Some Indigenous in Brazil Suffer 100% Food Insecurity

Food insecurity in Guarani and Kaiowa Indigenous communities in Brazil’s south-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul is as high as up to 100 percent, over four times higher than the national average, according to a new report from human rights organizations.

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The study, conducted by the Brazil chapter of the international human rights organization FIAN and the Indigenous Missionary Council CIMI, investigated rights violations and other factors impacting substandard nutrition and food security in nearly 100 families across the communities of Kurusu Amba, Ypo’i, and Guaiviry over the past three years. The report aims to offer a “holistic approach” to the human right to food in Guarani and Kaiowa communities.

In all three communities, FIAN found 100 percent food insecurity, which means all families reported some level of inadequate food quantity and quality with feeling of a threat to their food access in the immediate future.

Children were hard hit by poor nutrition, with just over three-quarters of families reporting that in the period of a month before Sept. 2013 at least one child or youth went to bed hungry or that there was no food in the house, the report found. Around 80 percent of households reported that an adult in the family ate less to save food for children.

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Underlying factors of the drastic food insecurity situation include land insecurity and systematic denial of their right to ancestral territory, which undermines possibilities for subsistence farming and fixed income sources, according to the researchers.

“Generally, Indigenous peoples’ rights violations happen because of their cultural identity,” said FIAN Brazil Secretary-General Valeria Burity in a statement. “These violations are historical (and) are associated with state economic exploitation processes.”

Food insecurity in Brazil at large is just under 23 percent, according to FIAN.

The Guarani and Kaiowa groups of Mato Grosso do Sul have a population of some 45,000 people. The communities have longstanding conflicts with agribusiness corporations, as the state is an central area in the Brazilian soybean industry. The monocultural export crop is notorious for displacing small farmers and Indigenous peoples.

The Indigenous communities also suffer other human rights abuses, aside from deprivation of their rights to land and food. According to FIAN, Mato Grosso do Sul was home to nearly 55 percent of all murders of Indigenous people in the country.