Future at stake
Five questions to understand the impact of Amendment 55 on human rights
The Senate is expected to vote in the first round today, November 29, on the Constitutional Amendment Proposal (Amendment 55/16) that freezes investments in areas like health and education for the next twenty years. The amendment, touted by the federal government as essential for the economic recovery of the country, has been the target of harsh criticism by human rights organizations that believe, instead, that cuts in public spending will worsen inequality and violate the fundamental rights of the most vulnerable populations. The proposal has already been approved by two rounds of voting in the Lower House of Congress.
In an analysis document sent today to the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, Conectas, Oxfam Brasil, Inesc (Institute for Economic and Social Studies) and CESR (Center for Economic and Social Rights) said that, if approved, Amendment 55 “will result in a serious erosion of social rights due to even lower real spending per capita, since the demand for services will increase while revenues will not grow, undermining the progress in various social rights”.
- Click here to read the analysis document in full.
Conectas has summarized, in five questions and answers, the main impacts that Amendment 55 will have on human rights in Brazil:
1. In the manner it is being voted, does Amendment 55 violate human rights?
Yes. The Brazilian population is increasing and growing older, which means that, without a real increase in public spending, each person will receive an increasingly smaller share of the budget for fundamental areas. This will gradually erode the social rights achieved over the past decades, affecting primarily the most vulnerable social groups that depend exclusively on public services. In the case of health and education, this is especially perverse because they are fundamental guarantees for the realization of other rights.
2. What other guarantees, besides health and education, will be affected if the Senate approves the proposal?
Amendment 55 could have an even worse effect on areas that do not have a constitutionally guaranteed minimum spending level, such as public security, science and technology and social infrastructure – which includes, for example, sanitation, urban mobility and low-cost housing. By setting a cap on public spending, corrected annually only by inflation, the proposal will mean that these social policies will compete for already limited resources with all the remaining budgetary spending, with almost no margin for governments elected in the future to democratically review the measure.
3. Why does Amendment 55 violate treaties signed by Brazil?
Brazil is a signatory of various international treaties, among them the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
According to the international bodies that monitor compliance with these treaties, although countries have room to maneuver to combat economic crises, no government may impose collective sacrifices without observing some minimum standards. These bodies have determined that all fiscal measures must: 1) be temporary, strictly necessary and proportional; 2) be non-discriminatory; 3) take into consideration all the possible alternatives, including taxation measures; 4) be submitted to the effective and genuine participation of the most effected populations. Amendment 55 fails all these tests.
4. Are there alternatives?
Yes, and the international treaties to which Brazil is party require that they be carefully analyzed before passing the constitutional amendment. One alternative would be to increase revenues, for example, by more rigorously combating tax evasion – a solution that could, according to experts, raise as much as US$80 billion (an amount actually much higher than the fiscal deficit forecast for 2016, of US$50 billion).
Another possibility would be to reduce the injustices in the Brazilian tax system, since the richest people pay proportionally less tax than the poorest. According to the Ministry of Finance, people who earn more than R$140,800 per year saw their income tax rate fall by 0.5% between 2007 and 2013, while those earning less than R$17,600 saw an increase of 1.6%.
5. Are there any other examples of measures such as this one? What are the impacts of austerity measures on social rights?
No. There are no precedents in Brazil or anywhere else in the world. Although many countries have made fiscal adjustments to combat economic crises, none have reformed their constitutions, and they have all been much shorter. Experts from institutions such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) point out that strategies that involve cutting government spending to promote growth do not work when the economy is already weak and that austerity measures focused on spending – such as the case with Amendment 55 – worsen unemployment levels and raise inequality.
