Mark Engman, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, was recently in Panama for a conference involving UNICEF’s national committees from around the world, and UNICEF’s Latin American and Caribbean offices.
Fact: Between 1990 and 2006, Panama lowered its overall under-five mortality rate by a third, from 34 to 23 per thousand live births.
Fact: Among rural, indigenous communities, the poorest people in Panama, the under-five mortality rate is about 57 per thousand live births, more than twice the national average.
Those facts highlight both the progress and the problems facing the Americas and Caribbean region. At our UNICEF workshop in Panama, we heard Nils Kastberg, UNICEF's Regional Director, talk about the "tyranny of averages." Throughout the region, national progress in many areas – child health, education, access to AIDS treatment – masks the underlying reality that the poorest communities have been left behind.
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| © Mark Engman |
Despite robust economic growth, the disparities between the haves and the have-nots remain extreme in Latin America and the Caribbean region. What’s more, this inequality disproportionately affects children. In a pattern typical of the region as a whole, the proportion of all poor people in Brazil is 27 percent, but the poverty rate among children is 40 percent. And poor children face the consequences of that inequality: infant mortality rates among Indigenous children are 60 percent higher than among non-Indigenous children in the region. The poorest 20 percent of the regional population concentrates almost 40 percent of the total number of child deaths, whereas the richest 20 percent accounts for only 8 percent of child deaths.
That persistent inequality’s impact on children is why UNICEF must stay engaged in this region. Rather than focus only on service delivery and specific projects, UNICEF’s role in Latin America and the Caribbean is evolving to that of an independent voice and authoritative advocate for equitable and effective public policies that ensure all children have access to basic services, even in the poorest and most excluded populations. As Latin America's overall wealth and health indicators have improved, UNICEF’s role in the region is evolving as well – shifting from almost total reliance on service delivery and projects, to become an independent and authoritative advocate for children, helping governments meet their responsibilities to deliver services like health and education to even the poorest and most excluded children.
That approach requires working with the highest levels of national governments, as well as staying engaged at the community level to provide technical assistance and to help hold governments accountable. UNICEF is the only organization in the world that can engage at all levels of society on behalf of all children, and it was an eye-opener for this American to learn how UNICEF works in a country only four hours by plane from Atlanta.
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| © Mark Engman |
