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I would say that it means social inclusion, it means putting everybody on board, giving
everybody a chance to be there, to have a nice life, to have a job.
In Brazil, I was brought up actually listening to an economic theory that we had to wait
for the cake to grow for us to divide it. In Brazil today we are cooking the cake together
and we are eating it together. We are distributing as we grow. We are growing and distributing,
we are growing and dividing the cake. I think this is very important and this is what social
justice is. I was brought up with the theory that no you cannot distribute until you have
your foundations, your economy is strong. That’s the contrary, in Brazil since President
Lula took power, we have been distributing and growing a lot. Bolsa Familia is one example
but we have other examples. We are creating opportunities for people. Bolsa Familia has
benefited 11 million families in Brazil. We have taken 45 million people out of poverty
and these people today are buying their refrigerators, their stoves, their TV sets. It makes a lot
of difference.
If you discriminate, it will marginalize sectors of your society. They will come back to you,
they will haunt you and they will haunt your economy, your policies and you won’t have
peace or stability. These are all assets and I think the ILO is a source of inspiration
for that.
I think the crisis has presented an opportunity for us to rebuild something, to build the
new world economic order. Not only inside our own countries but internationally linked
too and we are doing that in Brazil. As we say in the ILO, this is a crisis of jobs and
we have to create jobs but we have to do it right, in the right way. We have to create
real jobs for real people in the real economy. And this is more or less what Brazil is doing,
like China is doing, like India is doing. Taking people above the poverty line and giving
them a chance to be a partner in the solution, this is social justice - including people.