CARA­CAS, Venezuela–The Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (Eclac) says equal­i­ty is the "guid­ing prin­ci­ple" for apara­digm change in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

In ad­dress­ing the so­cial sum­mit of the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (Celac, Eclac's ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary, Ali­cia B�rce­na, pre­sent­ed the doc­u­ment, "Struc­tur­al Per­spec­tives on the In­equal­i­ties in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean" which fur­ther ex­plores the case Eclac puts for­ward in Time for Equal­i­ty: Clos­ing Gaps, Open­ing Trails".

Ac­cord­ing to Eclac, the new doc­u­ment em­pha­sis­es equal­i­ty as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple that "in­volves dis­sem­i­nat­ing the de­vel­op­ment of ca­pac­i­ties, labour op­por­tu­ni­ties and ac­cess to so­cial pro­tec­tion net­works and ben­e­fits through­out the so­cial fab­ric, as well as the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the widest range of stake­hold­ers in mak­ing this pos­si­ble".

B�rce­na un­der­scored that in­equal­i­ty "man­i­fests it­self in many so­cial di­men­sions, such as in­come dis­tri­b­u­tion, so­cial pro­tec­tion cov­er­age and the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion or the labour mar­ket".She said the re­gion cur­rent­ly has "sig­nif­i­cant gaps" in ed­u­ca­tion, in terms of both ac­cess and qual­i­ty.She said pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gaps in­volve dis­par­i­ties in em­ploy­ment qual­i­ty, adding that these, in turn, lead to seg­re­gat­ed ac­cess to so­cial pro­tec­tion.

"Plac­ing equal­i­ty at the heart of the mat­ter is a break with the eco­nom­ic par­a­digm that has pre­vailed in the re­gion for at least three decades," B�rce­na said.She said this break places the po­lit­i­cal di­men­sion at the cen­tre, stat­ing that there is a need for so­cial covenants that "en­sure will­ing­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty for this de­vel­op­ment op­tion".The Eclac chief said "per­sis­tent­ly high lev­els of in­equal­i­ty" in the re­gion 'go hand in hand with a deep mis­trust of in­sti­tu­tions and strong­ly per­ceived in­jus­tice'.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, it is vi­tal to link po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions, pub­lic agen­cies, busi­ness agents, work­ers and oth­er civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tors.For B�rce­na, 'there is a two-way re­la­tion­ship be­tween struc­tur­al change, equal­i­ty and po­lit­i­cal le­git­i­ma­cy'.

Eclac said B�rce­na's pre­sen­ta­tion "un­der­scored the im­por­tance of growth for equal­i­ty, and of equal­i­ty for growth, us­ing macro­eco­nom­ic poli­cies to en­cour­age in­vest­ment, in­dus­tri­al poli­cies that strength­en sec­tors, and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty to change pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion pat­terns".The doc­u­ment al­so states that the favourable his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tion cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by many Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries is "in step with this par­a­digm change.

CMC