Lula expands Brazil's affirmative action quotas for Indigenous and Black communities
SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday signed a new law to expand the country's affirmative action policies, increasing the quota for government jobs reserved for Blacks from 20% to 30% and adding Indigenous people and descendants of Afro-Brazilian enslaved people as beneficiaries.
The changes apply to candidates applying for permanent and public employment positions across Brazil's federal administration, agencies, public foundations, public companies and state-run mixed-capital companies. As approved by Congress, the quota will be revised in 2035.
'It is important to allow this country for one day to have a society reflected in its public offices, in the Prosecutors' Office, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Attorney-General's Office, in the Internal Revenue Service, everywhere,' Lula said at the presidential palace in the capital, Brasilia. 'We still have few women, few Black people, almost no Indigenous people.'
Brazil's first law on racial quotas for government jobs was approved in 2014 by then President Dilma Rousseff, and it extended to public administration positions an affirmative action policy that was in place for access to state-run universities.
Brazil's government said in a statement that Blacks and mixed-race people held 25% of top government jobs in 2014, a figure that rose to 36% in 2024.
'Still, Black people are under-represented in the public service and hold lower-wage positions,' the government added.
Management and Innovation Minister Esther Dweck said the new law was needed due to a low number of new government jobs being opened for candidates in the last decade, when the previous quota was in place.
'We could not reverse the scenario of low representation (for minorities) in the public service,' Dweck said in a speech Tuesday.
Brazil's government said 55% of the country's population is made up of Black or mixed-race people. It added that more than 70% of Brazilians living below the poverty line are also Black or mixed race, while only 1% of people from those ethnicities are in leadership positions in the private sector.
____
Follow AP's coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
15 hours ago
- Associated Press
Human rights committee blames Guatemala for forcing girl who was raped to carry out her pregnancy
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A panel of independent experts who make up the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Thursday they found that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old girl who was raped and forced to continue her pregnancy. A former director of a government-run daycare facility she had attended as a child raped her on multiple occasions beginning in 2009 when she was 13 and no longer attended the center, but she was denied access to abortion, forced to carry out the birth and care for the child, treatment the committee compared to torture. 'No girl should be forced to carry the child of her rapist. Doing so robs her of her dignity, her future, and her most basic rights,' Committee member Hélène Tigroudja said in a statement, adding that 'This is not just a violation of reproductive autonomy — it is a profound act of cruelty.' The committee monitors countries' adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. When the girl's mother found out about the abuse she reported it to authorities. The man and his wife tried to bribe and threaten the girl's family into withdrawing the report. The case wound on in Guatemala's justice system for nine years, but the man was never punished. 'Guatemala did not properly investigate the rape, nor did it take effective action to prosecute the perpetrator,' the committee said. 'Guatemala is one of the Latin American countries with the highest rates of both forced motherhood and systematic impunity for sexual violence,' the committee's statement said. 'Although the Guatemalan Criminal Code allows abortion in specific situations to avoid a threat to the life of the mother, access to legal abortion is almost impossible in practice.' The committee called on Guatemala to establish a system to record and monitor such cases. In the case of the girl, it said the state should support her to complete higher education and attain her goals. Catalina Martínez, vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Center of Reproductive Rights, one of the groups that brought the girl's case forward, said there is agreement in society that the protection of girls is a priority. 'But that promise is broken when we don't provide access to all health services, including abortion, and we obligate them to assume motherhood that they don't want and for which they are not prepared,' she said.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Brazil's Lula and France's Macron spar over EU-Mercosur trade deal
By Elizabeth Pineau and Gabriel Araujo PARIS (Reuters) -Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and French leader Emmanuel Macron disagreed on Thursday over the EU-Mercosur free trade deal, with Lula urging Macron during a visit to Paris to sign off on a deal that angers French farmers. The differences between the two men underline the challenges of getting the long-delayed trade deal between South America's Mercosur bloc and the European Union over the line. A deal was finalised in December but still needs approval from member states like France, which argues the pact as it stands is harmful to its powerful agricultural sector. Lula, on a state visit to France, said he will soon take up the rotating presidency of South America's Mercosur bloc, and committed to using that six-month stint to ink a lasting accord. "I will not leave the Mercosur presidency without having concluded the trade deal," Lula told a press conference alongside Macron, urging the French president to "open your heart" to the deal. He also said he would like to get French and Brazilian farmers together so they could settle their differences and hash out an accord, while also urging Macron to reassure European peers about Brazil's commitment to fight deforestation. Macron said he was in favor of free and equitable trade, but that the deal currently harms French and European farmers who would have to compete against South American peers not subject to the same norms and regulations. He said the text could be improved with the insertion of mirror clauses. France has previously argued for the insertion of an emergency break clause to restrict imports if a sudden surge in imports destabilizes certain EU markets. In a meeting with French lawmakers this week, French farmers' groups urged Macron to rally partners to form a blocking minority against the Mercosur deal, which they say would be devastating for the beef, poultry and sugar industries and compromise the EU's ambitions in terms of food sovereignty. On the war between Russia and Ukraine, Macron said Brazil, along with China and India, could do more to pressure Moscow to end the fighting. Lula said he was committed to brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, while Macron said everyone wanted peace, but that Moscow was the aggressor and that fact needed to be taken into account when adjudicating an end to the fighting.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
Brazilian prosecutors charge man accused of ordering high-profile killing in Amazon region
SAO PAULO — Brazilian prosecutors filed criminal charges Thursday against the man accused of ordering the 2022 killings of Indigenous peoples advocate Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon. Ruben Dario Villar, a Colombian fish trader, was formally accused by Brazilian police last November of being the person who planned the slaying.
