Brazil's austerity package decried by UN as attack on poor people
Brazil's austerity package decried by UN as attack on poor people
Senior official says proposed budget cuts, which have been protested in violent street clashes, are ‘lacking in all nuance and compassion’
Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro
Friday 9 December 2016 11.04 EST
Brazil is poised to implement the most socially regressive austerity package in the world, a senior United Nations official has warned.
Despite violent street protests against budget cuts, President Michel Temer – who came to power after engineering the impeachment of his former running mate, Dilma Rousseff – is pushing through a 20-year social spending freeze that will be locked into the constitution.
Ahead of a final senate vote on the measures next Tuesday, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, took the unusual step of decrying the plan as an attack on the poor – and a violation of Brazil’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
“This is a radical measure, lacking in all nuance and compassion,” he said in a statement on Friday. “It is completely inappropriate to freeze only social expenditure and to tie the hands of all future governments for another two decades. If this amendment is adopted it will place Brazil in a socially retrogressive category all of its own.”
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/09/brazil-austerity-cuts-un-official
LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141636491
