UNFPA: "Dramatic Inequality in Latin America Worse After Pandemic

Latin America and the Caribbean, the region with the greatest social disparity in the world, will be more unequal and indicators will worsen due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is already leaving a dramatic situation.

This was said in an interview with EFE by the regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Costa Rican Harold Robinson, who predicted that "the worst impact (of the pandemic) will be on education and will last for generations".

"If Latin America is already unequal, the pandemic will make it even more so, but we hope it will be in the short term and governments will react with the right policies," he added.

According to estimates by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), COVID-19 will leave 231 million people in poverty this year, 37.3 percent of the region's 626 million inhabitants, and 96 million in extreme poverty, 15.5 percent of the population.

"231 million people in poverty... that's almost a country like the United States," which, according to the latest official figures, has a population of 328.2 million, the director said.

With respect to 2019, the number of people in poverty in 2020 would increase by 45 million while another 28 million would be left in extreme poverty. "In terms of social indicators we will be worse off," Robinson said.

For the UNFPA regional director, the pandemic "has two impacts: it feeds inequalities and deepens them, that is the perverse thing about it".

Latin America and the Caribbean was already suffering from economic weakness and increasing inequality when the VIDCO 19 pandemic struck earlier this year. Now its economy will contract by 9.1 percent this year, according to ECLAC figures, and will recover more slowly than during the Great Recession.

"Some estimate that this will lead to a much more serious situation than in the 1980s with the crisis in the region," he said.

Since 2015 the region "had reversed the trend of reducing inequality," this is "the fifth year of increased inequality," and "from the pandemic the rates will increase," Robinson explained. Robinson stressed that "informality" is related to "systematic exclusion, which leads to people being on the street working.

"In more than seven months the pandemic has made it practically impossible to earn a living," said the regional director.

The differences between population groups "will undoubtedly be worse", as the most vulnerable "are those who suffer the most, already before COVID-19 they had precarious levels", and during the pandemic "they suffered at first because they did not have the capacity to stay at home; they had to work".
 

Although 134 million people of African descent live in Latin America and the Caribbean, corresponding to 21% of the total population, this population group still suffers from inequality and racism reflected in poverty and low schooling rates.

For Robinson, the region still faces challenges in the inclusion of people of African descent: "The first challenge is the recognition that addressing these structural reasons and making certain people disadvantaged is always a challenge," he added.

He added that it is necessary to improve the visibility of statistics and "make progress with censuses by updating administrative records every 10 years," as well as to understand that current universal policies, which give the right to access to health and education, "do not work for many people," so "we must go further and have policies that are specific.

"Decision-making spaces must be shared: in this region the representation of people of African descent is very low or non-existent in the public and private spheres of power," he concluded.