Brazil falls in UN human development ranking

In 2018, Brazil lost a position in the global ranking of the Human Development Index (HDI). The overall grade for the country was 0.761, up 0.001 from the previous year. Despite the advance, Brazil fell from 78th to 79th place in a group of 189 countries. Thus it was the same position of Colombia and behind countries like Sri Lanka and Argentina.

The Index, released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) from health, education and per capita income data, shows that Brazil is a country with no long-term planning. The country is positioned worldwide as a supplier of commodities: oil, soy, meat, sugar cane, iron ore etc. There are no long-term projects to improve income distribution, create jobs and advance education.

Incidentally, the drop also indicates the lack of progress in education, in which Brazil is in 79th place, which produces the lack of skilled labor and, in turn, acts as a trap that holds the country in a context. of little growth.

In recent years, the Brazilian Human Development Index (HDI) was virtually stagnant in 2018, after showing low growth in previous years.

UN vetoed Brazil's speech at the New York climate summit, according to Folha de S.Paulo's Ambiência blog

According to journalist Ana Carolina Amaral, Brazil "is not on the list of countries that will speak at the UN climate summit next Monday (23.10.2019) in New York."

The blog said UN Secretary-General Luis Alfonso de Alba said: "Brazil has not put forward any plans to increase its commitment to the climate."

To make matters worse for Brazil on the international stage, today a group of 230 investment funds, which together manage 16 trillion dollars, issued a joint statement urging Brazil to take effective measures to protect the Amazon rainforest against increasing deforestation.

According to the text, the process of destruction of the Amazon rainforest may have an impact on the fund portfolios. This could be exactly what Bolsonaro government and the agribusiness lobby in Brasilia most fear.

The current Brazilian government is turning the country into a kind of international pariah. The veto of Brazil's speech at the UN climate summit is severe and could greatly damage Brazil's exports and economy.

UN hunger fight projects resources halted due to lack of approval from the Brazilian Ministry of Economy; Fight against hunger in Brazil suffers from the government of a president who insists that this problem does not exist or is very small in the country

Brazil has over 45 million dollars in hunger-fighting projects that are stalled. These resources could finance projects through the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN agency to fight rural poverty and hunger. Investments, however, have not been halted since 2018 due to lack of approval by the foreign finance commission of the Ministry of Economy led by Paulo Guedes.

The main difficulty in allowing the release is the Union's inability to repay, which cannot be a guarantor of loans.

On July 19, at a coffee shop with international correspondents in Brasilia, President Jair Bolsonaro said that Brazil did not suffer from the problem of hunger. On the same day, Brazil's president's statement on hunger in the country was rebutted by data and experts.

In this coffee, with the journalists, Bolsonaro said: "Talking about starving in Brazil is a big lie". Later that day, pressured by the flood of criticism he received inside and outside the country, Bolsonaro turned back and said only a "small part" of the population suffered from hunger. In fact, more than 5 million people suffer from the scourge of hunger in Brazil.

However, the UN Food and Nutrition Security Outlook Panorama Report 2018, released in November by the UN, showed the rise in hunger in Brazil. The study estimated that malnutrition reached up to 5.2 million Brazilians between 2015 and 2017, compared to the 5.1 million estimated for the three years 2014-2016 and 2013-2015. In the 2000-2002 triennium, 18.8 million Brazilians suffered from hunger. 

This meaningless debate started by the president is a catastrophe for the hunger control programs in Brazil. Meanwhile, other less urgent projects are being tabled by this government, for example the decree to facilitate gun possession or the project that eliminates fines for transporting children without car seats or starting studies to include the terms "father" and "mother" rather than "parents" in the fields intended for membership in the Brazilian passport documentation.

Meanwhile, major resources for fighting hunger in the countryside have been stalled since 2018 because the country has not paid back a loan to the Union.

This indicates that the current government does not know what the country's real priorities are and continues to spend time and resources on debates that are completely innocuous.