LATIN AMERICA: SOCIAL COHESION IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT ADDRESSING HUNGER

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SANTIAGO DE CHILE, Jun 21 2007 (IPS) - Inspired by the European experience of bringing together different societies and unequal economies, Latin America is forging its own development model, writes Jose Graziano da Silva, FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean. In this article, the author writes that hunger is the greatest obstacle to social cohesion in Latin America, and as long as it exists there cannot be general well-being. Today Latin America is in an excellent position to drastically reduce its deep economic and social gaps. This is the first occasion in a long time there have been five years of sustained growth in most of the countries of the region, with a three percent annual average growth in per capita income. Though it has the natural, financial, and human resources and the infrastructure and democratic institutions needed to eliminate hunger, it has not shown sufficient political will. Now it must.

The central component of this model is social cohesion, grounded in the promotion of human rights and responsive to three basic and closely-related factors: the need to reduce social gaps, specially the income gap; the need to guarantee citizens’ rights, and the need to promote the sense of belonging in society.

Of course, there are huge historical and geopolitical and chronological differences with Europe. Foremost among these is hunger. Europe did not have 53 million hungry people, as Latin America does, when it started talking about social cohesion. It did not have more than 9 million unnourished children when it began promotion of a sense of belonging to the ‘European space’, nor did it have generations of poor people condemned misery and exclusion without any hope for the future.

In Panama, for example, a quarter of the population suffers from hunger; a third of the Dominican Republic does. In Guatemala one out of two children is chronically undernourished, which will either impede them going to school, or, if they do attend, prevent them from absorbing what is being taught. It makes dying before they reach adulthood more likely, and consigns them, if they survive, to inferior jobs, lower salaries, greater susceptibility to disease, and an inability to buy enough food for their families or themselves, trapping their own children in the same vicious circle of hunger and poverty they were born into.

Today, however, Latin America is in an excellent position to drastically reduce the deep economic and social gaps that plague it. This is the first occasion in a long time there have been five years of sustained growth in most of the countries of the region, with three percent annual average growth in per capita income. Extreme poverty has been reduced as governments have paid more attention to social problems. And there is a growing institutionalisation of democracy.

How is it possible, then, that Latin-American societies cannot manage to meet their citizens’ most basic needs, particularly in light of the fact that in 2004 the region produced 30 percent more food than was needed to feed all of them. This is a clear sign of a lack of social cohesion and the dysfunction of solidarity and protection mechanisms. Far too many human beings are currently excluded from the benefits of progress.

Noting that the problems of hunger and undernourishment were pushed to the side in the process of building social cohesion in Latin America, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the World Food Programme (WFP) committed to making hunger a priority on the regional development agenda. In response, we presented a document entitled ”Hunger and Social Cohesion” at the International Seminar held in Madrid, June 18-19, organised by the Ibero-American General Secretariat, in preparation for the XVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State, to be held in November 2007 in Chile to discuss social cohesion and public policy.

The document presents proposals for what needs to be done at the local and regional levels to end hunger in the region that today holds the prize for the highest level of income inequality.

There are two initiatives currently being implemented in the region to eradicate hunger and chronic undernourishment: ”Latin America and the Caribbean without Hunger”, launched by Brazil and Guatemala, and supported by FAO, and ”Towards the Eradication of Chronic Undernourishment in Children”, launched by the World Food Programme(WFP) and supported by ECLAC and the Inter-American Development Bank. While both will contribute to reaching the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015, their target is eradicating hunger by 2025, at the latest.

Latin America has the natural, financial, and human resources and the infrastructure and democratic institutions needed to eliminate hunger, but it has not shown sufficient political will. Now it must. If we are to construct more capable and sustainable institutions and create broad, concrete public policies and national programmes, political will is essential.

It is also important to open channels for citizens’ participation, giving a voice to the voiceless and learning to listen to their demands. Otherwise, citizen confidence in institutions and democracy will be seriously compromised.

Hunger is the greatest obstacle to social cohesion in Latin America and as long as it exists, there cannot be general well-being. Therefore, its eradication must be the top political priority in Latin America’s effort to build social cohesion and equity throughout the region. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)