Human rights and the child

This article refers to the increasing importance being given to the children, as human people, with equal rights. It relates how, in 1959, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the value and dignity of the child as a human person and the need to give children the necessary protection for their growth and development. It describes the approval, in November 1989, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in the form of a legally binding agreement that the 171 ratifying States are obliged to fulfil. This constitutes one of the greatest achievements of the United Nations during its fi…

Transnationalization and integration of production in Latin America

Trade among the ALADI countries has grown with exceptional vigour so far in the 1990s, especially in the branches of metal products, machinery and equipment, chemical products, and foodstuffs, beverages and tobacco. In order for this dynamic growth to be sustainable in the long term, these countries must develop their intra-industry trade by promoting reciprocal supply in those branches. The bulk of transnational productive capital in Latin America is concentrated in those branches, and it is in the metal products, machinery and equipment sector that the swiftest increase in intra-industry tra…

Economic relations between Latin America and the high-performing Asian developing economies

This study examines South-South economic relations in the context of regionalism. It covers three Latin American countries and eight high-performing Asian developing economies. Although the level of trade and investment between these two groups is currently very low, trade is growing fast and there are indications that the potential for continued growth exists. Although regionalism is advancing in both these parts of the world, it has so far not affected the ties between the two groups of countries, and in fact inter-regional trade growth has recently been exceeding intra-regional …

Port privatization, labour reform and social equity

Governments of the ECLAC region have promulgated labour regimes which support port workers' desire for stable wages and job security, isolate them from market signals and create cargo-handling monopolies. The advent of a global economy, the introduction of export-led growth policies, the acquisition of advanced cargo-handling equipment and electronic information systems, and the participation of private interests in the offer of port services permit enterprises to compare, purchase and employ raw materials, labour and service inputs worldwide, and have transformed the traditional concept …

A summary of the ECLAC proposals

There is growing consensus that although a solid, balanced macroeconomic base is a necessary condition for development, it is not of itself enough to ensure that development is actually achieved or that its fruits will be enjoyed by the population as a whole. In a series of documents, ECLAC has been defining a coherent agenda of public policy reforms designed to ensure a change in production patterns accompanied by greater social equity. This article seeks to present a summary of this proposal, leaving aside for this reason the underlying diagnosis of the regional situation and the general fra…

Governance, competitiveness and social integration

This article seeks to set forth the grounds for an approach integrating political governance, economic competitiveness and social integration as interdependent variables. To this end, it looks at the possibilities for Latin American society to simultaneously increase its capacity for democratic self-government, improve its economic competitiveness and tackle the main problems of social exclusion and poverty, since if this is not done the region will find it more difficult to take its place in the concert of modern democratic nations. In order to analyse the evolution of those variables from a …

Democracy and development

Address delivered by H.E. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, on the occasion of his visit to ECLAC Headquarters Santiago, Chile, 3 March 1995. Document is available for download.…

Guía metodológica general para la preparación y evaluación de proyectos de inversión social = General methodological manual for the preparation and evaluation of social investment projects

Guía para la identificación y formulación de proyectos de educación = Guide for education project identification and formulation

Post-conflict peace-building: a challenge for the United Nations

The multidisciplinary peace-keeping and post-conflict peace-building (PCPB); operations of today have imposed on the United Nations a multifaceted and complex role, comprising both verification and good offices functions in a wide variety of areas. This has put tremendous pressure on the human and financial resources of the Organization. As a result, many flaws in the United Nations system have been brought to light, such as the inadequate coordination that exists between the different bodies of the Organization and its inability to address problems associated with peace and development in a r…