High youngster mortality plagues Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil is going through an "epidemic" of youngsters' killings, said a report released Wednesday, less than a week after President Dilma Rousseff said a country's greatness is measured by its actions to protect children and adolescents.

The report, name Violence Map, was written by sociologist Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz of the Latin American School of Social Sciences and the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies.

In the research, which included 92 countries, Brazil ranked fourth after El Salvador, Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago in terms of mortality rates for those aged zero to 19, the highest among those having children protection laws.

According to the paper, 31.9 deaths occur for every 100,000 minors due to external causes, including murder, suicide and traffic accident, while the number is higher for the age group of 15 to 19, with 44.2 deaths per 100,000 teens.

It also showed that a soaring murder rate for those aged zero to 19, increasing 346 percent to 13.8 deaths for every 100,000 people between 1980 and 2010, has become an major contributor to the hovering mortality rate.

The result came as an embarrassment for a government that had made repeated pledges and attempts to make the country safer for children.

As one of the largest economies in the world, Brazil introduced the Child and Adolescent Statute in 1990 and also encouraged families to keep their children in school and vaccinated by making these terms the preconditions for receiving low-income subsidies.

Tolerance of violence among the people and the government may be the main cause driving up the death rates, the report alerted.

According to Waiselfisz, victims were often blamed for being in a position where they are susceptible to violence. When the state acts in such a manner, it shows tolerance to violence, he said.