LATIN AMERICA: More Education Needed to Avoid ‘Lost Generation’

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Apr 7 1997 (IPS) - Without stepped-up efforts in education, Latin America will produce a new “lost generation” in the next few years, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) warned at a conference in Brazil.

There is consensus among international institutions and countries in the region that more funds are needed in education, in order to overcome rampant poverty, Iglesias told a four-day meeting being held to assess progress made since the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen.

Promoted by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the first Regional Follow-up Conference opened Sunday in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

An ECLAC report prepared for the meeting, “The Equity Gap”, underlines that distribution of income in the region has become even more skewed over the past few years, while the total number of people living below the poverty line has risen to 210 million.

But Chile’s Minister of National Planning, Roberto Pizarro, presented figures pointing to improvements in his country, where efforts to fight poverty have been combined since the 1980s with measures to contain inflation and achieve fiscal balance. A full 70 percent of the Chilean budget is earmarked for social spending, especially education, said Pizarro, who added that 85 percent of health funds benefit the poorest 55 percent of the population.

At the conference’s first panel, “Macroeconomic Administration and its Impact on Poverty”, Colombia’s Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Jose Antonio Ocampo, said “the issue of distribution is even more complex than that of poverty.”

Latin America’s big problem, he stressed, is that “84 percent of jobs are in the informal market,” which does not contribute to social security and other fiscal income. Improved education is indispensable to expanding the non-marginalised active labour force, he added, echoing Iglesias.

Ministers of the economic area face challenges that are impossible to resolve, said Costa Rica’s Finance Minister, Francisco de Paula Gutierrez, because they have “limited funds with which to address many priorities.” For that reason, frequent conflicts break out with colleagues from the social sector, who are constantly demanding increased funding, he said.

Costa Rica has achieved a relatively decent level of development thanks to the opening of its economy and the containment of inflation, the minister added.

Marcos Caramuru de Paiva, a Brazilian Finance Ministry adviser, cited his country as an example of how contained inflation contributes to improving social indicators. The stabilisation programme named the ‘Plan Real’ after the national currency “has greatly improved the lives of the poorest in Brazil” since its implementation in 1994, he said.

“There are no good social policies that are not based on good economic policies,” Iglesias underlined.

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, participating in another panel, announced the creation of a National Secretariat of Human Rights in the Ministry of Justice.

The measure, which had been under study for some time, took on a new urgency in the face of the commotion caused by the late March airing of a video containing scenes of torture and murder practiced by Brazilian military police against inhabitants of a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, is an example of the challenges facing social development in the region, with its contrasts of wealth and poverty, said Cardoso.