Latin America, the region of the world with the greatest disparity between haves and have-nots, needs to address the root causes of social exclusion and discrimination in order to prosper, Inter-American Development Bank President Enrique V. Iglesias said.
At the opening of a seminar on social, economic and political inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean held on Tuesday, May 4, Iglesias said the region must overcome a legacy of inequality that prevents whole groups of its population from benefiting from development and participating as full citizens in their own countries.
“As the region with the greatest level of inequality in the world, Latin America has the most to gain (from social inclusion),” he said. “We cannot afford to leave anyone out.”
According to IDB studies, Latin American countries with large indigenous or Afro-descendent populations would obtain immense social and economic gains by ending exclusion that permeates their health and education systems, as well as their labor markets. In these countries, peoples of color have on average less than half the years of education as their white compatriots. Racism results in lower salaries, fewer benefits and worse jobs for those in discriminated groups.
Tuesday’s seminar brought together delegates from multilateral agencies, academic institutions, the private sector and non governmental organizations to discuss how the IDB can best promote social, economic and political inclusion through its projects, research and outreach efforts.
The meeting also provided an opportunity to compare the experiences of Latin America and the United States in combating discrimination. The keynote speaker, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, urged participants to promote a better understanding of the importance of diversity and of the costs of keeping people at the margins of society.
Swygert said discrimination endures in the United States, even decades after the movement for racial equality achieved historic victories such as the landmark 1954 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that segregation in the education system was unconstitutional.
Civil rights leaders such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and their followers had to push for many years for the implementation of changes, he added. Nevertheless, to this day African-American and Latino students fill the worst performing schools in the poorest areas of this country.
Social exclusion persists because minorities remain “largely invisible to a world that hardly knows they are there,” Swygert said. In Latin America, as recently as in the year 2000, less than one third of the countries considered race or ethnicity in their census and household surveys.
The seminar’s participants discussed what is being done and what should be done to combat discrimination in Latin America and the United States, as well as how different actors can contribute to the solution.
The panel on economic inclusion considered the experience of two U.S. companies, Continental Airlines and ATS-Chester Engineering, in promoting diversity and creating opportunities for members of minorities both within and outside their organizations through proactive programs, such as recruiting to build a diverse workforce and mentoring minority-owned small businesses.
On social inclusion, panelists underscored the importance of targeting social programs to ensure that benefits flow preferentially to the most disadvantaged groups rather than to people who are better off or have more influence. Coalition building was also singled out as an effective tactic to confront and overcome entrenched discrimination.
The panel on political inclusion concluded that social and economic inclusion could not be truly achieved without affirming the rights of discriminated minorities to participate fully as citizens in their societies, with voice and representation. While in some Latin American countries the indigenous population has lately gained greater political clout, other disadvantaged groups are still largely relegated.
The IDB is working with member countries in the region to help them surmount such barriers. For instance, in recent years it has provided financial and technical support to national statistics agencies in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua for the training of bilingual census takers and facilitators and awareness campaigns to encourage members of minority groups to participate in census, which are crucial tools for targeting public spending on those with the greatest needs.
At the same time the IDB also supports social programs that focus their resources efficiently on the most needy, such as Mexico’s Oportunidades, a program that offers female heads of indigent households cash subsidies in exchange for keeping their children in school and taking them periodically to medical checkups.
Other programs aimed at increasing social inclusion involve improving the quality of basic education and health services, upgrading public services and infrastructure in slum areas, supporting women microentrepreneurs and expanding poor people’s access to the judicial system.
The Bank is also collaborating with donor nations such as Norway and the United Kingdom, which have established trust funds to support programs focusing on social inclusion of people belonging to racial or ethnic minorities, the poor and people with disabilities or with HIV/AIDS.
At the closing of the seminar, IDB Executive Vice President Dennis Flannery noted that while much is being done, much more must be done to break the cycle of inequality and defeat discrimination.
“Targeted spending may be one avenue to address exclusion, but the driving force of any change is in political leadership, which can be the vehicle for changing attitudes,” Flannery said. “Partnership and leadership, as stressed in this conference, lie at the heart of overcoming the profound exclusion found in the region.”