Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

AMERICAS: Social Charter Aimed at Fuller Democracy

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 7 2004 (IPS) - Representatives from various sectors of civil society will meet this Saturday to discuss Argentina’s contribution to the Social Charter of the Americas, a proposed document that would deepen the hemisphere’s commitment to democracy and social rights.

The initiative to draw up a Social Charter based on contributions from civil society throughout the region was first put forward by Venezuela. The resulting document will be submitted to the Organisation of American States (OAS).

Campesinos (peasant farmers), human rights activists, students and representatives of the unemployed and other social movements will work together to draft proposals for inclusion in the Charter, emphasising the right to food, employment, health care, education and housing.

The meeting will take place in a Buenos Aires print shop that shut down after the owners went bankrupt but was subsequently reopened by the workers.

It is being coordinated by José Roselli, a lawmaker from the leftist Bloque Convergencia and president of the metalworkers union. "We want an instrument that can be used to pressure our governments," Roselli told IPS.

The Social Charter is meant to serve as a "counterweight" to the Inter-American Democratic Charter, adopted by the OAS in 2001. The existing charter establishes representative democracy as the only model of government and development in the states of the hemisphere, thus "disregarding the potential of participatory democracy," said Roselli.

"The Democratic Charter promotes democratic participation solely through political parties, and we believe that a much greater role should be given to social movements and civil society in general, making them the backbone of democratic representation," he explained.

Roselli and the others meeting on Saturday believe that the Democratic Charter fails to recognise the contributions that could by made by grassroots social movements to achieving higher levels of development and overcoming poverty.

They complain that the document takes a "superficial" and "anachronistic" approach to the issue of poverty, which affects over 40 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean.

This is why the new charter will explicitly detail the social rights that all states must guarantee to their citizens, as well as their responsibilities with regard to economic, cultural and indigenous rights.

A draft version of a Social Charter of the Americas was put forward in April by the Venezuelan government, led by left-leaning President Hugo Chávez. The proposal is now being discussed by civil society representatives in countries throughout the region.

The Argentine health care sector has written up a series of points to be addressed regarding the protection of certain "basic social rights", namely the right to decent living conditions, health care, employment, education and housing.

A group of Argentine lawmakers then drafted an initiative that was introduced for consideration at the Latin American Parliament.

The two documents will serve as the focus for discussion at the meeting on Saturday, which will lead to the drafting of Argentina’s contribution to the charter to be submitted at the next OAS Assembly.

Participants in the meeting will include Venezuelan lawmakers and officials and representatives of the Campesino Movement of Santiago de Estero (an impoverished province in northern Argentina), the Peace and Justice Service, the Corriente Clasista y Combativa (Class-Based and Combative Current) and the Movement of Unemployed Workers, among others.

"This is an open invitation for a discussion of social rights, aimed at drafting a solid document with the greatest possible participation of grassroots movements," said Roselli.

There are already plans for a similar process in the Bahamas and Bolivia, and other countries like Brazil and Peru will likely follow suit, he noted.

At the last OAS General Assembly, held in Quito, Ecuador in June, the member states adopted a resolution instructing the Permanent Council and the Permanent Executive Committee of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CEPCIDI) to draft a Social Charter of the Americas and a Plan of Action, outlining specific goals and targets.

The resulting documents should provide tools that would "reinforce the existing inter-American instruments on democracy, integral development and the fight against poverty," according to the resolution.

In response, the Venezuelan government launched the process aimed at having an alternative draft charter ready for submission to the next OAS assembly.

This alternative charter should reflect the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000, which include halving the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015.

Roselli was asked to coordinate Argentina’s contribution to the new Social Charter while he was in Venezuela as an international observer to the Aug. 15 presidential recall referendum, which Chávez survived with flying colours.