Study Shows Brazil Among Leaders in Child Homicides

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – A study released by the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO) on Thursday, June 30th, shows that 29 children and teenagers were murdered per day in Brazil in 2013, ranking the country in third place in child homicides among the 85 countries analyzed.

“Despite the myth of [people] being friendly and cordial in Brazil, the country is extremely violent,” sociologist Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, coordinator of the Program of Studies on Violence FLACSO Brazil and the author of the study told a government news source.

According to the study 10,520 children and adolescents lost their lives in 2013 with homicide being the leading cause of the deaths of children and adolescents from external causes.

The study shows that homicides represent about 2.5 percent of total deaths of children from 0 to 11 years old. Among the deaths up to fourteen-year olds, 25.1 percent are for murder, and among older children, up to seventeen-year olds, it is the cause of 48.2 percent of the deaths.

The number of black victims, shows the study, is almost three times greater than that of white victims. Waiselfisz has been surveying and producing the Violence Map for Brazil since 1998.

The sociologist says that while in 1980 the leading cause for child deaths was automobile accidents, in 2013, the leading cause was homicide. According to Waselfisz the number of homicides among children in Brazil jumped from 1,825 in 1980 to 10,520 in 2013.

The study was commissioned by the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents and the Secretariat of Human Rights, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD).