Skip to Content
Home

National law and policies on minimum ages – Brazil

 

According to the CRC, laws and policies must be directed to the best interest of the child. This is especially so in provisions that aim to safeguard the child against exploitation or an early end to childhood, i.e. in the instances where children are most vulnerable and at risk. Yet such safeguards are often ignored and different areas of legislation found to clash with each other. What happens if the age for the end of compulsory education is 14 but the minimum age of employment is 12? Or vice versa? What if a girl can be married before school leaving age - will she then return to school? And who ensures schooling in prisons, when in reality education should protect children from incarceration?

 

 

 

 

With 192 parties to it, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most widely ratified UN treaty. Each State Party must submit periodic reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which uses this process to monitor State compliance with the treaty. The vast majority of the information on minimum ages presented on these pages is taken directly from such reports (occasionally, if these failed to include relevant information concerning minimum ages, other components of the reporting process - such as the Committee’s Concluding Observations - were consulted). States Parties’ reports constitute self-assessment by governments and are therefore authoritative sources, emanating directly from those empowered to make decisions. Using this type of sources also permits a range of actors to hold governments accountable for the standards which they report under the CRC. The sections of these reports have been reproduced faithfully, and readers are encouraged to make use of the full original text, available here.

 

Individual country reports are often written by diverse parts of the government, and frequently run to more than 100 pages. Moreover, within some states’ legal systems there are various recognised sources of law, which frequently generate conflicting minimum ages. Distilling precise numbers out of such documents is therefore a precarious task. While we would encourage cross-country comparison, we would also stress the danger that those countries with a more honest engagement with the reporting process might come off worse when compared with those which would mis-represent the degree of compliance, whether wilfully or not. For a full explanation of the principles that guided us in our analysis, please visit the introductory pages here.

Source: Initial, 2nd and 3rd periodic reports combined: CRC/C/3/Add.65, 17 December 2003 

Minimum age for the end of compulsory education

88. [S]chool education is compulsory and free from the age of 7 until the completion of primary education (Law No. 9.394, 20 December 1996, Law of National Education Guidelines and Bases, art. 6).
431. Brazil has universalized access to primary education for 97 percent of children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 14, the key stage in the effort to eradicate illiteracy.
479. Because of repetition, student take an average of 10 years to complete the 8 years of mandatory education.
 
Minimum age for admission to employment
601. The prohibition of the use of the labour of children and of adolescents in Brazil is stated in the Constitution, in article 7, item XXXIII, as modified by Constitutional Amendment 20 (16 December 1998), which sets the minimum working age at 16 […]
604. […] The allowance of apprenticeship in Brazil, beginning at age 14, is not an impediment to setting the minimum age at 16, in line with article 6 of Convention No. 138.
 
Minimum age for marriage
88. The new Civil Code lays down that, from 2003 onward, a male and a female of 16 can marry, provided that they have the consent of both their parents or their legal guardians, while they have not reached the age of legal majority (art. 1.517).
86. Relative majority is reached at 18 and absolute majority at 21, the age at which persons are entitled to practise all the acts of civil life (Civil Code, art. 9). Brazilian legislation provides for the possibility of emancipation of a minor, which means bringing forward the age of majority, and the consequent right to practise all the acts of civil life (Civil Code, art. 9).
87. Since 2003, with the coming into force of the new Civil Code, Law No.10.406 of 10 January 2002, minority ends when the person reaches 18 years. Emancipation, however, may be reached at 16 through the consent of the parents, or of one of them in the absence of the other, through the sentence of a judge, after consulting with the guardian, through marriage, through the full exercise of public employment, on bestowal of a university-level degree, through civil or commercial stability, or through the existence of an employment link, provided that, as a result thereof, the minor of 16 is self-supporting.
 
Minimum age for criminal responsibility
575. Children may not be confined. Only adolescents can be confined, when submitted to due legal process with full rights to defence, and only for having committed offences with violence or making serious threats against a person. The longest period of confinement allowed for acts committed by a person under 18 is three years, and it must be served in an establishment created exclusively for adolescents, who are forbidden to be held together with adults.
85. The Statute of the Child and Adolescent defines a child as a person up to 12 years of age and an adolescent as being someone between 12 and 18 years of age (art. 2) […]
 
Source: Initial, 2nd and 3rd periodic reports combined: CRC/C/3/Add.65, 17 December 2003