Austerity and human rights: the impacts of the new constitutional fiscal regime in Brazil

December 1, 2016 from 4pm – 6pm

The current Brazilian government led by the center-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) is seeking to consolidate a long term agenda of reduction of the state. The government recently proposed an Amendment to the Constitution that aims at instituting what has been called a “New Fiscal Regime.” If approved, the regime would establish a limit of zero real growth for primary spending for twenty years. The New Fiscal Regime also proposes to suspend the constitutional vinculation of revenues for expenditures with public health and education. This vinculation was adopted after intense mobilization of civil society as a way to guarantee public funding for those areas and is considered to be fundamental to enable the state to ensuring the infrastructure of basic social services.

The Workshop discussed the impacts of the proposal for public health, education, economics and human rights. This event is sponsored by the Institute for Global Law and Policy and the Brazilian Students Association at Harvard Law School.

• Speakers: Claudia Costin, former Minister of Management and Reform of the State (1995-2002), Visiting Professor of Practice in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education
• José Gomes Temporão, former Minister of Health in Brazil (2007-2011)
• Adriano Massuda, former Secretary of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Health in Brazil (2015), Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health of Health in Brazil (2007-2011)