Family planning, sexual and reproductive health, and empowerment of individuals and families took centre stage as World Population Day (WPD) 2018 was celebrated through a full-day event in the north-eastern town of Sangre Grande, Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday 14 July 2018.
Building on the success of the International Women’s Day City Village, which was held in Port of Spain in March 2018, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with support from Government, civil society an…
With populations ageing and an increasing number of people suffering from non-communicable diseases, the number of people in the Caribbean living with some form of disability is expected to rise in coming years. The prevalence of disability could increase by 30 to 40% between 2015 and 2050. In anticipation of this, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean is urging the subregion to take early action.
On 11 April 2017, ECLAC Caribbean brought together policy makers in the fields of disabilities, social development and human r…
Countries in the subregion are set to meet to identify a set of core indicators, from among the global indicators for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that the Caribbean would regard as essential to produce.
The SDGs are a set of 17 global goals adopted by the UN General Assembly just over a year ago. The Goals, among others, are aimed at ending poverty, promoting decent work and economic growth, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all as part of a sustainable development agenda. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years and over 200 global indicat…
The unpaid care work performed primarily by women, underpins all societies, contributing to well-being, social development and economic growth. Care work involves a variety of domestic tasks, such as the preparation of food, cleaning, washing and ironing of clothes, the collection of water and fuel for cooking, as well as, the care of mostly dependant family members, including children, older persons and persons with disabilities.
The time-use survey is the only available tool for measuring unpaid care work and is also a more cost effective method of collecting timely and accurate data on the…
Information generated from mobile phones can be successfully used to contain the spread of non-communicable diseases, as was recently done to stem the spread of the Chikungunya virus in the Caribbean. This opportunity was explained in the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) recently published report titled “An assessment of big data for official statistics in the Caribbean”.
The report notes that the use of big data through geospatial (or location) information was used to support healthcare, and to design social intervention measures to address …
Opening remarks by Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, on the occasion of the 14th International Resource Panel Meeting
Santiago, 28 May 2014
It is a great honour to welcome you to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean on the occasion of the 14th International Resource Panel and its Steering Committee under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme-UNEP.
It is especially significant since the decision to hold this Panel of Experts in our region is a source of tremendous p…
The present document offers a comparative study of the legal child protection codes and practices in Latin America and the Caribbean, both in terms of the legal grounds for establishing a Comprehensive National Child Protection System (NCPS) and as a basis for examining current child-protection practice, institutions, functions and powers established within such legal frameworks.
The study also includes an analysis of the status of implementation and start-up of NCPSs in compliance with national mandates in four countries of Latin America and the Caribbean: Uruguay, representing the Southern C…
Discourse always matters in the politics of building social pacts on social protection —for failure as much as for success. And by discourse, we mean not just the ideas behind the social pacts but the policy debates and political discussions surrounding the negotiation of those pacts. Over the past three decades, with globalization a major driving force in the international economy, new social pacts have been negotiated and older ones renegotiated. Many of these negotiations have been underpinned by neoliberal ideas focused on increasing flexibility in labor markets through greater management …
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(3 October 2012) Today, the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, and the Director of the South America Department of the German Agency for International Cooperation (or GIZ, because of its name in German), Sabine Müller, signed the contract to implement the cooperation programme known as "Promoting low-carbon development and social cohesion in Latin America and the Caribbean". The ceremony was also attended by Jürgen Klenk, Resident Director of GIZ in Chile.
The programme was agreed by ECLAC and the …
This manual contains information on the dataset compiled from the Survey of Living
Conditions and Household Budgets (SLC/HBS) conducted in Saint Lucia by the Kairi
Consultants Limited and National Assessment Team between 2005 and 2006. The
SLC/HBS is a sample survey which generates data on households and individuals in the
country.
This manual was developed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) – Subregional Headquarters in the Caribbean as a supplementary
document for the Caribbean Household Surveys Database (CHSD). It is sectioned out into
two main parts- sec…
The importance of science and technology (S&T) in Small Island Developing States
(SIDS) is clearly articulated in Chapter XI, paragraphs 57, 58, 61 and 62 of the Mauritius
Strategy for the Further Implementation of the Programme of Action for Sustainable
Development of Small Island Developing States (MSI). At the regional level, the Heads of
Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) noted the challenge that CARICOM
member States face in competing in this new international economic environment in which the
impact of scientific and technological change has created a knowledge-based glo…
Social protection was the core of the Thirty-first Session of the economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC);, held in Montevideo in March 2006The discussions focused on the need for a new approach to social protection, given the structural changes the region is experiencing. It was suggested that this approach should be the result of a new rights-based social covenant, in which social rights are seen as the normative horizon, and existing inequalities and budgetary restrictions are the limiting factors to be addressed (ECLAC, 2006a);.…
Abstract The author examines the pension systems of Bolivia and Antigua in the context of non-contributory pensions around the world, concluding with policy lessons. Universal pensions available to everyone of eligible age, regardless of income, assets or employment history, have many advantages over targeted pensions. If targeting is desired, it is best done with ex post recovery from other income rather than ex ante means tests. For reasons that are unclear, governments almost always prefer ex ante tests to ex post controls for noncontributory pensions, even though the reverse is tr…
Social protection systems have to cope with large
discrepancies between the financing needed to cover demand
and the resources actually available. For this reason, it is
necessary for any reform proposal to include elements of
cost restraint as well as measures to increase the population
coverage of systems. Efficiency and solidarity must improve
together if progress is to be made towards universality of
benefits. Any reform strategy needs to consider not only the
financial constraints imposed by the macroeconomy, but also
the heavy drain on financial resources and the effects on the
fiscal ac…
This article holds that ensuring the full sway of economic, social and cultural rights makes it possible to advance towards greater equality of opportunities, both for attaining well-being and for asserting differences in the field of identity. This development of the effective use of rights must be complemented with new forms of citizenship connected with the possibility of interaction with the media and greater participation in the knowledge-based society. Only in this way does it seem feasible to give an ethical foundation to social and development policies which have been deprived of ideol…
Second regional conference in follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development. Santiago, Chile, 15-17 May 2000 Summary The courses of action recommended at the World Summit for Social Development coincide with the general thrust of the action taken by the Governments of the region in the economic and social spheres during the 1990s. The objective of this document is to weigh the positive and negative aspects of the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean with regard to poverty reduction, productive job creation and social integration within the wider context of economic changes and s…
This article aims to make a walk-through in the virtual reality of budgetary and fiscal matters in order to identify the possible degrees of freedom to achieve a higher level of convergence between the public discourse on equity and the real content of public policies aimed at that goal. To this end, the author explores possible answers to four questions: what is the current meaning of the concept of equity; how much leeway is there in the field of taxation for expanding resources and improving vertical equity; what means are there for giving priority to the objective of equity in managing pub…
This article makes both a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the new policies applied in Argentina since 1992 with regard to the treatment accorded to capital goods: exemption from import duties, with drawback facilities for domestic producers in respect of their local sales. The new system is evaluated through a detailed analysis of its effects on demand for capital goods (section II);; on the domestic supply of such goods (section III);; and on some macroeconomic variables such as the fiscal balance (section IV); and the external balance (section V);. Some aspects relating to the manag…
This article analyses the treatment accorded to foreign investment under the present development strategy. To this end, it looks at the recent dynamics of both direct and indirect foreign investment, including portfolio investment and quasi-equity operations, the latter with reference to contracts for the transfer of production know-how. For this purpose, the main resource flows and their directions are analysed, together with the changes which have taken place in corporate strategies. It is concluded that it is necessary to put together an explicit development strategy in which the main objec…
Con la ambición de fortalecer la institucionalidad social y una mirada hacia el futuro concluyó en Santiago de Chile la Quinta Reunión de la Conferencia Regional sobre Desarrollo Social de América Latina y el Caribe y el XV Foro Ministerial para el Desarrollo en América Latina.…