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L.A. is the second most violent region in the world
By LUCY CRISFIELD
TEGUCIGALPA — Due to criminal behavior, Latin America has been recognized
as the second most violent region in the world, after the Sahara in
Africa. “The wealth is in the hands of five percent of the population”
said Bernard Kliksberg, the director of the Interamerican initiative on
social capital and ethics. Kliksberg is currently leading a program
developed by the International Development Bank, as part of which, he has
been holding a series of discussions on the levels of poverty and violence
in the continent this week.
Criminality in Latin America is largely due to the rise in the number of
young delinquents, which also corresponds with the rising figure of
unemployment in the region. Kliksberg added that this situation is
perpetuated in Latin America by putting young people in jail, adding that
criminality can only be reduced “by fighting the structural causes of
poverty”.
The people most affected by poverty are children, who lack their parents
protection and the chance to grow in a safe and caring environment. The
International Labor Organization has registered 22 million young people
under the age of 14 who are currently working in Latin America, a very
small percentage of these have the option of a scholarship. According to
UNICEF “58 percent under the age of five are poor; and one in every three
under the age of two are at a higher risk of being malnoursihed”.
In the last few years, the so called middle class has been absorbed by
poverty; the most dramatic example being Argentina. This is one of the
reasons why Latin America now has the biggest inequality gaps in the
world; while five percent of the population is rich, the rest live emerged
in poverty. Also, the income of 30 percent of the poorest population of
Latin America has minus 7.5 percent of the national income which
constitutes the biggest social gap in the world. Even though Africa is
poorer than Latin America, it does not have such high levels of
inequality. This situation is not only due to the distribution of wealth,
but is also due to the population´s access to credit. Small and medium
sized businesses that number around 16 thousand only have access to five
percent of the credit in Latin America. This inequality has been gradually
getting worse over the past two decades in Latin America, the second most
extreme case in the world now being in Brazil where the richest 20 percent
of the population owns 55 percent of the wealth of the country.
Currently, 44 percent of Latin America live on the poverty line, and one
out of two is poor. However in Central America, Kliksberg assured that the
situation is even worse. With the exception of Panama and Costa Rica, 70
percent of Central America is poor. In as much as unemployment is
concerned, in almost all of Latin America, the levels of unemployment are
double in young people. A large number of these juveniles have also been
excluded from the educational system due to truancy, and on average only
have 5.2 years of schooling. The levels of secondary education are even
worse; in Latin American countries, only 35 percent complete high school,
while in Korea for example, the figure is 90.
Ethic discrimination is also very acute in these countries, and is perhaps
most prevalent in Guatemala where the indigenous population have an
average of 1.9 years of schooling, whereas the non-indigenous population
have an average of six. Kliksberg concluded by pointing out that 190
thousand children are dying annually from preventive diseases in the
continent. In the light of such information, Kliksberg called for the
governments of Latin America to unify in order to broach the obstacles
that are currently hindering the path towards social and economic
progression in the continent. |
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Fransisco
Artiga
Oscar
Alas
