Omar Anderson, Freelance Writer
Juan Carlso Espinola (left), resident coordinator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with Marta Mauras, secretary of the Economic Commission for the Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and Dr. Wesley Hughes, director-general of the PIOJ, view a copy of the Millennium Development Goals report, which was launched yesterday at the Knutsford Court. - RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
DESPITE MAKING slight progress in improving primary education and reducing hunger, Latin America and the Caribbean are still found wanting in eradicating extreme poverty, making primary education universal, and stopping environmental decline, a United Nations (U.N.) report says.
The latest report on the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) was released yesterday at a press conference at Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston.
The report noted that extreme poverty in the region remained very high, with 222 million Latin American and Caribbean people regarded as very poor. Of this number, 96 million were indigents.
According to the report, only Chile has halved extreme poverty with slight progress being witnessed in other Latin American countries.
OTHE COUNTRIES
"In the other countries, however, progress was poor or there was some slipping backward," the MGD report said.
In 2000, the governments of 189 countries adopted the MGD, committing themselves to take concrete steps toward eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, making primary education universal, promoting equality among the sexes, improving infant healthcare, reversing environmental damage, and fostering worldwide cooperation for development.
According to the report, the Latin American and Caribbean region is on its way to meeting the goal regarding hunger, with 15 of 24 countries reducing sub-nutrition.
The MGD report noted that the theme underlying the report is inequality, since the Latin American and Caribbean region is the least equitable region in the world.
PRINMARY EDUCATION
The U.N. report added that primary education in the region has seen progress with registration rates exceeding 93 per cent. Progress, the report added, occurred mainly in intermediate development countries like Brazil and Mexico with rates of 95 per cent.
Most of the countries in the region are also expected to meet the millennium goals for urban drinking water.
But the U.N. is contending that to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, the region will require sustained economic growth at different rates for each country, but averaging 2.9 per cent capita in the next decade. Poor countries, however, will require an annual average 4.4 per cent per capita growth rate.
"Economic growth that does not change income distribution will not improve the poor's standards of living enough," the MGD report stated. "A change in distribution to boost the poorest strata's income more rapidly would make it possible to meet the goal more quickly."
Towards this end, the MGD report advised that this growth with equity strategies requires institutional changes that place social policies at the centre of developmental strategies.
