E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.1 page 16 by their employers and suffer physical and moral violence. Black women have the lowest level of education. As a result of their lack of qualifications, but also because of racial discrimination on the labour market (job advertisements frequently require people to be "of good appearance") many of them become prostitutes. 53. It has also been found that more Black women are sterilized than White women. Some people believe that this method of contraception or family planning contributes to the gradual whitening of Brazil’s population. 25/ According to data provided by the Brazilian Geographical and Statistical Institute for 1986, in the State of Bahia, 75 per cent of women who had been sterilized (aged between 15 and 40) were Black or of mixed parentage, while for the country as a whole the percentage is estimated to be 61.8. 26/ 54. These women, who are often poor, naturally do not wish to have any more children because they are unable to provide them with a decent standard of living, but they are not offered any alternative means of contraception; however, they may even be sterilized without their knowledge when they give birth. They are also encouraged to accept sterilization by politicians who promise to help them if they are elected; there are also material incentives (money, food) to accept sterilization, and until 1995 employers could demand a medical certificate certifying that female workers had been sterilized. 27/ This fact is also confirmed by the observations of the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations which, in its report to the eighty-second session of the International Labour Conference (June 1995) noted with regard to the application of Convention No. 111, Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958, "that, despite the detailed information provided on administrative and statutory provisions to ban discrimination based on sex, the Conference Committee keenly regretted that Bill No. 229/91 (prohibiting employers from requiring a medical certification attesting to the sterilization of women workers, which constitutes discrimination on the ground of sex in respect of access to employment) has still not been adopted". 28/ 55. According to the explanations obtained from the Ministry of Health, sterilization of women is not an official practice encouraged by the Government. Generally speaking, contraception, including sterilization, is a method which Brazilian women have adopted voluntarily. If many women resort to sterilization, that is because it is a simple and cheap method; those who resort to it do not always consider the consequences. Significantly, it is women from the poorest sectors of the population who use sterilization, but that does not mean that there is a sterilization policy targeted at Black women. The Government has had an act against mass sterilization adopted. 29/ The Act in question is Act No. 229/91, referred to above by the ILO Committee of Experts, which has now come into force. H. Violence against children and child labour 56. Violence against children is one of the most serious problems Brazil has to face. It mainly affects street children of Black and mixed parentage. According to a study carried out by UNICEF and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of São Paulo into child murders, in 1991, out of a total of 307 victims, 42.35 per cent were White, 44.63 per cent of mixed parentage