Down to Zero / SUFASEC – Brazil SUMMARY: Brazil records 500,000 cases per year of sexual exploitation against children and adolescents, occupying second place worldwide. This number can be even higher, since only 7 out of 100 cases are reported. In a context of shrinking civic space and dismantling children's rights institutions over the last 4 years, Plan International Brazil and Ecpat Brazil will join forces in this three-year programme using both a systems and gender transformative approach to combat SEC. 
PIB will be working from March 2023 onwards to set up a steering committee of youth, enabling vulnerable girls and boys to improve their agency and advocating to combat SEC & gender equality. Moreover, interventions will focus on changing social and gender norms that contribute to the sexual exploitation of children and strengthening, influencing CPS actors (both services providers and LEA) to better implement prevention and response measures and support CSO's movement building to do national advocacy for better CP. This activity forms part of the Step Up the Fight Against Sexual Exploitation of Children (SUFASEC) programme. The programme will run in 12 countries in Latin America and South and South East Asia. 
In  Brazil root causes include harmful social and gender norms. The production and reproduction of discriminatory gender norms, sexual abuse and SEC are inherently tolerated and normalized and even encourage the victimisation of children, especially girls, and the perpetration of violence by adults and male peers.  Negative social and gender norms interact with  weak governance, poverty, income inequality and racism  to create an environment in which violence occurs with impunity and is normalised. In the case of Brazil, race - , age- and gender-related social norms come into play regarding sexual violence and SEC.
Root causes also include many children’s inability to build social assets that are essential to their protection, families’ economic hardship and exposure to negative shocks such as unemployment, illness or death within the family, or natural disasters. Urbanization and migration can contribute to children’s risk of exposure to SEC, particularly when family separation is involved or where children are migrating for work to support household income needs.
Lastly weak governance and child protection systems (duty bearers) do not implement sufficiently protection and response measures in order to protect children’s rights. Especially under the last government civic space has been under pressure and mechanisms (such as the Intersectoral Commission to Combat Sexual Violence against children and Adolecents) have been dismantled. The program will focus on rebuilding these spaces under a newly installed government, advocating for actions that integrate policies for prevention and response of SEC. The programme will work towards the following long-term impact: “Children in all of their diversity are better protected from sexual exploitation.” 

This will be reached through three interlinking objectives: 
1.	Children, youth and their communities successfully challenge social norms and harmful practices related to SEC 
2.	Children and youth have access to and are supported by strengthened assets and protective environments 
3.	Children and civil society meaningfully participate in holding duty bearers, including government and local authorities, accountable to their obligations towards improved (implementation of) laws, policies, and systems.

Social norms and harmful practices are key drivers of SEC. Social norm change begins at home, and for children, youth and their communities to challenge these norms, they must exercise high levels of agency and autonomy over their own bodies and lives. To the extent that children and adolescents recognize themselves as subjects of rights, they can also better understand SRHR as fundamental, and both children and youth in general, as well as victims of SEC, can aspire to exercise a healthy sexuality that includes respect for their personal integrity and decisions about their bodies. To the extent that they are recognized as subjects of rights, all children and youth are also able to demand access to inclusive protection services that both duty bearers and co-responsible parties can provide. This agency can be supported through positive parenting, strong family ties and supportive community members. Acting together, children, their caregivers and communities, can achieve meaningful change in how all children engage with and are valued by society. 

SEC can be reduced, and its impact appropriately mitigated through access to appropriate assets and through provision of protective environments for children. Economic resilience is a key means of mitigating against monetary drivers of SEC. Children need access to child-centered, inclusive and locally available protection and SRHR information and services, delivered and received without stigma. With so many varied actors involved in protection and referral mechanisms it is important that such services are delivered in a holistic and coordinated manner. By supporting the specialized care and reintegration services that CSOs provide to SEC victims, it is possible to strengthen the restitution of their rights and integrity, especially in contexts where the role of the government in child-friendly and inclusive service provision is still weak. The SUFASEC programme in Brazil builds on the Alliance’s collective achievements to date, scaling up the 2016- 2020 Down to Zero (DtZ), and 2021 – 2022 Building Back Better (BBB) programme. This allows the Alliance to effectively address SEC in the continuously evolving context. Plan International Brazil joined the Down to Zero alliance in the 2016-202 DtZ programme and brought to the country team a rich experience of working with schools, children and youth, local communities, government at local and national level, CSO networks, and CPS actors. Plan International Brazil continues to do so along with a focus on gender transformative programming, a strong understanding of intersectionality and changing social and gender norms. The key target group (and final beneficiaries) of the programme are girls and boys up to 18 years old, who are victims and survivors and those at risk of SEC. We will mostly work with them through children and youth groups. 

Besides this target group, the program will also works with
- representatives from private sector
- public security officers
- actors from the CPS The programme in Brazil will focus on successful interventions from the previous phases, as well as will build on foreseen opportunities with the new national and state government (ie. Maranhâo). Our main strategy in this new phase is to support CSOs, coalitions, youth organizations and duty bears to strengthen their abilities and create spaces of collaboration in order to improve or create laws and policies. By
supporting their capabilities, the project will gain scale at national level and state levels:
1. CSO strengthening and coalition building
2. Meaningful youth participation
3. Social Norm change
4. Duty-bearer engagement
5. Due diligence process with private sector
6. Youth, community and NGO-driven lobby and advocacy
The programme has a clear context analysis of  SEC in Brazil, showing how and why it affects girls and boys differently, and how and why this is also linked to other exclusion factors, such as race/colour and economic status. During the implementation, activities will tailor media and policy engagements as well as
capacity building on key gender norms and barriers/drivers, working on the root causes of SEC, i.e. gender, age, race and economic power imbalances. A steering committee of youth will be created enabling girls from vulnerable and excluded groups to improve their agency, taking action and influencing to combat
SEC&gender equality. The committee’s capacity building programme will build increased knowledge, confidence, capacity to speak, to identify and to mitigate risks, to mobilize and to influence others. Boys and young men will also be mobilized as part of the committee to take action on gender equality, in favour
of the sexual and reproductive rights realization and against SEC. Finally, the project seeks for an enabling environment, through the provision of capacity building, creating platforms for dialogue and collective proposition, adding efforts to improve coordination among sectors, services and actors and influencing in
policies and budget allocations 1. Practice - building CSO's and government actors’ capacities, strengthening networks, alliances and long-term partnerships with other organizations or entities that are working towards similar goals, influencing public policies and/or legislation and collaborating with existing infrastructure; 
2. Socially - developing leadership paths for children and young people (especially for girls). The impact of the project is felt by and lasts among the participants and end beneficiaries if they are involved in making decisions about the project. The steering committee at the heart of this element. The project will support the strengthening of skills that participants can use or benefit from throughout their lives, such as youth leadership, focusing on the structural causes of social and gender inequalities;
3. Economically: throughout the implementation Plan International and potentially partners will analyze and put into practice methods to generate new funds to maintain some or all of the project activities. For this, Plan International Brazil has a team available to identify opportunities and generate fundraising strategies for the sustainability of the project. Alternative sources of funding other than grants are also possible in some possibilities: for example, fundraising events, individual donors, sales of products or services, etc.