“Not one step back” in compliance with the region’s demographic agenda, demanded activists at the Second Session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, held Oct. 6-9 in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 10 2015 (IPS)

“The countries of Latin America have not fully committed themselves to the international conventions and have not given indigenous peoples access. Nor have their contents been widely disseminated,” to help people demand compliance and enforcement, said Guatemalan activist Ángela Suc.

The indigenous community organiser’s criticism is an alert regarding the pledges made at the Second Session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, organised Oct. 6-9 in Mexico City by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations population fund (UNFPA).

“We need land, territory, and access to culturally sensitive healthcare and education in line with our traditions and knowledge and in our languages,” Suc told IPS.

Suc, a representative of the Pocomchí people in the Guatemalan delegation to the conference, said the native population also experiences demographic phenomena such as migration and ageing, just like the non-indigenous population in the region.

The vicissitudes of native and black populations were part of the focus of the debates at the conference, which followed the one held in Montevideo in August 2013. A civil society gathering was also organised parallel to the official conference.

Participants discussed the problems still affecting these groups, such as poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunities, and high maternal and infant mortality rates.

More than 45 million indigenous people live in this region of around 600 million. They belong to over 800 native groups, according to the ECLAC report “Indigenous peoples in Latin America: progress in the last decade and pending challenges for guaranteeing their rights.”

Brazil heads the list, with 305 different native groups, followed by Colombia (102), Peru (85) and Mexico (78). At the other extreme are Costa Rica and Panama (nine), El Salvador (three) and Uruguay (two).

The countries with the largest numbers of indigenous people are: Mexico (nearly 17 million), followed by Peru (7.2 million), Bolivia (6.2 million), and Guatemala (5.9 million).

ECLAC reports the fragile demographics of many native peoples, who are at risk of actually disappearing, physically or culturally, as observed in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

The problems they face include forced displacement from their land, scarcity of food, pollution of their water sources, soil degradation, malnutrition and high mortality rates.

Birth rates are dropping in the region, with an average of 2.4 children per indigenous women in Uruguay, 4.0 in Nicaragua and Venezuela, and 5.0 in Guatemala and Panama.

Map of indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, drawn up by ECLAC, which estimates the number of native people at 45 million. Credit: ECLAC

Infant mortality rates among indigenous people are still higher than among the rest of the population. The biggest inequalities are found in Panama, Peru and Bolivia, in that order. And malnutrition is a major problem in Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

The ECLAC report stresses that indigenous children grow up in material poverty and that violence against native children and women remains a major challenge.

Of the region’s 12.8 million indigenous children, 2.7 million are in Mexico, 2.4 million in Guatemala, and 2.2 million in Bolivia.

“Our demands have been set forth in different international platforms and are still valid,” Dorotea Wilson, general coordinator of the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women (RMAAD), told IPS.

“We are going to monitor, observe and follow up to ensure that countries assume these commitments and comply with them,” said the Nicaraguan activist, who also took part in the regional conference. She added that compliance with the measures in favour of minorities requires political will, as well as agreements between the authorities and civil society, and specific budgets.

More than 120 million afro-descendants also live in the region, including 97 million in Brazil, one million in Ecuador and 800,000 in Nicaragua, according to national census data that included specific questions about ethnic identity. In other countries there are no specific statistics, such as Colombia, which has a significant black population.

The report “Afro-descendant Youth in Latin America: Diverse Realities and (un)Fulfilled Rights”, produced by ECLAC in 2011, showed that teen motherhood among young blacks was more widespread than among the rest of the population, especially in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama.

One of the problems discussed at the conference is the lack of demographic statistics on the region’s afro-descendant population.

In the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development, which contains the conclusions reached by the first edition of the conference, the region’s countries pledged to take into account the specific demographic dynamics of indigenous people in the design of public policies, and guarantee their right to health, including sexual and reproductive rights, and to their own traditional medicines and health practices.

They also agreed to adopt the necessary measures to guarantee that indigenous women, children, adolescents and young people enjoy full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination.

With respect to blacks, they agreed to tackle gender, race, ethnic and generational inequalities, guarantee the enforcement of their right to health, in particular sexual and reproductive health, and promote human development in this population group, while ensuring policies and programmes for improving women’s living conditions.

The plenary of the second conference approved the “Operational guide for the implementation and follow-up of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development”, which includes 14 provisions for indigenous and afro-descendant peoples.

Approval of the guide was hindered by the Caribbean delegations’ protest that they had not been given the document ahead of time – an obstacle that was not resolved until the early hours of the morning of the last day of the conference.

“To the extent that full participation by indigenous peoples exists, the guide will be complied with. This is a challenge for the State,” Suc said.

The process can be an engine driving progress in the U.N. International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024.

“The guide can be improved. We can influence the follow-up. But it is a challenge,” Wilson said.

The Political Declaration of the Social Forum held parallel to the official conference, which brought together social organisations from throughout the region, stressed that every indicator in the guide should be broken down by age, sex, gender, race and ethnicity.

But it also complained that two years after the approval of the Montevideo Consensus, the “ambitious, innovative agenda has not yet translated into substantive progress, and in some cases there have even been setbacks” in areas such as gender violence, hate crimes, high maternal mortality rates, a rise in teenage pregnancies, and discrimination.

Edited by Estrella Gutierrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Representatives of 38 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean meeting this week in the Uruguayan capital urged governments in the region to consider modifying their laws on abortion, which are among the most restrictive in the world.

The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development calls on “States to consider amending their laws, regulations, strategies and public policies relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy in order to protect the lives and health of women and adolescent girls, to improve their quality of life and to reduce the number of abortions”.

The document was adopted at the end of the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which ran Monday through Thursday.

Daptnhe Cuevas, of the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network, said their reaction to the outcome of the conference was “jubilation.”

Uruguay’s deputy minister of health, Leonel Briozzo, presided over the regional conference on population and development. Credit: Courtesy of the Public Health Ministry

We feminists came here with a series of clearly outlined proposals that were taken up integrally by the governments, which sent out a strong signal to the world that in Latin America, women’s rights are on the rise.”

Speaking with IPS just after the negotiations came to a close, the Mexican activist described the result as “a resounding success” and praised the governments for “rising to the demands.”

The Montevideo Consensus also urges the governments to “Ensure, in those cases where abortion is legal or decriminalised under the relevant national legislation, the availability of safe, good-quality abortion services for women with unwanted and unaccepted pregnancies”.

In Latin America, first-trimester abortion is only legal on demand in Cuba, Mexico City and, since 2012, Uruguay. In the rest of the countries, it is only allowed in exceptional cases – such as risk to the mother’s life or rape – or under no circumstances at all, such as in Chile, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

This week’s meeting, organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Uruguayan government with support from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), also brought together 24 regional and international agencies and 260 non-governmental organisations.

The document contains over 120 measures concerning the eight priority areas to follow up the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994.

The recommendations will be the input of Latin America and the Caribbean to the meetings of the U.N. Commission on Population and Development and the General Assembly, to be held in New York in April and September 2014, respectively.

The participants in the meeting numbered over 800, which made it one of the largest intergovernmental conferences in recent years in the region, according to ECLAC.

Cuevas said central demands of the women’s movement were echoed. The final document reaffirmed, for example, the concept that “a secular state is an indispensable condition for the rights of women to be exercised.”

The Montevideo Consensus states that “a secular state is one of the elements fundamental to the full exercise of human rights, the deepening of democracy and the elimination of all forms of discrimination”.

At the close of the conference, Uruguay’s deputy minister of public health, Leonel Briozzo, said the agreement was a sign that “Cairo isn’t moving backwards, but forward.

“We significantly expanded on what Cairo set forth, and we did so from a diversity of viewpoints that were completely respected. As a region that carries the sobriquet of inequality, we are giving an example of democracy,” he said.

“We were able to reach an agreement where no one was trampled on and no one was ignored. This collectively-built construction reflecting agreement on more than 130 points was made by all of us together. It is ours, and it is for the world as a whole.”

The countries also agreed to apply a human rights approach with a gender and intercultural perspective when dealing with population and development matters.

They also committed to spend more on youth, especially in public education, and to implement comprehensive sexual and reproductive health programmes, with a priority on prevention of teen pregnancy.

In addition, they agreed to adopt measures to ensure better quality of life for the elderly.

Another stride forward underscored by Cuevas was the recognition of sexual rights and reproductive rights as separate concepts.

“We took another step forward by recognising them separately,” she said. “What was approved 20 years ago in Cairo referred to reproductive, but not sexual, rights.

“Information has advanced, we have clear concepts, and we know that sexual rights are not necessarily linked to reproduction,” she added. “They’re different issues dealing with different bearers of rights, and on this occasion we managed to get that reflected in the agreement.

“The discussions were very different from discussions at past conferences. I think the tone changed substantially, and it changed because women were seen as people of flesh and blood,” she said.

The declaration also clearly states, she said, “the right to sexual orientations and gender identities. Gender identity can be varied, and the effort had never been made to mention that in a regional accord. That was included for the first time; we had no precedent in any previous consensus, and it is very important.”

Teresa Lanza, head of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir/Bolivia – the Catholics for Choice partner in Bolivia – told IPS that “the next step is for this to be translated into political will and big enough budgets to ensure that everything that was achieved here truly works and becomes a reality for all women in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The activists attributed a large part of the advances made to Uruguay’s leadership. Cuevas said that “In the United Nations system, we generally find that the base document doesn’t really tread too much on anyone’s toes, and if you start to compromise, you won’t necessarily win.

“Uruguay set a high starting point, and that made less strident, ideological positions possible in the negotiations and dialogue,” she said.

Point 88 of the declaration calls on countries to “Respect and guarantee the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, including those of peoples living in voluntary isolation and those in the initial phase of contact, with special attention to the challenges presented by extractive industries and other major global investments”.

Chile had initially voiced reservations regarding this point.

Quechua activist Tania Pariona of the Network of Organisations of Indigenous Youth of Peru told IPS that “the work here was collective.”

“The states were fairly open to civil society,” she said. “There has been a good reception, a good vision of what is wanted for the future of the region, and that’s a step forward.”