abundance of evidence that the roots of serious criminality in adolescents and the youth of Brazil stem from previous situations of violence and social negligence. These situations are made much more severe by the absence of support from families and by the lack of access to the benefits of public education, work, employment, healthcare, housing, social assistance, leisure, culture, citizenship, and access to justice which, hopefully, should be available to each and every citizen at every stage of life.
Certain evidence shows that incarcerating people in general aggravates their state of health and their sense of isolation, which combines to create a major barrier against their development of life skills. Lowering the legal age of majority and the resulting incarceration of 16 and 17 year old adolescents may even further increase this group of people's susceptibility to violence and crime 6 .
In Brazil, adolescents from 12 years old are already liable for any illegal acts that they commit, based on a specialized system of accountability, through educational measures, including deprivation of liberty, laid out in the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA).
If such a system has failed to provide effective answers, it is necessary to improve it along the lines of the specialist model of juvenile justice, in accordance with the international standards which have already been incorporated into the Federal Constitution of 1988.
Besides being opposed to the most effective measures for confronting violence, lowering the legal age of majority makes the contexts in which one finds themselves exposed to crime worse, it reinforces the racism along with racial and social discrimination, and it weakens both human rights agreements and international commitments that the Brazilian State has taken on.
One of the fundamental agreements that Brazil assumes upon ratifying the international treaty is the agreement to adapt its internal legislation to the ordinances or the treaty, as understood in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 7 . As such, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ratified by the Brazilian State on September 24th, 1990, recognizes both children and adolescents as subjects and rightholders, establishing in its first article that a child is, "every human being below the age of eighteen years." 8 .
Regarding the liability of persons under 18 years of age, the CRC clearly establishes in articles 1, 37, and 40 that: (i) no person under 18 years of age may be tried as an adult; (ii) a minimum age must be established at which the State will waive any type of criminal responsibility; (iii) a specific system of accountability must be implemented within the Country for minors in relation the penal age, guaranteeing the presumption of innocence and due legal process and establishing differentiated penalties, where the deprivation of liberty is used only as a last resort.
The United Nations System in Brazil recognizes the importance of the debate on the topic of violence and hopes that Brazil continues to be a strong regional and global leader in seeking out answers that protect human rights and expand the system of social protection and public safety for all.
The UN System in Brazil would like to reiterate its commitment to supporting the works of a Country in favor of guaranteeing the rights of children, adolescents, and young people, and calls on all social agents to continue to come together to discuss and create the best alternatives for improving the current system of youth accountability, to whom delinquency is attributed.
NOTES
1 Estimation by UNICEF based on data from Levantamento SINASE 2012 e PNAD 2012.
2 Approximately 11 thousand Brazilians between 0 and 19 years old were murdered in 2012. In: UNICEF. Hidden in plain sight: a statistical analysis of violence against children. 2014. P. 37. Available at: http://goo.gl/O3uhzE
3 Data from SIM/DATASUS. In: UNICEF. Adolescent Homicides. IHA, 2012. P. 12 e 57. Available at: http://goo.gl/U6odLu
4 UNITED NATIONS. Fact Sheet on Juvenile Justice, p.5. See http://goo.gl/ZPqCJT
5 Data taken from the Concise Report on the World Population Situation 2014 (UNFPA, 2014). Vide http://goo.gl/FnP2Gq
6 UNODC. From coercion to cohesion (2010). Available at: http://goo.gl/MmxJt7
INFORMATION FOR THE PRESS
Contact the United Nations Information Center for Brazil (UNIC Rio), contact by clicking here.
"We thank our UN Online Volunteer, Aaron Kircher, for his contribution to the translation of this article". Aaron Kircher, is an online volunteer mobilized through www.onlinevolunteering.org".