The government plans of Brazil's leading presidential candidates address violence against children and adolescents mainly through responses to crimes rather than prevention, according to an analysis by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) released on Monday (24). The agency reviewed the platforms filed with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Brazil's top electoral authority, by the five candidates leading the polls: Lula (PT), Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), Ronaldo Caiado (PSD), Romeu Zema (Novo) and Renan Santos (Missão).

According to G1, the five programs contain 178 mentions of children and adolescents, spread across education (42), violence or public safety (39), health (30), social protection (28), sport (8) and other rights (31). Where violence is addressed, proposals for responding to crime dominate, such as tougher sentences, more policing and stronger criminal investigation. References to prevention, to strengthening Brazil's child rights protection system and to responses involving sectors beyond public security are less frequent.

"This is not about choosing between prevention or repression. Yes, perpetrators of violence must be investigated and held accountable. But to protect children and adolescents it is also essential to act before violence happens, through education policies and opportunities for young people, social assistance, health, strengthening families and systems that identify and refer situations of violence," said Joaquin Gonzalez-Aleman, Unicef's representative in Brazil.

Differences among the candidates

According to the review, the programs of Flávio Bolsonaro and Romeu Zema focus on punishment and response to violence against children or committed by them. Caiado's plan stresses investigating and penalizing perpetrators but also includes cross-sector prevention proposals, while Lula's leans more toward preventive action. Metrópoles reports that Caiado leads in mentions of childhood issues, with 86, followed by Lula (37), Flávio Bolsonaro (28) and Zema (24). Renan Santos makes only three mentions, all related to education, and does not explicitly address violence against children. Unicef noted that the analysis counted explicit mentions and that policies phrased in other terms may not have been captured.

Sexual violence appears in the plans of Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro and Caiado. Risks in digital environments and domestic violence are mentioned only by Lula and Caiado, and homicides of children and adolescents only in Caiado's program. No plan includes proposals on deaths resulting from police operations. For Unicef, the only measures aimed at adolescents, tied to lowering the age of criminal responsibility and changing the juvenile justice system, reflect a view of adolescents as "perpetrators" of violence rather than among the biggest victims of rights violations. The agency also points out that the plans treat children as a homogeneous group, without distinctions of race, gender, disability or territory, and make no reference to Black and Indigenous children.

The scale of the problem

Figures from the 2026 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, cited by G1, show the scale of the issue: in 2025, 2,079 children and adolescents were killed violently in Brazil, almost six per day, most of them Black male adolescents. Cases of mistreatment at home rose 106% between 2024 and 2025, with more than 38,000 records last year, and 61,000 rapes or statutory rapes were registered, most of them occurring at home.