A/HRC/31/56/Add.1 education to be constitutional. Quotas are now established by individual universities on the basis of State Law and demographics.3 45. There are also specific government-led affirmative action initiatives to increase the representation of Afro-Brazilians. Law 12990 of 2014 established an affirmative action programme for federal civil servant positions countrywide, reserving 20 per cent of these positions for Brazilian negros (blacks) and pardos (mixed race). This also applies to public companies controlled by the federal government. It is notable that some Brazilian states, such as Mato Grosso, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, and Rio Grande do Sul, and cities including São Paulo, have enacted similar affirmative action policies for their civil servants. 46. The quota system, however, has some shortcomings. It does not apply to the legislative and judicial branches and also excludes “positions of trust”, which are often the decision-making posts. Thus, in the judiciary, only 15.7 per cent of judges are AfroBrazilians and Afro-Brazilians hold fewer than 10 per cent of posts in higher courts. 4 There are currently no Afro-Brazilians judges on the Supreme Court. In Bahia, where 76.3 per cent of the population identify as Afro-Brazilian, of 470 prosecutors in 2013, only 9 were Afro-Brazilian.10 47. The Special Rapporteur also observes that federal parliamentary quotas have been rejected. This has translated to low levels of Afro-Brazilian political representation. At the time of the visit, self-identified Afro-Brazilian descendants occupied only 8.5 per cent of the seats in the Câmara (House). The 81-seat Senate had only one Afro-Brazilian member. There is presently only one Afro-Brazilian minister. 48. It should also be noted that, although quotas are not applicable to the private sector, the Secretariat for Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality has been working on a voluntary programme with specific companies, and publicly recognizes good practices in this regard. V. Principal human rights concerns facing Afro-Brazilian communities 49. Brazil undoubtedly has, at both the federal and state levels, numerous laws, policies and programmes aimed at addressing the situation of Afro-Brazilians. Nevertheless, sharp inequalities remain for Afro-Brazilians across the full spectrum of human rights. While it is beyond the scope of the present report to analyse all the human rights concerns facing AfroBrazilians, the Special Rapporteur highlights some of the principal violations she observed. A. Violence 50. The Special Rapporteur was shocked to learn about the levels of violence in Brazil. Regrettably this violence has a clear racial dimension. Of the 56,000 homicides that occur each year, 30,000 victims are between 15 and 29 years old, of which 77 per cent are AfroBrazilian male youth.5 What is disconcerting is that a significant number are perpetrated by the State, often through the apparatus of the military police. Research reveals that the number of Afro-Brazilians who have died as the result of police actions in the state of São Paulo is three times greater than that registered for the white population. In Rio de Janeiro, 3 4 5 10 The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Equality has noted that such policies play an important role in achieving the objective of eliminating racial discrimination (see general comment No. 32). See www.cnj.jus.br/images/dpj/CensoJudiciario.final.pdf. See https://anistia.org.br/campanhas/jovemnegrovivo/.