Brazil’s Supreme Court formed a majority to force the Jair Bolsonaro government to carry out a nationwide demographic census no later than 2022. Initially scheduled for 2020, the survey was postponed until this year due to the pandemic — and recently suspended for budgetary reasons.
Late in April, Justice Marco Aurélio Mello issued an injunction ordering the nationwide survey to take place this year. “The right to information is the foundation on which governments may draft and implement public policies,” he wrote. His colleagues agreed with him, forcing the government to conduct the survey, but gave the administration more time to get things together.
Per the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the absence of the census would compromise “information pivotal to the enactment of public policies, particularly for municipal administrations.”
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