In Brazil, 40,000 people
are killed, annually, by firearms,
according to the United Nations. The country’s private sector
alone spends US$ 24 billion a year for protection. While
having only 2.8 percent of the planet’s population, Brazil is
responsible for 11 percent of all the homicides committed on earth.
by: Angélica
Gramático
"Although Brazilians are only 2.8 percent of the world’s population,
the country has 11 percent of all the homicides committed on the planet. Unfortunately,
that is a number that just keeps rising," laments Carlos Lopes, who represents
the UN Development Program in Brazil. Lopes made his comments at the opening
of an international seminar on weapons in Rio de Janeiro.
According to Lopes, 40,000
people are killed in Brazil, annually, by firearms. "That is more than
the number of people killed in Iraq. It is difficult to comprehend that so
many people die from gun wounds here, after all Brazil is supposed to be at
peace," he said.
Lopes says that UN data
shows that people in the private sector (this does not include the military)
are spending almost US$ 24 billion annually for protection; this is the so-called
"industry of fear." It is a thriving business that siphons off money
from areas that need investments, such as social assistance, he explained.
Last year, the World Health
Organization had already named Brazil the world’s champion in murders, with
one homicide occurring every 12 minutes. At that time the same Lopes had said,
"Brazil is a world champion in areas that are not very positive."
The United Nations Development
Program official compared the situation in Brazil with that the United States.
"In Brazil," he said, "1 percent of homicides are cleared up.
In the US, the number is 70 percent." Lopes said the way to improve the
situation was to modernize the judicial branch of government and fix the country’s
prisons.
Calling the Young
The Unesco representative
in Brazil, Jorge Werthen, called earlier this month for greater participation
by youth in the definition of programs transmitted over the media and directed
at young audiences. According to him, this would lead to a reduction in the
violence of television and radio programs and movie productions and would
permit a real socialization of knowledge and an increase in the self-esteem
of children and adolescents.
For Werthen, the excessive
use of images of violence on Brazilian TV encourages violence among young
people. "It is important for the media to be able to supervise and adopt
a critical perspective, with regard, for example, to a fundamental problem
in Brazil, the excessive and unacceptable bearing of firearms, which, regrettably,
cause a quantity of murders, basically affecting young people between 15 and
24 years old, that is nearly a world record by international standards,"
he said.
According to Ana Lúcia
Sabóia, coordinator of the Synthesis of Social Indicators study released
by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), violence in
Brazil’s large cities is a problem caused by the very intense, rapid urbanization
process that has occurred in the last 20 years.
Sabóia informed
that in the last 20 years urban violence has been responsible for 500 thousand
deaths throughout the country, hitting, in large part, the Brazilian youth
population. Rio de Janeiro, Sabóia added, leads these indexes. In every
group of 100 thousand residents of the state, 181 young people are killed
in crimes involving the use of firearms.
According to the researcher,
the murders end up producing a growing decline among males, compared with
the female population in the 14-25 age bracket. The data presented by the
IBGE show that the urban centers contain 85 percent of the country’s population,
the distribution of which remains concentrated in the Southeast region.
Angélica Gramático works for Agência Brasil (AB), the
official press agency of the Brazilian government. Comments are welcome
at lia@radiobras.gov.br.