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Showing posts with label poverty Latin America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty Latin America. Show all posts

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Latin America: Regional reflections, 200 years on

Regional reflections, 200 years on
By David Roberts




As several Latin American countries celebrate their bicentenaries, the latest being Chile and Mexico, marking 200 years since the start of the process that led to their independence from Spain, now is probably as good a time as any to reflect upon the progress the region has made over recent decades.



And not insignificant progress that is, too. Almost every country in the region now enjoys a relatively stable democracy, a situation quite unlike that of 20, 30 or more years ago, when military dictatorships and guerrilla wars were commonplace. Of course, there's no such thing as a perfect democracy - witness the 2000 US election when Al Gore lost despite receiving more votes than George W Bush - and in Latin America it comes in various shapes and sizes, some more steadfast than others, but there remains just one country that cannot seriously claim to be a democracy, and we all know which one that is.



Then there's the economic progress made in recent years. Most countries in the region now have stable, regulated and market-based economies that have seen steady growth, and generally survived the financial meltdown of 2008-09 better than their counterparts in the so-called developed world. Indeed, countries like Chile, Peru and Colombia have made remarkable headway, and even the "socialist" countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are a far cry from the old-style socialism seen in the communist/Soviet era. Brazil, meanwhile, has emerged as a genuine world economic powerhouse, with many of its corporations being global industry leaders (Vale, Petrobras and Embraer, for example). Compare all that to the constant banking, foreign debt and hyperinflation crises of yesteryear.



Of course, all that is no excuse for complacency. The region faces many severe challenges, such as the still unacceptable levels of poverty and a shameful record on wealth distribution, high rates of crime and drug-related violence, indigenous rights issues, corruption, weak institutions and inadequate infrastructure, to name a few. Large parts of Latin America are still over-dependent on exports of raw materials and consequently remain vulnerable to commodity price cycles, and economies in some parts of the continent, as in the case of Mexico in the recent global slump, are too reliant on demand for their products in the US.



The region is also particularly susceptible to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, flooding and hurricanes. The consequences of these "acts of God" can only partly be blamed on divinity, as many of the deaths and much of the damage are more often than not the result of shoddy building (Haiti in January, for example), poverty, deforestation and other human frailties.



And the region remains divided between the left-leaning Venezuela-led bloc and the more "liberal" nations, although perhaps less so than some may imagine as leaders such as Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have shown they are not always prepared to toe the Chavez line.



Finally, and this may be more of a symptom than a cause of the region's ills, Latin America remains largely ignored by the outside world. Events like earthquakes and the attempts to rescue the 33 trapped miners in northern Chile do, quite naturally, capture the attention of the world, but even Washington's policy towards Latin America (talk of a partnership of equals, etc) is fuzzy to put it kindly, and regions further afield simply don't seem to have Latin America on their radar. This too represents a major challenge that regional leaders must face up to - to make sure Latin America's voice is heard on the global stage, and it's one that cannot wait another 200 years.

bnamericas

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Number of poor in Latin America to rise by 9 million this year, says UN report

19 November 2009 – Nine million more people in Latin America will fall into poverty this year due to the global economic crisis, bringing the total number of poor in the region to 189 million, or 34 per cent of the population, according to a United Nations report released today.

The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which produced the report, stated that the new estimates depart from the trend towards poverty reduction that was prevalent in the region thanks to greater economic growth, the expansion of social spending and better income distribution.

“We can’t say that all that was attained between 2002 and 2008 has been lost,” said ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena, as she presented the report, Social Panorama of Latin America 2009.

“However, the rise in poverty calls us to action. We need to rethink social protection programmes with a long-term, strategic perspective and measures that make the most of human capital and protect the income of vulnerable families and groups,” she added.

ECLAC recommended, among other things, reforming social protection systems and adopting both urgent short-term measures as well as strategic long-term ones.

“In doing so, governments should avoid fiscal irresponsibility and rigid labour markets, increase taxes progressively, redistribute social spending and extend coverage of social services,” the Commission stated.

The Commission also noted that the projected increase in poverty for 2009 will impede efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the globally agreed targets to slash poverty, hunger and a host of other social ills, all by 2015.

At the same time, the impact of the current crisis on poverty in the region is not expected to be as great as with previous crises, such as the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, it pointed out.

UN News