The InterDependent

Ana Nascimento/MDS

In Angico City, Brazil, Elza Oliveira dos Anjos pours water on her daughter, Genileide, from a cistern built in the family's yard, a project of Bolsa Familia, a government antipoverty program. Brazil is quickly catching up to Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay in achieveing high rankings for human development.

A family health center in the small Brazilian city of Piraí, a town of about 23,000 set among rolling hills and great expanses of cattle-ranching land about 60 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, is a living illustration as to why Latin America -- and Brazil in particular -- is moving steadily toward meeting some if not all of the Millennium Development Goals. Brazil, where health care is a constitutional right and a government cash-transfer program for the poor covers a diverse country, has already met Goal 1, reducing poverty and hunger by half.

The Piraí clinic, a joint effort of the local municipality and a leading Brazilian family planning organization, Bemfam, digitizes its records to keep track of women both in town and in the hinterland; schedules appointments to coincide with rural bus timetables for the convenience of poor patients; and can dispatch an ambulance at short notice to remote villages in emergencies. Though the clinic is primarily a mother-and child center, it encourages a holistic approach to health, offering excellent dental care and nutritional advice as well as counseling for cases of sexual abuse.

When leaders from around the world meet this week to take stock of progress on the Millennium Goals, the Latin American-Caribbean region will have the right to boast about its achievements – as well it should. Regional leaders might also offer advice to African and Asian governments, where progress and innovation have been much slower and government commitment less strong. Nevertheless, income disparity in Latin America continues to hurt the region, where government policies often do not budget enough for social programs and low tax rates benefit the rich while depriving the poor.

Six Latin American countries – Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay -- are ranked high in human development by global standards, with Brazil moving up rapidly. Chile and Peru, like Brazil, have also met the goal of reducing extreme poverty. Caribbean nations, on the whole, also do well on progress toward meeting the goals.

Latin America and the Caribbean – with some exceptions – is a region now classified economically as middle income. In human-development terms, it is moving into even higher ranks. Literacy rates average about 92 percent, nearly 30 percentage points above Africa and South Asia, where rates among women rarely rise above 50 percent. The ratio of girls to boys in school in the Latin American-Caribbean region is about equal, with more girls than boys at secondary level in some countries. Malnutrition affects about 6 percent of children under 5; in India the comparable figure is about 45 percent. Infant mortality is generally low and life expectancy high.

There are some clouds in this otherwise sunny picture. Five regional countries rank low in global living standards: Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua. Regionally, maternal mortality rates – perhaps the biggest challenge everywhere for the Millennium Goals – have actually become marginally worse in enough places to raise red flags, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean reported in August.

Ana Nascimento/MDS

Marilane Dantas Cunha of Recife City, Brazil, makes handbags with a sewing machine bought through the Crediamigo program of the Brazilian Northeast Bank, an arrangement by Bolsa Familia.

The commission had other bad news this year: “Latin America and the Caribbean still has the worst income distribution of any region in the world,” a report in the spring concluded, pointing to persistent inequalities.

“Although Latin America is considered to be a middle-income region in the world, and without ignoring the important progress that has been made towards the Millennium Development Goals,” the commission said, “the high level of inequality within and between the countries paints a not entirely auspicious picture.” Among those inequalities were several related to gender and female empowerment.

Against this background, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s appointment of the former Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, to lead UN Women, a new high-level agency created to enhance UN effectiveness in dealing with women’s issues, will bring the Latin experience to UN headquarters.

In many ways, Bachelet has been a pioneer in Chile and the region. A physician, single mother of three and torture victim under the Augusto Pinochet regime, she fled into exile and then returned to Chile to build her own career in politics. Bachelet, 58, was not, like many women in leadership positions in the developing world, the political heir of a father or a husband. She understands well the struggle to succeed when female leadership is not taken for granted and when the rights of women are limited. Chile legalized divorce just six years ago, and abortion for any cause whatsoever was banned in 1989 under the Pinochet dictatorship; the ban has never been overturned.

The gaps between the richest and poorest Latin Americans do not close automatically with development, the regional economic commission found. But the gaps can be narrowed with good government policies, as Peru and Brazil have demonstrated. One lesson for other countries is Brazil, which has the highest taxes in the region and actually collects them. This has given the government the money it needs for its generous social programs, which have helped to even out some inequalities. Brazilian women’s organizations are exceptionally strong and have had a positive impact socially in promoting women’s rights.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is expected to point out these achievements when he speaks to the UN summit. The president, who was born poor and has given high priority to antipoverty programs while in office, is backing a woman in elections to choose his successor on Oct. 3. She is Dilma Rousseff, his former chief of staff and member of his Workers’ Party.

The Obama administration, which has been seeking ways to strengthen ties with Brazil, will be on a similar wave length when the US president speaks at the summit, which more than 150 world leaders will attend.

American officials have said in recent months that there will be four main themes in US policy on making development work not only to meet the Millennium Goals but also to turn that campaign into a permanent strategy for improving lives in poor countries.

“It’s not just about bringing new money and resources,” said Peter Yeo, vice president for public policy at the United Nations Foundation and executive director of the Better World Campaign, at a news teleconference on Sept. 16. “It’s also about promoting innovative technologies, promoting sustainability, focusing on outcomes and enhancing mutual accountability. Those four key elements together can play an incredibly important role in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

“President Obama has indicated that the Millennium Development Goals are America’s goals, and he’s on solid ground in terms of where the American public is as well,” said Yeo, who was formerly deputy staff director at the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We did polling this year that showed that when we walked Americans through the Millennium Development Goals, 87 percent thought that the United States should be very or somewhat involved in a worldwide effort to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals.” Yeo added that the president would be “pushing on an open door” in gaining public support for his policy.