Brazil, the largest South American and Portuguese-speaking country, has doubled the murder rate of its young in the past 20 years. Approximately 28 Brazilian children and adolescents are murdered every day.

Within the past two decades, the number of children and teenagers murdered in Brazil has doubled, according to a new UNICEF report. Throughout 2013, there were approximately 10,500 homicides of adolescents registered in Brazil, an increase of 5,500 or 110 percent since 20 years prior.

According to the report, 28 children and adolescents were murdered each day in 2013, which made Brazil the second leading nation in world with regards to homicides of boys and girls under the age of 19. Afro-Brazilian youth, often poor and living on the outskirts of the city, were most at risk and nearly four times as likely to be murdered. Also, indigenous children are twice as likely to die before their first birthday.

"#ECA25years - Improvements and Challenges for Childhood and Adolescence," the new UNICEF report, also stated maternal mortality is exceptionally high in Brazil. Due to complications related to child birth and pregnancy, 61.5 mothers die per every 100,000 births -- this leaves many children unguided. Additionally, well over 3 million children and adolescents don't go to school, which leaves them uneducated and vulnerable to dangerous elements. Overwhelmingly, these children are poor, Afro-Brazilian, indigenous and from quilombolas communities.

UNICEF also said indigenous children are among the most vulnerable when it comes to education, despite nationally-enabled access to basic education for 93 percent of youth ages 4-17. Policies and programs have been instituted across the nation to ensure the survival and development of millions of Brazilian boys and girls, which actually prompted positive outcomes, such as the truancy rate decreasing from 20 percent to 7 percent in fewer than 20 years. Also, the illiteracy rate fell by 88.8 percent among 10- to 18-year-olds; that dip in illiteracy rates most prominent among Afro-Brazilian adolescents (approximately 91 percent).

While constructing policies to boost the education and literacy of Brazilian children has worked to a certain extent, the same policies have failed to effectively get children off of the street, so they might avoid targeting or becoming involved in criminal activity. According to UNICEF, the "disturbing" death rates for minors are higher than typical, even for warzones.

"You can see a push from parts of society to make adolescents responsible for the violence," the report said. "In reality, there are death sentences every day on adolescents, especially those who are black, across the whole country."

The findings were published just in time for the 25th anniversary of the country's Child and Adolescent Statute, a landmark law on children's rights. Nigeria is the only nation that outranks Brazil for the murder of individuals under 20 years old, and most of the crimes go unsolved.

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