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Brazil gov't urged: Continue providing food to millions of children pushed out of school due to Covid-19
Amid the continuous surge of Covid-19 cases in Brazil, making it the second worst coronavirus-hit country in the world in terms of deaths, civil society groups have called on the government to continue providing food to children, who have been out of school due to the pandemic, by keeping Brazil under a state of public calamity.
In a recent statement, six organizations led by the Brazilian Forum on Sovereignty and Food and Nutrition Security (FBSSAN), said the non-extension of the state of public calamity in Brazil would be tantamount to violating the right to food as it would hinder the distribution of food baskets to students via the National School Feeding Program or the Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE), which caters to over 40 million primary public schoolers.
The groups urged Brazil’s National Congress to convene an "extraordinary legislative session as soon as possible" to extend the state of public calamity via the approval of Draft Legislative Decree PDL 566/2020 "so that states and municipalities can continue the distribution of food baskets to the families of schoolchildren."
The proposed legislation seeks to extend the validity of Legislative Decree No. 6, 2020, the law that originally placed Brazil under a state of public calamity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The declaration of a state of public calamity allowed the transfer of funds to continue during pandemic-spawned emergency situations.
This included the transfer of budget to the PNAE, which is being managed by the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE), that enabled states and municipalities in Brazil to continue purchasing and distributing food to students even when their classes were suspended due to Covid-19.
The PNAE is considered as one of the most relevant policies aimed at guaranteeing the right to adequate food and nutrition in Brazil, according to FBSSAN. The feeding program serves about 41 million students, with financial transfers to the country' s 27 states and 5,570 municipalities of R$4 billion (about USD 736 million) annually.
Also, the groups called on the FNDE to "make the appropriate guidance to state managers, and especially municipal managers" in-charge of procuring food for students.
"The management of the PNAE during the pandemic has become even more challenging, with the suspension of classes and health risks, which generates an even greater environment of operational and legal uncertainty," said FBSSAN, a member of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition; the Alliance for Adequate and Healthy Food, Citizenship Action; FIAN Brazil; National Campaign for the Right to Education; the Landless Movement; and the Committee of Presidents of State Councils for Food and Nutrition Security.
"It is also up to the FNDE to take the necessary legal and administrative measures so that the decentralized resources not implemented by the states and municipalities in 2020 can be rescheduled for implementation in 2021, with the guarantee of acquisition of the minimum percentage of 30% of family agriculture," the groups added.
In 2009, the Brazilian government passed a law requiring that at least 30 percent of the food purchased for the country' s school feeding program be bought from small-scale farmers.