LATIN AMERICA: Legislators Listen to Lectures on Social Debt

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 14 1997 (IPS) - Lawmakers from throughout Latin America recently gathered here to listen, rather than talk, to experts on children, poverty, education, gender and the foreign debt.

The Social Debt Commission of the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino) took note last weekend of recommendations on how to resolve problems such as malnutrition among children, unemployment, extreme poverty and unequal opportunities for women.

“You, the politicians, are the ones who have to change things,” urged health expert Maria Luisa Ageitos, with the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), who pointed out that some 19 million children in the region suffer from malnutrition.

The meeting, the seventh since the creation of the Social Debt Commission, was the second one with a specific agenda and researchers and specialised functionaries as guests.

Economist Nestor Lopez, also with UNICEF, warned that the prevailing economic model in Latin America excluded a majority of citizens. He recommended that the lawmakers provide legal support to small and medium-sized companies, as a key part of efforts to reduce unemployment.

Lopez pointed out that according to the latest report by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), some 209 million people in the region live in poverty, a phenomenon that hurts children’s growth, health and access to education.

Uruguayan Deputy Daisy Tourne told IPS that her aim in the Parlatino commission was to urge a re-thinking of today’s economic policies, which in her view generate an increase in production and price stability, but without contributing to the creation of jobs nor the elimination of poverty.

“We must modify State policies with legislation, while elaborating initiatives of positive discrimination in favour of women and young people, who are hardest hit” by the predominant model, she underlined.

Stressing the gap between men’s and women’s wages, and the tendency for women to absorb the jobs offering the most precarious conditions, Tourne proposed the creation of a credit fund for women entrepreneurs.

Ageitos, meanwhile, focused on the need to address the crucial mother-child bond. “You will do more for the children of your countries by backing initiatives that promote breastfeeding than by approving health budgets in which the funds go toward the purchase of milk,” she told the legislators.

Suggesting that financial support be provided to hospitals qualified by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) as “mother and child-friendly” due to their efforts to promote that bond from the moment of birth, Ageitos added that many cases of malnutrition could be prevented by promoting breastfeeding.

She also stressed the need to protect the rights of mothers: “When you vote for laws making the labour market more flexible, don’t forget that if the rights of mothers in the period of lactation are infringed on, you are mortgaging the future of millions of children.”

Legislators in the region should also translate into law the International Code on Commercialisation of Human Milk Substitutes, which limits publicity and the free distribution in hospitals of formulas to replace maternal milk, the UNICEF official underlined.

Although the international code was approved by a vote among all the world’s countries, she pointed out, the majority of the laboratories that produce formulas to substitute maternal milk ignore the code because it does not explicitly prohibit the sale of such products.

“We must take into account the fact that children are often in the care of an exhausted, illiterate and anemic mother with no self-esteem, who in many cases works long hours outside of the home while acting as head of her household.”

Parlatino, which groups all of Latin America’s parliaments, was created to promote economic, social and political integration in the region.

The Foreign Debt Commission also participated in the Buenos Aires meeting. Concerned about the region’s growing debt, the members decided to meet with experts from Jul. 10-12 in Caracas, in a meeting titled “The Foreign Debt and the End of the Millenium.”