Braços Institute: Defense of Rights and Social Control, Sergipe State
Summing Data, Pulsating Lives
Sergipe
Founded in 2006 in Aracaju, capital of the State of Sergipe, the Institute develops activities in networking and empowering civil society through proactive participation in the State Forum for the Defense of Children and Adolescents, besides training and capacity-building for social organizations in the areas of public policies for children and adolescent, public budgets and funds, and monitoring of complaints filed against institutional violence perpetrated against adolescents confined for social and educational rehabilitation.
The Institute receives political support from the State Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, the Aracajú Municipal Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, the State Forum for the Defense of the Rights of Children and Adolescents, and the University Legal Aid Center (NAJU/UFS).
The Project
The project “Summing Data, Pulsating Lives” aims to monitor the phenomenon of violence and violation of the human rights of children and adolescents in Sergipe, based on organizing a database fed by information from print newspapers, police reports from the Special Precinct for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, medical examiners’ reports from the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and the Aracaju Municipal and Sergipe State Health Departments.
According to the organization in charge of the proposal, the State of Sergipe, as elsewhere in Brazil in relation to institutional violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers, is outside the realm of the democratic order. Numerous cases of violence are committed against children and adolescents by law enforcement officials.
In recent years, local newspapers have covered the disappearance and death of adolescents, including former inmates of the system for juvenile offenders. In many cases, according to the families, members of the police force itself are believed to have carried out summary executions.
The lack of a databank on this problem illustrates the absence of rule of law in the State of Sergipe. Since there are no systematic data on the issue, the State’s ability to intervene effectively is severely curtailed.
The proposal to organize a Databank on Violence against Children and Adolescent consists of developing appropriate software to receive and process information on violence and death from external causes, generating reports that allow a grasp and interpretation of the types, motives, circumstances, and causative agents, instruments, or means in order to substantiate complaints against violence.
The databank will be implemented by a network consisting of public agencies, which in principle will provide the raw data. However, over the course of the process they will become “consumers” of the data, since the aim is for the databank to back public policy agencies and civil society organizations to develop measures to deal with violence.
The databank will play a dual role: 1) technical and scientific, since it can be used to compile, systematize, and analyze the data, thereby producing quality information, and 2) political, acting as a catalyst for action by various agencies and a link between them, thereby creating possibilities for joint work.
Funding Line
Annual Call for Proposals
Year
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Total Granted
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Duration
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Main Themes
The rights of children and adolescents