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Brazil's President Lula signs law to expand affirmative action policies

Brazil's President Luiz Incio 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 per cent to 30 per cent 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 per cent of top government jobs in 2014, a figure that rose to 36 per cent 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 per cent of the country's population is made up of Black or mixed-race people. It added that more than 70 per cent of Brazilians living below the poverty line are also Black or mixed race, while only 1 per cent of people from those ethnicities are in leadership positions in the private sector.