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How Foreign Policy Can Help Address Brazil’s Violence Epidemic

By Oliver Stuenkel

Promoting gun control measures in international fora could put pressure on domestic actors to catch up.

Last week, Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, a well-respected NGO based in São Paulo, published a series of grim statistics. In 2015, a staggering 58,383 people were assassinated in Brazil. The number of murders in Brazil increased over 250 percent in the last three decades, jumping from 13,910 in 1980 to above 50,000 in 2012. This means that one person is killed in the country every nine minutes, or 160 per day.

These figures are particularly noteworthy because Brazil has no territorial disputes or civil, religious or ethnic wars...

Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.

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