I take this opportunity to make a parenthesis on the country-by-country analysis, which is the objective of the series Latino Debates, to talk about Sustainable Development in our countries. Sitting on my desk is the Quadrennial report on regional progress and challenges in relation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, recently published and elaborated by the ECLAC, with the support of 13 other multilateral organizations. Out of the six chapters that make the 223 pages, I will refer exclusively to two of them: Chapter II, dedicated to the advancement of institutional frameworks and tools for implementing the 2030 Agenda; and Chapter IV, titled “Leave no one behind: the challenge of inclusive development,” which contains revealing information about matters such as inequality, hunger, gender equality, education, workforce, violence, among others.
A good place to start contextualizing the development sustainability problem in the region is pointing out the pendular movement Latin America and the Caribbean experience decade after decade. The eighties (and for many countries projected all the way to the nineties) were defined as the “lost decade,” when the region was asphyxiated by the weight of foreign debt, macroeconomic unbalances, social debt, and growing poverty. Later, the situation became worse due to the rigid prescriptions of the “Washington Consensus,” which translated into adjustment policies imposed by the conditionality of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to access fresh money and refinance external debt with international banks. Then, the sustained and accelerated growth in both China and India set a new tone, creating an expansion (and even a resilience of Latin American economies in the face of the crisis that shook the US and Europe). This scenario encouraged the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, the Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, to speak of the Latin American Decade, alluding to a period and establishing a parallelism that, in the language of the economist Shumpeter, could be referred to as the “takeoff” of a country or region.
Today the region faces small and fragile growth; a continuing and growing regional dependency on its raw materials; the even abusive character of the Sino-Latin American exchange, which presents a barrier for industry and value-added activities that cannot compete with their counterparts in China or Asia, which simply need natural resources. These and many other factors set off a new alarm. There is an immense opportunity and potential, but it does not seem to consolidate. It’s like reading up on economic literature about the so-called “Brazilian Miracle” or similar stories in any other in a country in the region, to then see the fall or crisis that resurfaces the fact that the core problems remain unsolved.
Having established some context, I return to the study or work that inspired this note. In general terms, the ECLAC maintains that there have been advances related to institutionality: out of the 33 countries researched, 29 have mechanisms that allow implementing policies inscribed in the 2030 Agenda. 14 of the countries created high-level institutions or bodies, especially for these purposes. The other 15 countries made changes or adaptations in existing organizations. This represents the establishment of coordination mechanisms between different agencies at the highest governmental level; the direct connection between goals of the 2030 Agenda, state programs, and budgets; the specification of the objectives, and, in some cases, this great potential: the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals as State policies.
Another variable that deserved to be highlighted is the voluntary reports that the countries have been presenting on the advances achieved in the Sustainable Development Goals: between 2016 and 2017, 14 reports were presented, plus another 8 in 2018. 12 of the remaining countries have expressed their intention of presenting reports in 2019 and 2020. When comparing this data to that of the world scale, the result is astonishing: between 2016 and 2020, 17 countries have presented voluntary reports in two occasions. Of those, 7 are from the Latin American and the Caribbean.
Another point worth highlighting is the participation of civil society, although the ECLAC report is cautious when commenting on this issue. While civil societies have more wide opportunities ahead, they are still insufficient or very partial. On page the report calls to action: It is “essential to continue consolidating recent regional advances in public participation and innovation, strengthening the role of young people and groups that have traditionally been the most vulnerable.”
In the beginning of the fourth chapter, titled “Leave no one behind: the challenge of inclusive development,” the dimension of the difficulties is clearly expressed: the region is the most unequal in the world. This inequality reflects on the most varied and interconnected matters: income, goods, economic power, and political power, to name a few. These inequalities persist over time and pass from one generation to the next. Fearfully, the gap is ‘normalized’; it becomes cultural. This warning must not go unnoticed: “The persistence and reproduction of inequality are associated with a culture of privilege in which differences are normalized as justified inequalities, in line with a common mindset built on hierarchies of socioeconomic status, race, culture, gender, populations or peoples, which are propagated through actors, institutions, rules and practices.”
After years of a poverty and extreme poverty reduction trend between the years of 2002 and 2014, a new negative one started in 2015: either it started growing again, or it has remained stuck. This resulted in 180 million people (30% of the total population) living in poverty conditions and 63 million (10%) in extreme poverty conditions in 2018.
Between 2015 and 2016, the number of undernourished people increased by 2.4 million, for a total of 42.5 million (6.6% of the total population). It is likely that these numbers are, in fact, even more dramatic. They do not seem to be properly accounted for, at least until 2018 with the hunger epidemic that overwhelms Venezuela. In addition to hunger, there is malnutrition by excess. Except countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, which managed to lower the indicator, there is a slight increase in the rates of overweight or obesity in children.
When studying the infant mortality rate—an emblematic indicator of the functioning of the health systems—, the inequality factor is even clearer. While infant mortality decreased considerably between 2000 and 2015 (by 36.3%), the average infant mortality among indigenous communities was 1.8 times higher than in non-indigenous populations. Another indicator of mortality, which especially affects young people, is that of deaths related to drug use (mainly cocaine and cannabis), which has not decreased, but remains at a rate of 14.9 per million inhabitants in 2015.
The chapter dedicated to gender equality and women autonomy reveals a complex social phenomenon: legal reforms are not enough to correct behaviors, such as male violence, which are rooted in society. There have been advances in the legal and institutional frameworks. 13 countries have integral laws that punish gender violence and the other 18 have reformed their penal codes to characterize femicide. Meanwhile, between 2013 and 2018, more than 15,000 women were killed by their partners. Statistics are especially high in El Salvador and Honduras. While 19% of women in the world experienced some form of sexual or physical violence from their partner in 2018, in Latin America and the Caribbean that average is slightly higher: 21%.
Data on female workforce participation also challenges us to reflect and persist in the fight toward women equality. While 74,4% of men participate in the labor market, 50.2% of women do so. In 2017, unemployment rate in Latin America and the Caribbean was 10.4% for women, and 7.6% for men. The report draws attention to a specific projection of this inequality: although the studies are unanimous in recognizing that women are better payers, they obtain less credit than men and at higher rates. In relation this, data from the International Labor Organization shows that around 10.5 million children and adolescents are in engaged in child labor situation (page 138). This amounts to 7.3% of the population between 5 and 17 years. In absolute numbers, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru are the countries where the practice is more bulky. In percentage terms, Bolivia (26.4%), Paraguay (22.4%), and Peru (21.8%) lead this painful statistic.
ECLAC speaks of violence as a “cross-cutting issue for inclusive development.” It is, in almost all countries, a growing concern, clearly reflected in the opinion studies. While in 1995, only 5% of citizens pointed to insecurity and crime as their main concern, this figure soared in 2017 to 20%. This worry comes only second to the economic situation, which leads the results (23%). As I have pointed out, there are countries, such as those that make up the Northern Triangle of Central America, where the levels of violence are so extreme that they have an impact on the respective GDP, as in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
I could keep on adding numbers to represent the gravity of the situation. However, a few will suffice to draw a picture. Take for example homicide rates per a thousand inhabitants. While the world rate is below 7, in 2017 some countries in the region reached scandalous numbers: Venezuela (89), El Salvador (60), Jamaica (55.7), and Honduras (42.8). The report also draws attention to the opposite phenomenon: the case of three countries that achieved figures below the world average: Chile (3.3), Ecuador (5.8), and Argentina (6). A chart, displayed on page 142 of the report, makes it clear that all forms of violence soar in Latin America and the Caribbean, when compared to the rest of the world. While the rate of sexual violence in the rest of the world is 29.4, it is 60.6 in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, the rate of aggression and homicide rate is 103.9 and 4.4 in the rest of the world, but 229.5 and 22.1 in Latin America and Caribbean, respectively.
What I have noted so far are only some of the indicators that the report offers as systematically as possible. If some realities are not widely reflected, it is surely due to the lack of official information, as is the case with Venezuela, where the regime led by Nicolás Maduro has destroyed the official statistics system.
Reading this report brings us back to the enormity of the tasks that lie ahead for the governments of the region, which are obliged to insist and continue to advance. One objective is a priority: civil society must be made aware of the Sustainable Development Goals and the value of the 2030 Agenda as an instrument to plan and achieve concrete objectives. Only to the extent that the voters force their leaders to comply with them, Latin America and the Caribbean will be approaching the necessary compliance.
Para español lea El Nacional “Debates Latinos: América Latina, el Caribe y la Agenda 2030”