The administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took important measures to reduce Amazon deforestation but is planning to invest billions of dollars in fossil fuels. There was devastating flooding in the south and a record drought nationwide that contributed to ravaging fires.
Police abuse continued to plague Brazil. In São Paulo state, there has been a dramatic increase in killings by police since the current governor took office in 2023.
Brazil made progress in the protection of children’s digital rights.
Democratic Rule
As of November, prosecutors had charged more than 1,600 people who allegedly supported or were part of a crowd that ransacked federal buildings in Brasília on January 8, 2023, calling for a coup. Of those, 284 had been convicted. Meanwhile, Congress was considering a bill to grant them amnesty.
In November, police accused former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others, including former ministers and military officers, of planning a coup. Police detained four military officers and a police officer for allegedly plotting to kill President Lula, Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in 2022 to prevent Lula from taking office.
Also in November, a man detonated explosives and killed himself in front of the Supreme Court, after allegedly making threats against the Supreme Court.
Congress eliminated a requirement that parties allocate the same level of public electoral funds to Black and non-Black candidates. The parties also granted pardons to themselves after widely violating the allocation rule in the previous elections, in which several parties favored white candidates.
Researchers compiled 338 cases of threats and violence, including 33 killings, against individuals engaged in politics—or their relatives—in the run-up to October’s municipal elections.
Corruption and Transparency
Congress was considering a bill that would reduce the period politicians convicted of crimes are banned from running for office.
Federal police recommended charges against former President Bolsonaro in March based on allegations that he falsified health records, and in July that he appropriated jewelry received from foreign governments.
In May, prosecutors charged a member of Congress and his brother, a state official, with ordering the 2018 killing of councilwoman and human rights defender Marielle Franco, whom they allegedly saw as an “obstacle” to illegal activities, involving land-grabbing and paramilitary groups. Prosecutors also charged the then-civil police chief of Rio de Janeiro with aiding them. Franco’s driver Anderson Gomes was also killed. In October, two former police officers who confessed to carrying out the murder were sentenced to decades in prison.
In August, the Supreme Court suspended budget allocations decided by lawmakers until Congress adopts rules to ensure greater transparency. In 2024, Congress controlled a quarter of all government discretionary spending, amounting to 49 billion reais (US$9 billion). The attorney general charged three Congress members with corruption over the use of those funds.
In 2023, the government denied 1,339 information requests, claiming that they contained personal data. It classified as confidential for 100 years the list of meetings by the first lady and a declaration of conflict of interest by a Cabinet member. In September, the government announced some measures to increase transparency.
Freedom of Expression
A study identified more than 47,800 social media posts attacking the media during the electoral campaign.
In May, the Supreme Court ruled that campaigns to file multiple lawsuits against journalists in different jurisdictions constituted judicial harassment intended to silence them. It found that journalists are only liable for defamation if there is “unequivocal” evidence of malicious intent or “evident negligence” in their reporting.
Digital Rights
In August, a Supreme Court justice suspended the operations of X in Brazil for more than five weeks after the social media platform refused to block accounts that likely engaged in doxing. The justice also ordered fines for users who accessed X through virtual private networks (VPNs). Lack of transparency about account removal orders by the Supreme Court and inadequate content moderation by X have harmed users.
In June, the personal photos of 358 Brazilian children were discovered to have been misused to build artificial intelligence (AI) tools that in turn were used by others to create malicious deepfakes of other children.
Between November 2023 and April 2024, at least 85 girls from six states told police that their social media photos had been manipulated, using AI, into sexually explicit deepfakes of them.
In June, the government committed to developing a national policy to protect the digital rights of children.
In July, the National Data Protection Authority prohibited Meta from using personal data from its child users to train its AI systems.
Education
Racial disparities in access to education continued. Forty-eight percent of Black Brazilians aged 25 and older had completed secondary school in 2023, compared to 62 percent of white Brazilians of the same age.
In June, the government-supported National Observatory of Violence against Educators launched an initiative to research harassment against teachers who discuss gender and sexuality, racism, and other topics in the classroom. In August, the government created a working group to address bullying, prejudice, and discrimination in schools.
G20
In November, the G20 agreed to ensure that very wealthy individuals are effectively taxed by fighting tax evasion and fostering dialogue on tax issues, as proposed by Brazil. The G20 also endorsed Brazil’s global alliance to fight hunger and poverty, which seeks to promote cash transfer programs and school meals, among other initiatives.
Public Security and Police Conduct
Homicides fell by 5 percent from January through September, compared to the same period in 2023.
Police had killed 4,565 people as of September. Analysis from previous years showed that more than 80 percent of the people killed by police were Black. While some police killings are in self-defense, many result from illegal use of force.
In São Paulo, police killings increased 55 percent from January through September, compared to the same period in 2023. Police killed at least 84 people in two operations in the Baixada Santista region, in 2023 and 2024. Prosecutors had filed charges in just five killings, as of November.
Since a Supreme Court ruling in 2020 ordered Rio de Janeiro state to take measures to curb police abuse, killings have dropped dramatically. From January through September, they fell 24 percent, compared to the same period in 2023.
In June, the Supreme Court decriminalized marijuana possession for personal use. In response, Congress was considering a constitutional amendment to criminalize it. Brazilian police regularly use drug law enforcement as a justification for lethal raids into low-income neighborhoods.
In 2023, 118 police officers died of suicide, a 26 percent increase compared to 2022, the nonprofit Brazilian Forum of Public Security (FBSP) reported, exceeding the number of killings on duty (54) and off duty (73).
In two rulings published in March, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found police in São Paulo and Paraná states had committed serious human rights violations. The court ordered Brazil to stop trying crimes against civilians committed by military police in military courts, and instead use civilian courts.
In a report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in October, UN experts on racial justice and equality in law enforcement denounced systemic racism and urged Brazil to adopt a national strategy to reduce killings by police and ensure adequate investigations into police abuse cases.
Detention Conditions
More than 668,500 people were incarcerated as of June 2024, exceeding the capacity of Brazilian facilities by 37 percent. Another 220,221 people were under house arrest.
The National Mechanism for the Prevention and Combat of Torture and the National Council of Justice reported overcrowding, unhealthy conditions, and ill-treatment and torture in at least six states in 2023.
The number of children and young people held in youth detention—11,757—continued to decline, dropping 6 percent in 2023 compared to 2022.
Gender-Based Violence
About 3,060 women and girls were killed from January through September. Police registered about a third of them as femicide, defined under Brazilian law as killings “on account of being persons of the female sex.”
There were about 51,400 reports of rapes of women and girls from January through September. In 2023, girls under 14 were victims of three-quarters of all reported rapes. Black girls were twice as likely to be victims of rape as white girls, a study found.
In a nationwide survey published in 2024, almost half of women said they had suffered domestic violence.
In September, President Lula fired the human rights minister after allegations that he had sexually harassed the racial equality minister and other women. He denied wrongdoing. Between January and August, ombudspersons’ offices received 557 complaints of sexual harassment involving public servants.
Abortion
Abortion is legal in Brazil only in cases of rape, to save a woman’s life, or in cases of fetus anencephaly. Criminalization of abortion pushes women, girls and pregnant people out of the health system. People who have illegal abortions can face up to three years in prison, and those who perform them face up to four years in prison.
In June, thousands of people protested a bill that would make abortions after 22 weeks equivalent to homicide, even after rape.
Military-Era Abuses
Since 2012, prosecutors have filed charges in more than 50 criminal cases for human rights abuses during Brazil’s military rule (1964-1985). Courts have dismissed most, citing the statute of limitations or an amnesty law passed by the dictatorship and upheld by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found violated international law.
In May, prosecutors charged four former officials and a medical examiner for the 1969 killing of Carlos Marighella, a former member of Congress who led armed opposition to the dictatorship, and its cover-up. Prosecutors also filed civil suits against more than 100 former officials for torture, disappearances, and killings.
In March, President Lula instructed his administration not to hold events in memory of the 60th anniversary of the coup. The UN special rapporteur on truth, justice and reparation said that silence “revictimizes” the victims.
The Lula administration apologized for abuses against Indigenous peoples during the dictatorship and re-established a commission to investigate killings and enforced disappearances that the Bolsonaro administration had dismantled.
Rights of Indigenous People, Afro-Descendant People, and Environmental Defenders
The Lula administration has titled 13 Indigenous territories and made progress in the recognition of another 11, but hundreds of claims are still pending.
A key obstacle has been an attempt by agribusiness interests to deny Indigenous peoples’ right to their traditional lands if they were not physically present on them when Brazil’s Constitution was adopted in 1988. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that such a cut-off date was unconstitutional, but Congress passed it into law. The issue is pending before the court again.
Titling Indigenous lands is key to securing land rights and can curb deforestation. From 1985 to 2023, Indigenous territories lost less than 1 percent of their native vegetation, compared to 28 percent in private areas, MapBiomas, a consortium of scientists, reported.
In September 2024, the Lula administration issued 21 land titles to Afro-descendant rural communities. Yet, at the current pace, it would take 2,708 years for the government to conclude pending titling requests, a study by the non-profit Terra de Direitos showed.
People defending environmental and land rights continued to face violence.
The non-profit Pastoral Land Commission registered in the first half of 2024 more than 1,000 conflicts over land and resources across Brazil, many of them involving illegal logging, mining, or land-grabbing. These conflicts resulted in 11 killings, as of November.
As of November, Congress was considering approval of the Escazú Agreement, which requires protection of environmental defenders and access to information and public participation in environmental matters.
Environment
Extreme weather events caused severe health and environmental impacts in Brazil. Experts said climate change increases the likelihood and intensity of such events.
Between April and May, more than 180 people died in the worst flooding in 80 years in Rio Grande do Sul state, which displaced tens of thousands.
Brazil as a whole suffered the worst drought on record. And fires raged across the country, many of them linked to clearing land for cattle grazing or agriculture, experts said. From January through October, more than 27 million hectares were burned, more than double the number of the previous year.
Brazil contributes to the climate crisis as one of the world’s top 10 greenhouse gas emitters.
The Lula government has reduced deforestation, a key source of emissions. From August 2023 through July 2024, 6,288 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest were cleared, a 31 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2023.
In May, the agriculture ministry established a working group to design a system to track cattle, in response to a European Union law that restricts the sale of several products linked to deforestation, including meat and leather. Cattle ranching is the largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon.
In August, Brazil adopted a National Energy Transition Policy that experts said lacked concrete timelines and commitments. The Lula administration has planned 288 billion reais (US$47 billion) in investment in oil and gas, the vast majority public money, from 2023 through 2026 compared to just about 87 billion reais ($11 billion) in investment in renewable energy, all expected to come from the private sector. President Lula advocated for fossil fuel exploration.
In May, Congress overturned a presidential veto of a bill that granted the agriculture ministry the primary authority over pesticide regulation, reducing the role of health and environmental authorities. Pesticides cause severe health and environmental harm.
Disability Rights
About 18.6 million adults and children over 2 years old with disabilities live in Brazil. Thousands are confined in institutions—sometimes for life—where some face neglect and abuse. The government launched a plan for people with disabilities, but failed to include concrete measures to foster deinstitutionalization.
Congress was discussing a bill to implement a care policy that includes support for people with disabilities.
Migrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers
Thousands of Venezuelans have crossed the border into Brazil in recent years, fleeing hunger, lack of health care, or persecution.
About 568,000 Venezuelans lived in Brazil as of early June, of whom 23 percent had refugee status, and over 84 percent had residence permits. A voluntary relocation program benefited over 141,000 people as of October.
In August, the government prohibited people transiting without visas from applying for asylum, requiring them to continue to their destination or return to their home country.