Brazil

ASAP Brazil aims to contribute to the fulfilment of the most basic of the Millennium Development Goals: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. Although in Brazil the goal of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 has technically already been achieved—while 25.6% of the Brazilian population was living in extreme poverty by 1990, the figure dropped to 4.8% in 2008—this decline conceals the cruel reality: in 2008, 8.9 million Brazilians were still living under less than $1.25 a day.

In this regard, ASAP Brazil aims to stimulate academic research on the various ways to fight poverty, and to encourage further discussion of their effectiveness. The ASAP Brazil launch conference took place in Sao Paulo, in December 2013, and the Superior School of the Brazilian Public Federal Prosecutor’s Office (Escola Superior do Ministério Público da União – ESMPU) sponsored the initiative. The Brazilian Public Federal Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Publico Federal – MPF) in partnership with an interdisciplinary academic network organized the launch conference. There was an inaugural lecture by Professor Thomas Pogge and five panels, which included lectures by some renowned Brazilian jurists and researchers.

The Brazilian Public Federal Prosecutor’s Office  (Ministerio Publico Federal – MPF) has been coordinating the ASAP Brazil initiative. Researchers and other institutions are currently joining ASAP Brazil’s research groups, which seek to promote academic research on the structural causes of poverty, at both the global and domestic level. Also, we are currently working on ASAP Brazil’s structure as an ASAP chapter with its own regulation. We have recently begun the process of appointing our Board of Directors.

ASAP Brazil will host 4 research groups: right to education, right to health, access to justice, and right to urban development/right to the city. The coordinators of the panels in the launch conference have been now appointed as the project coordinators in each of these groups. The project coordinators are now working on the outline of their research group’s activities, as described below. The first research outcomes will be presented in the second ASAP Brazil conference.