As the pandemic’s new epicentre, not only has Latin America’s death toll risen; hunger has skyrocketed. In the region, over 50% of the population—around 140 million people—work informally.
This informality makes families’ household economies precarious, even more so when stay-at-home orders curtail their income, having repercussions on their ability to feed themselves, pay rent or mortgage payments or other basic needs. Public policies must prioritise actions aiming to prevent the health crisis from becoming a full-blown food crisis.
Furthermore, access to water, which is directly tied to the virus’ spread, is cause for worry in the entire region: 65 million people do not have access to water and soap, with rural areas being the most affected.
The region’s high covid-19 death toll has given visibility to the dismantling of the public health system, the precarious nature of health workers’ jobs, and the lack of medical supplies such as ventilators and hospital beds. In Latin America, medical centres are concentrated in urban areas, leaving many rural residents disadvantaged and vulnerable.
In many countries in the region, there have been corruption scandals about improper use and embezzlement of funds meant to purchase medical equipment to fight the pandemic.
At this critical juncture, when the pandemic’s course can still be changed, FIDH and its member organisations warn against the serious risk that the pandemic’s impact on extreme poverty and inequality could become permanent. Now is a key moment that must be seized to undertake a momentous policy shift.
While many governments have ordered the provision of economic and food assistance to needy citizens, the measures adopted are insufficient and suffer from problems including slow delivery and lack of transparency in how assistance is allocated. What’s more, medium-term policies are benefitting the business sector and the richest individuals, to the detriment of those who are most disadvantaged—thus deepening socioeconomic inequalities.
Before this complex backdrop, FIDH and its undersigned member organisations present a series of short-term and medium-term recommendations aiming to counteract covid-19’s exacerbation of poverty and socioeconomic inequalities impacting vulnerable populations, to pave the way for a more just and equitable society in which human rights are of utmost priority.
Among the paper’s recommendations: redistributive fiscal reforms to fight aggravation of inequality and combat the rise of extreme poverty; for example, the implementation of universal basic income financed by taxes on significant wealth, allowing for the full enjoyment of human rights; the suspension of external debt and interest, and the cancellation of those deemed illegitimate, odious, and illegal; and finally, greater monitoring of public expenditures combatting the pandemic to prevent resources earmarked for the needs of vulnerable populations from vanishing due to corruption.
Without an overhaul of Latin American nations’ social compact, the region will come out of the pandemic poorer, more unequal, and backsliding from the social advances of the past 15 years.
